Branson, with a Little E

The “B” in Branson hangs in the air like the giant, lit water tower that looms over this Ozark town.

Big. Bright. Bodacious.

Also slightly bipolar, but more on that in a bit.

“Thank you. Thank you very much,” drawled a compact, 8-year-old Elvis impersonator hanging out with his manager-mom at the Cakes and Cream Dessert Parlor on Highway 76. (The highway is part of Branson’s famed Strip.) Though his voice was a few octaves higher than The King’s, his made-up Mississippi accent rang true.

Blue-suited Little E had all the moves and knew all the songs as they sprang from the jukebox at the parlor’s west end. He was just missing the chest hair. His real name was Radney.

“Rodney?” I asked.

“No, Radney,” he politely corrected me. “Rodney, with an ‘a.’”

His last name is Pennington. He’s been doing this schtick since he was 2. He’s on MySpace.

We timed the visit to C & C right, because a couple of tables away sat “Marvelous Marvin Short,” a popular sax player withvertical ski-slope hair that stands a good 10 inches above his hairline. He was knifing and forking his way through a combination funnel cake-ice cream-strawberry creation while talking up his five-night-a-week gig at the Top 10 Rock and Roll Revue just east of the ice cream parlor.

“Come on by if you can … 7 p.m. every Tuesday through Saturday night.”

We went to Branson this weekend with eyes wide open. We’d never been. Bruce and Sue invited us down with friends Brian and Christy. We invaded a condo belonging to Sue’s folks, who kindly offered it up to all of us.

Bruce and Sue are veteran Branson-goers. For Brian, Christy, Cindy and me, though, it was a confirmation of what we’d heard and read about for years.

To dismiss Branson as corny or hokey is to be, well, both right and wrong. Branson is what it is – an honest, eclectic celebration of country music, patriotism, rock and roll music, more patriotism, a lot of God and a healthy dose of weirdness, all packaged along a series of three-lane highways atop Missouri’s Ozarks.

Proponents proclaim it Missouri’s crown jewel, but it’s costume jewelry, really. And that’s just fine. At night, Branson seems to pull power directly from the nearby, muscular Table Rock Lake dam to light its many massive, animated signs -- Mickey Gilley, the Dixie Stampede, Andy Williams, the Presleys, Shoji Tabuchi, the Baldknobbers, and more.

From an airplane, it must look like a curvy, spasmodic runway. Even the water tower gets in the act: Lights at night make it appear to be a hot-air balloon.

But it’s not just the big, amped-up shows that pulsate here. There are tattoo parlors, hotels and motels of all sizes and reputations, Hollywood wax museums with King Kong in the lobby, a Titanic replica that spews water up its bow, predictable tourist traps like miniature golf, multi-level go-kart tracks and T-shirt shops ("Four for a dollar!"), and calorie-rich food outlets guaranteed to bust your buttons.

Oh, and the place is white. There’s little diversity among the tourists -- though the wait staff is, of course, highly diverse. 

That Branson is a cultural phenomenon has long been known. That Branson also is a bit schizophrenic these days -- the big “B” of bipolar – is less known.

Below the hills of blue-hair entertainment sits old Branson, along the thin sliver of Lake Taneycomo that snakes along its east side. There rests the spanking new Branson Landing.

Branson’s city fathers, perhaps fearing the day when the Gilleys, Presleys and Tabuchis don’t pull in the crowds like they used to, have created a brick-and-concrete main street anchored by a Hilton Hotel, a convention center, a Bass Pro Shop and a multitude of suburban-style shops whose brands you’ll see pretty much in every city across the country.

It’s a lovely place, with fountains and fine restaurants. But it is as predictable as the Strip to the west is raucous, as symmetrical and eye-pleasing as Highway 76’s sites are jarring and mind-numbing.

In a place notorious for being gambling-free, Branson’s leaders have hedged their bets. It’s a smart strategy. Right now, Branson businesses will complain of a slowdown, but that’s the economy speaking. It’ll pick up.

Likely both sides of Branson life will then benefit.

In the meantime, Branson’s Strip and the old-but-new downtown don’t seem to mix much.

I doubt you’ll see Little E hanging around the Hilton, for example. (On Saturday night, he was playing another Highway 76 haunt -- the Caprice Inn.)

On Friday night, at the ice cream parlor, Radney impressed me to the point where I forked over $5 for his CD of Elvis tunes – “Half-price tonight,” he said with his muted twang. I suspected it was always half price.

Later, the six of us adults would debate Radney’s prospects for success as a home-schooled kid destined to mimic The King. Maybe he needed to broaden his horizons some … so he could land, say, a Hilton accounting job down the road.

But Friday night, I congratulated him on his many talents as I freely paid the $5. The kid did do a good Elvis. And his self esteem didn’t seem to be an issue.

“Thank you … thank you very much,” he repeated.

His mom counted the money. 

There's that water again ... 


One of the highlights of the trip was the time we spent Friday on Table Rock Lake.

We rented a pontoon boat for four hours. Bruce and I did the piloting, though we mainly drove to one spot about 45 minutes northwest of the marina, stopped the engine and enjoyed the relative stillness. 

It was relaxing … a complete separation from our Kansas City existence. 

Brian and I did some swimming while the rest remained on the boat. The water was cold, though not overly so.  

Table Rock Lake features waters about as clear and pristine as Glen Lake in Michigan, shown in the photo atop this blog. I talked with a local scuba diver who was packing up his boat after an early-morning dive. He said that nearby lakes in the Arkansas Ozarks were even clearer. It's something we'll remember as we consider closer alternatives to the cottage.

We posed for a group photo using my camera and small tripod. Somehow, because of the camera's perspective, I ended up being the shortest person on the boat. I'm not sure how that worked out, since I'm almost positive I'm taller than Cindy, Christy and Sue.  

But hey, it's okay.

As Little E demonstrated, in the grand scheme of things, size really doesn’t matter.

The cows among us

Much has been made of the intellectual weakness of the cow.  

That's dumb.

What a noble beast.  My family's forebears, in fact, built a living around the bovine crowd.  My grandfather, Luther Abraham Weaver, was a professor of animal husbandry at the University of Missouri, did a lot of livestock judging, and had a "gentleman's farm" north of Columbia. My uncle, Wendell Arbuckle, specialized in dairy science and in particular turning cow's milk into the magic of ice cream. 

So it was with some anticipation that a close friend of Zach's -- Sarah -- recently had to show a cow as part of her vet-school training at Kansas State University. 

We jumped in the car and headed to Manhattan for two reasons -- to see and support Sarah, and to check out what was now Zach's school of choice, K-State.  He starts there this fall. 

For a visual look at how Sarah did, click here.  All in all, she did her family proud.  Unlike some of her peers, who had to push and prod and cajole their charges into the ring, Sarah's "Baby" -- Sarah's name for her cow -- seemed docile and compliant.  

I suspect it was Sarah doing some kind of cow-whisperer thing.

I like cows.  I don't think Dad did, much.  He used to tell us that he didn't like working the farm ... that he jumped at the chance to move to St. Louis and a big-city engineering job. 

But growing up, some of my best memories were traveling back to Columbia to see the farm, climb around the barn, make forts in the hay bales and -- yes -- moo at Granddad's Black-Angus cattle. 

L.A. Weaver was a rock star among the Midwestern livestock set.   I recently found a letter he penned long-hand to my father when Dad was in the Air Force during World War II.   Dated Oct. 14th, 1945, Granddad wrote:

"Guess you know from your mother's letters that it's been a game of 'touch & go' with me all fall.  Last week was an example.  Was out of town all but two days.  This week, I go to St. Joe Tuesday afternoon to put on a judging demonstration there Wednesday morning, go to K.C. that night for an Angus cattle show and to attend a meeting of the Heart of America American Angus Association Thursday night.  

"Will get home Friday morning and leave Sunday afternoon for Farmington to judge Herefords on Monday, home that night, to Chillicothe Tuesday to judge hogs, and so it goes ...."

Here's a shot I found of Granddad judging sheep ... not sure where.

I like to imagine what that life was like ... driving from town to town, meeting old friends over steak dinners -- when dinner was the mid-day meal -- discussing the latest science and philosophy behind animal husbandry, then judging the beasts ... what I'm sure was an intricate process. Then perhaps a cup of coffee to end the evening.  And off to another town the next day to do it again. 

You wonder when he had time to teach. 

Judging cattle seems subtle to us city folk.  But to judge cattle is to carefully scrutinize a cow's height, the way its head sits atop its shoulders, the length of its carriage, the sturdiness of its legs and the leanness of its body. 

It is a fine art.  And it varies by cow type.  In Sarah's case, her Baby was a young dairy cow whose udder was just developing.  It was important, she was told, to try to get Baby to stand just so ... so that the udder could be clearly viewed by the judge. 

Hmm ...  good luck with that. 

One of the best jobs I ever had was when I was a college student and worked for a landscape company in Champaign, Illinois.  The outfit was called Sod Now.  Clever.  It was kind of a gypsy company.  You never quite knew who were employees and who were not. But I was between semesters and needed the work. 

For about three weeks, I landed a plumb assignment. I was to cultivate grass seed in the barren ground surrounding the University of Illinois' spanking-new Large Animal Clinic, on the south end of campus.  (Here's a map of the place today; if you visit, know the grass is mine.) On all sides of the clinic were acres upon acres of cattle. 

It was heaven for me.  Most folks are put off by the smell of cow manure.  I'm reminded of those wondrous weekend trips to the farm.  

That also was back when I would run five miles a day on the weekends. Because of the cows, I chose to do it out by the South Farms, of which the clinic was a part. The path I chose basically was a long, circular country road.  

I guess in a silly way it was my own Chariots of Fire -- I'd run hard, breathe hard ... though instead of running along beach front dodging waves as the Brits did in that famous film, I'd pound the good Midwestern earth and dodge cow pies. 

During my workdays, I'd drive my old VW Beetle to the site, spread the seed and fertilizer, water it in, and then break for lunch.  I'd find a stretch of ground by the fence separating me from the cows. Invariably, three or four would wander over to check me out while I munched on a sandwich. 

And then we'd moo.  I'd moo a greeting.  They'd moo back.  I'd answer their moo with my moo. And so it went, through lunch.  I got pretty good at mooing. 

I used to think it was just intelligent banter.  

I now think that the cows warmed to me because of my sandwich choices. You see, I was in a rut back then -- either peanut butter and jelly, or Velveeta cheese.  Both were tasty between bread, and economical. 

I'm sure both met with their approval. 

Because roast beef would have killed the conversation.