Saturday, August 11, 2007
Missouri-Part II or Branson
Bob had meetings in Springfield until noon and then we drove down to Branson, which is only about 35 miles. We remember how crowded the main highway is through Branson, but learned about some of the alternate routes, so were able to get to our hotel and to the Jim Stafford show at 3 pm—it was really a lot of fun. He is so funny; I thought I was going to split because I was laughing so hard. He’s also a really good guitar player. Then his 10 yr old daughter and 14 year old son played the piano. He made the comment that he had 10 & 14 yr old children and he was 63. He said what he’ll need is a nursing home next to a good school!
That evening we went to Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede—she wasn’t there, but it is in a huge arena and included lots of horses and wagons. The audience sits along tiers that has narrow tables with everyone facing the arena. They give you a huge meal (cheese biscuit, soup, whole capon chicken, slab of pork tenderloin, corn on the cob, hunk of roasted potato, and apple turnover), but what they don’t give you is any silverware—so you eat it all with your hands. It was fun and messy! The show included singing and dancing as well as horse showmanship and contests. We have been to Medieval Times a couple of times—and it reminded me a lot like that (although this one had pig and chicken races, in addition to the horse riding).
On Friday, we had three shows. At 10 am we went to a Red Skelton revue. The actor was Tom Mullica and he really was a lot like Red Skelton and did several of his characters. Both Bob and I really liked Red Skelton and could remember Clem Kiddlehopper, Gertrude and Heathcliff (the birds), and Freddy the Freeloader. It was neat because toward the end of the performance, he put on Freddy’s make-up right on stage and did one of Freddy the Freeloader's skits. Then at the end, he took off all the make-up and removed the teeth and tape that he had on his ears and turned into himself. I’m always amazed at how theatre make-up can make such a difference in a person’s appearance.
The next show that we went to was Yakov Smirnoff—who is very funny. He had some Russian dancers and a few other people that helped with the skit, but a lot of it was him talking about how it was to come from Russia without knowing a single word of English. He (and a lot of the Branson shows) are extremely patriotic—to the point of au nausium—at least to me. 
But I still enjoyed his humor--one of his standard lines is "you probably never thought of that before--but you will from now on!" I was surprised to learn that he is also an accomplished artist and taught art at a University. In fact, he painted a picture that was made into a huge mural and displayed at ground zero after 9/11. He didn't sign the mural at that time, because he didn't want it linked to him as a humorist. There were lots of his paintings for sale in his gift shop and he is really great! Just recently he has completed a Master’s Degree in psychology because he really is studying the art of laughter.
We had just enough time to stop and eat a quick meal of barbeque ribs—where they had some live music going on—and then headed to our evening show, which was The Beach Boys! Of course their music is what Bob and I grew up on—so especially in the last part of the show, all the songs were familiar and we were dancing to 'Surf City', 'Barbara Ann', 'Fun, Fun, Fun till Her Daddy Takes the T-Bird Away', etc. I was really surprised because they didn’t take any intermission at all. The show was a little over two hours. We were in the RFD Theatre (which is beautiful) and our seats were about 7 rows back—so we had excellent seats. The only thing, we noticed is Mike Love (an original Beach Boy and cousin to the Wilson’s) and Bruce Johnston (who joined them in 1965) are sure old. I wonder how that happened?!
Another thing that surprised me this that they didn't have many things for sale. Only some t-shirts--no CDs. They told everyone to go to their favorite music store to purchase the CDs.
The next day we went to Silver Dollar City—which is an amusement park, old time shops and demonstrations, and shows. However, we should have left earlier or looked for an alternate route, because we left the hotel around 9 am and drove the FIVE miles to the park and arrived there around 11 am! Most of the time, we were stopped and when we did move, we crawled forward a car length at a time.
We enjoyed many of the shows, but didn’t go on any of the rides—although it was very hot and one of the water rides would have felt pretty good. Then we realized that we didn’t have to take a water ride, because it came to us. We had gone to an ice show in a cool arena—so we were shivering a little and when we were going outside—it was pouring! We waited until it slowed down a bit and made a dash to another area where we got under a deck area—although it leaked, so we had big cold drips on us. The temperature must have dropped 40 degrees and along with the rain—it made it pretty cool. Since we didn’t want to get back into the slow moving traffic, we decided to wait for quite a while before we left. So we went to a great BBQ place and took our time eating, then moved to the car and enjoyed a bottle of green tea. We also found a back road—so it didn’t take much time to get back to the hotel.
We had a two-day ticket for Silver Dollar City and talked about going back Sunday morning, but thought we had taken in most of the shows that we were interested in, so decided to just relax and have a leisurely drive back to Springfield to catch our plane at 4 pm. We arrived home around midnight!
That evening we went to Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede—she wasn’t there, but it is in a huge arena and included lots of horses and wagons. The audience sits along tiers that has narrow tables with everyone facing the arena. They give you a huge meal (cheese biscuit, soup, whole capon chicken, slab of pork tenderloin, corn on the cob, hunk of roasted potato, and apple turnover), but what they don’t give you is any silverware—so you eat it all with your hands. It was fun and messy! The show included singing and dancing as well as horse showmanship and contests. We have been to Medieval Times a couple of times—and it reminded me a lot like that (although this one had pig and chicken races, in addition to the horse riding).
On Friday, we had three shows. At 10 am we went to a Red Skelton revue. The actor was Tom Mullica and he really was a lot like Red Skelton and did several of his characters. Both Bob and I really liked Red Skelton and could remember Clem Kiddlehopper, Gertrude and Heathcliff (the birds), and Freddy the Freeloader. It was neat because toward the end of the performance, he put on Freddy’s make-up right on stage and did one of Freddy the Freeloader's skits. Then at the end, he took off all the make-up and removed the teeth and tape that he had on his ears and turned into himself. I’m always amazed at how theatre make-up can make such a difference in a person’s appearance.
The next show that we went to was Yakov Smirnoff—who is very funny. He had some Russian dancers and a few other people that helped with the skit, but a lot of it was him talking about how it was to come from Russia without knowing a single word of English. He (and a lot of the Branson shows) are extremely patriotic—to the point of au nausium—at least to me. 
But I still enjoyed his humor--one of his standard lines is "you probably never thought of that before--but you will from now on!" I was surprised to learn that he is also an accomplished artist and taught art at a University. In fact, he painted a picture that was made into a huge mural and displayed at ground zero after 9/11. He didn't sign the mural at that time, because he didn't want it linked to him as a humorist. There were lots of his paintings for sale in his gift shop and he is really great! Just recently he has completed a Master’s Degree in psychology because he really is studying the art of laughter. 
We had just enough time to stop and eat a quick meal of barbeque ribs—where they had some live music going on—and then headed to our evening show, which was The Beach Boys! Of course their music is what Bob and I grew up on—so especially in the last part of the show, all the songs were familiar and we were dancing to 'Surf City', 'Barbara Ann', 'Fun, Fun, Fun till Her Daddy Takes the T-Bird Away', etc. I was really surprised because they didn’t take any intermission at all. The show was a little over two hours. We were in the RFD Theatre (which is beautiful) and our seats were about 7 rows back—so we had excellent seats. The only thing, we noticed is Mike Love (an original Beach Boy and cousin to the Wilson’s) and Bruce Johnston (who joined them in 1965) are sure old. I wonder how that happened?!
Another thing that surprised me this that they didn't have many things for sale. Only some t-shirts--no CDs. They told everyone to go to their favorite music store to purchase the CDs. The next day we went to Silver Dollar City—which is an amusement park, old time shops and demonstrations, and shows. However, we should have left earlier or looked for an alternate route, because we left the hotel around 9 am and drove the FIVE miles to the park and arrived there around 11 am! Most of the time, we were stopped and when we did move, we crawled forward a car length at a time.
We enjoyed many of the shows, but didn’t go on any of the rides—although it was very hot and one of the water rides would have felt pretty good. Then we realized that we didn’t have to take a water ride, because it came to us. We had gone to an ice show in a cool arena—so we were shivering a little and when we were going outside—it was pouring! We waited until it slowed down a bit and made a dash to another area where we got under a deck area—although it leaked, so we had big cold drips on us. The temperature must have dropped 40 degrees and along with the rain—it made it pretty cool. Since we didn’t want to get back into the slow moving traffic, we decided to wait for quite a while before we left. So we went to a great BBQ place and took our time eating, then moved to the car and enjoyed a bottle of green tea. We also found a back road—so it didn’t take much time to get back to the hotel.
We had a two-day ticket for Silver Dollar City and talked about going back Sunday morning, but thought we had taken in most of the shows that we were interested in, so decided to just relax and have a leisurely drive back to Springfield to catch our plane at 4 pm. We arrived home around midnight!
# posted by bjm @ 10:09 AM 
