Branson, Chapter 3

Our time at this rally is flying by. Thursday morning we left the park by tour bus, headed for Table Rock Lake and the Showboat Branson Belle.

The Branson Belle is a true paddlewheel showboat, driven through the water by two immense paddlewheels, powered by three giant diesel engines.

Suzy enjoyed this musical apparatus.

The cruise started at noon, with a delicious lunch in the large theater / dining room, followed by a pre-show featuring a band playing awesome Dixieland and then New Orleans jazz. After an intermission for potty breaks and a fresh air break out on deck, we returned to the theater for the big show.

Christo-pher James was the emcee, singer, and would-be magician. He did a fine job engaging the audience, then introduced the Showstoppers, a singing and dancing quartet who treated us to a wide variety of numbers, including a medley of 22 Broadway hit songs in 8 minutes, complete with costume changes!

The finale was the emcee doing some obvious cornball magic tricks involving audience members, to the delight of the rest of us. His big trick was a Houdini-style escape from a straitjacket. He hammed it up in front of us for quite a while, then suddenly appeared behind the audience, with his stage manager on stage in the straitjacket! Attaching the straitjacket here is our tour member Ted Boyette.

Mid-afternoon back at the RV park we had an ice cream social to celebrate the birthdays of three of our group, including my 70th. As I told our daughters, I don’t feel 70, but then again I don’t know what 70 is supposed to feel like. If 70 feels like I do, then it’s fine, and I’m going to hang onto 70 for a year before moving on to the next one!

Thursday evening was the Shoji Tabuchi Show, declared by many to be the best show in town. It certainly was the biggest theater we’d been in all week, and the restrooms are tourist attractions all by themselves.

Both restrooms were complete with fireplaces!

The hand washing areas were special too!

A pool table in the men's room?

And orchids at the ladies' sinks!

Stained glass, beveled glass. What class!

While the show was really good, at first we felt disappointed, hearing a violinist / fiddler singing Ozark country music with a pronounced Japanese accent.

The dancing was certainly colorful!

Shoji in one of at least 12 to 15 on-stage costume changes.

There was a preview of the annual Christmas show for those of us who wouldn't be back during the holidays.

As the show went on, the staging was terrific, the singing and special effects dramatic, all leading up to an exciting patriotic finale. It was a great show, but we still felt something was missing.

One thing all the other Branson shows did WAS missing from this one. Everyone else besides Shoji made a major point of saluting the veterans and the men and women presently serving this country. In most cases, the entertainers asked all the veterans in the audience to stand for applause from the rest of us.

Friday morning, many of the group boarded the tour bus to go shopping at Branson Landing, We took the morning off, slept in, and started writing this blog episode. At 5:00 the whole group got together for some social time and a farewell dinner.

The Friday evening show, Pierce Arrow, was among the best of them. Pierce Arrow is essentially six guys with great voices, accompanied by a four-piece band, two singing ladies, and a slam-bang comic.

The show was fast moving, the comic was tops, and the singing was great. The group sang a mixture of western, country and gospel music, and carried the strongest Christian message of all the shows we have seen. In a rare serious moment, the comic told us, "Live a good life, be considerate of others; you may be the only Bible they'll ever read."

One of the cast members would be the straight man for the comic routines. The comic did just enough adlibbing to keep his partner off guard and, often, in tears of laughter which, of course, made it even funnier for the audience.

After the show was over, the audience was invited to stay for a special event. The show was being taped live, and they brought in an extra singer to do a number for the video, and the comic ran through a routine ordinarily used only during the afternoon show. So for our final night, we had a bonus.

The rally ended with a bang Saturday morning. While we were lingering over a continental breakfast in the clubhouse, we received a warning of a fast-moving storm coming in, bringing 50mph winds. We quickly stopped lingering and returned to our motorhomes to haul in our awnings and close our slideouts. Severe windstorms have been known to tear awnings off a rig and to even twist the frame of a slideout! The bang (thunder) came just after we loaded Suzy’s scooter on the back of the car and tied it down, and the rain fell.

As I write this, the rain is pounding the roof (sounds worse than it actually is, for now), but we’re snug and warm as we sit at home and wait out the storm.

So ends another adventure in …Our Life on Wheels.

Branson, Chapter 2

Our second full day at Branson started with a duck ride. Quack? No. Donald? No, the amphibious relics from World War II, which also served in Korea and briefly in Vietnam, landing American troops for battle.

These ducks have been
“stretched” and will hold about 36 riders for a trip on land or water. Our trip took us from the Branson Strip to the top of a local mountain (which in the western states would have been a reasonably good-sized hill) where we got a great view of Table Rock Lake. Then we headed out onto the lake itself, which is currently about 11 feet above normal. We circled an underwater island, saw the Showboat Branson Belle (more about her next time) at her usual dock.

An interesting sight was the building with the Showboat’s offices, visitor center and workshop. The workshop’s doors were about half under water! We presume they had known the lake was rising and got all their tools and equipment safely to higher ground.

The next stop was at the Dick Clark American Bandstand complex. We toured the ’57 Heaven Auto Museum in the basement, displaying 66 pristine 1957 automobiles: every make and model of the ’57 convertible; three 1957 NASCAR race cars; 1957 pickups, station wagons, hard tops, motorcycles and a fire truck. There was even a Texaco gas station. After all the classic cars we had seen in Carson City last year, plus the Route 66 Museum’s classy cars, we didn’t take a single picture of these beauties.

Then we moved upstairs to the American Bandstand Grille for dinner (a mélange of tender roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy, one “chicken finger,” mixed vegetables and a nice green salad, with a mediocre-at-best brownie for dessert). We sat at a table with another couple from our group, hailing from Ohio. While they drive a Winnebago motorhome, it was clear that they are limited-experience RVers. They peppered us with questions about how full-time RVing was even possible, from leaving the home and all the “stuff,” to how we get our bills paid, to other details that seem to us (now, at least, after nearly six years on the road) as everyday living.

They regaled us with stories of places they’ve gone that we haven’t seen yet, which sounded very interesting, and whetted our appetites for more adventures of our own.

The highlight of the evening was the Dick Clark’s American Bandstand show, featuring original stars from the early days of American Bandstand. Starring this evening were: Fabian (“Sealed With a Kiss”), Bobby Vee (“Take Good Care of My Baby”), Brian Hyland (you remember his “Itty Bitty Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”), and the Chiffons (“He’s So Fine”). The Chiffons’ original lead singer was there with her daughter and her niece filling in the side positions with their own excellent voices.

Bobby Vee and Brian Hyland.

All of the stars seemed completely comfortable with who, where and how they are now, as well as who and where and how they were in the ’60s. Of all of them, Fabian seemed to own the stage, and be completely at home and natural in that milieu.

It was great hearing these “originals” singing their own hits from our teenage years. So many shows have impersonators or “tributes to.” This one was the real thing. In this photo, Fabian's on the right, the Chiffons on the left, with Bobby Vee in the middle.

Other stars who appear at the American Bandstand show on a regular basis include: Paul Revere and the Raiders, Bill Medley from the Righteous Brothers, Bill Haley’s Original Comets, and Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers.

Wednesday morning started with a pancake breakfast at the RV Park, then a bus ride into town to see the Jakov Smirnoff Show. We said a few episodes back there were two things every American should see: the Vietnam Wall and the Oklahoma City Memorial. Please add Number 3 to the list: the Jakov Smirnoff Show.

Aside from great comedy (“The big problem with America’s oil program is that all the oil is in Texas and Oklahoma, and all the dipsticks are in Washington, DC!”), Smirnoff is a dyed-in-the-wool, unabashed American patriot (“What a country!”). He believes in personal choice and responsibility, described as “We see what we seek.” If we’re looking for corruption, there’s plenty to be found, but if we’re looking for examples of service and selflessness, there’s lots of that out there too. We will see what we seek to see.

As a finale to the show, Smirnoff presented a live Lady Liberty.

As an example of the many sides of Jakov Smirnoff, he is an accomplished artist in oils. Among his works is a self-portrait entitled “American by Choice.” Prints of that painting are displayed on the inside of each stall door in the ladies’ rest room.

Another of Smirnoff's paintings on display at his theater.

Smirnoff received a Masters Degree in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania, and now teaches The Science of Laughter at the University of the Ozarks.

We ate lunch at a restaurant called Mel’s Hard Luck Diner. All the servers are aspiring singers and songwriters, and they are earning a living while working for their big break into Show Business. Every few minutes, one of them would put background music on the sound system and do a number they had recorded. We bought a CD recorded by our waitress, Dana Lynn Bell, singing the most requested songs from country music’s top songstresses.

The afternoon was free time, and we spent part of it writing this episode to carry you along with us on … Our Life on Wheels.

Fun in Branson, Missouri

We’d always thought we wanted to come to Branson some day, and then this rally showed up with our magazine from the Winnebago-Itasca Travelers Club. The timing was perfect, as we had planned to visit friends Cynthia and Wayne in Mountain Home, Arkansas, this spring or summer. Mountain Home is actually just across the lake, and south a little, from Branson.

So now our rally is in full swing, and the weather is fabulous, so far at least.

We met the other 18 couples Sunday, including the Rally Hosts. Other than the host couple, we are the only full-time RVers in the group. After an excellent pork barbecue dinner that evening (pulled pork with homemade BBQ sauce, spicy-savory beans, cole slaw, potato or macaroni salad, rolls, and peach cobbler), we got into a luxury Gray Line coach and headed into town.

The Jim Stafford show was outstanding comedy. Stafford is billed as the “Victor Borge of the Guitar,” and he really plays that instrument. A large part of the show was Stafford telling stories and interacting with the audience.

He included his son Shea (15) and daughter G.G. (11), both extremely talented on the piano, and Shea did a lively fiddle number. Our sides ached from laughter by the end of the show.

As with all major shows in Branson, good taste, family-rated humor, patriotism and just a touch of good old Christian faith were the basis of his performance.

Monday morning we hopped back on our tour bus and headed to Silver Dollar City (about two miles from here). Silver Dollar City is, plain and simple, a tourist attraction, but what a tourist attraction!

First we were greeted by Buckshot Granny, who took our picture at the entrance.

There are several rides, many of them designed to get you wet; entertain-

ment venues large and small; craftsmen and artisans displaying old-time tools and trades; and FOOD! This week is a special Bluegrass and Barbecue festival, and there were bluegrass groups playing in all the entertainment venues and in every nook and cranny where four or five musicians could gather and move their hands and feet. By the way, we learned that the signature instrument required for bluegrass is the mandolin, and every group playing had at least one, along with an assortment of fiddles, guitars, basses, and banjoes.

After walking a bit, I sat down next to this whittler. Suzy asked him what he was making and he replied, "A pile of cedar shavings"

We saw a cornball humor show complete with Can-Can girls in the Saloon (Suzy took this picture, folks, while I modestly averted my eyes!),

and a bluegrass concert in the Silver Dollar Opera House,

had lunch from a vendor stand (eaten by a waterfall), and frozen strawberry slush for dessert, then rode the bus back to the RV Park for a rest before dinner and a show featuring the Twelve Irish Tenors. (No photography was allowed here due to copyright rules.)

The Tenors show was a mixed bag. Well, yes, they were all tenors, they were all Irish (or Irish-American), they all had good singing voices. But the show opened with the twelve of them sitting on stools singing a very poor arrangement of Danny Boy. About mid-song, they got up and walked around a bit, then finished the song (which is a sad tale of death and homecoming), all of them with bright, happy smiles on their faces. For the balance of the show, the music was strong and dynamic or soft and gentle as appropriate. They sang a blend of Irish ballads, drinking songs, Beatles music, opera, swing and Broadway. They called to mind Simon and Garfunkel, Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, Barry Manilow. Following the intermission, the tenors removed their ties and, occasionally, their jackets, for very active dancing with their singing. So, half of the show had meaningless staging, and the other half was a lot better. All in all, we enjoyed the show.

And that’s just the first two days of a six-day episode in … Our Life on Wheels.