Branson -- From Blood Feuds To Balladeers And Bungee Jumping

BRANSON, MO. - I read once that the Kodachrome moments of our lives get their best exposure from ages 9 to 15, when even the dullest summer afternoon seems like a portal into the land of Maybe and Why Not?

Between the ages 9 to 15, I lived in the hot and humid Mississippi River Delta. The ritual summer escape was to get in the car, spread towels over the seats and drive to the Ozarks.

The Ozarks are a chain of old, old mountains in northwestern Arkansas and southwestern Missouri. Cloaked in oak and hickory, ribbed with limestone bluffs, they were (and are) beautiful, cool, and cheap to visit.

This is how an Ozarks vacation went:

Get carsick on the endless switchback roads into the mountains. Arrive, pile the family gear into a cabin on a lake. Hang out on the dock, splashing and teasing the boys in the cabin down the way. Watch your hard-working dad doze over his fishing pole, see the lines in your mother's face smooth out. Look for the first lightning bug at dusk, dangle your feet in the water and wonder why that old moon's reflection always comes back together after shattering apart in the evening wind.

In those days, Branson, Mo., was a small-town Ozark vacation mecca. It had cabins with bare light bulbs strung on the dock, some local history and the Ozarks.

My visits there and to other Ozarks resorts became the stuff of a powerful nostalgia, leaving out the boredom, the ennui and the mosquitoes, known locally as Arkansas' state bird.

Then, when I wasn't looking, something extraordinary happened to Branson.

My little rock-ribbed town got on "60 Minutes," which billed it as the New Country Music Capital of America. National entertainers and country music impresarios - Roy Clark, Andy Williams, Tony Orlando, Kenny Rogers, Charlie Pride - moved in and built theaters that drew thousands for the Wednesday afternoon matinee.

I returned last fall to the Ozarks to see what Branson had become - why last year, 5.7 million people visited a tiny town of 4,500 in the remote southwestern Ozarks.

Oh, my, I kept saying, as I headed down a Missouri highway into the deepening clefts of the hills.

I saw the first Branson Billboard 52 miles from Branson on a Missouri highway more notable for combines and country bungalows than tourist traffic. It featured a man with a spangled tuxedo and a pompadour gazing up toward a bald eagle, more or less like Jesus contemplating the Dove of Peace.

The sign featured one word: WAYNE.

Wayne?

That would be Wayne Newton, the singer. His billboard was the first of many, stuck like Paul Bunyanesque lollipops into the tops of the hills of southwestern Missouri, billboards that exhorted me to come to Branson shows, stay in Branson hotels, drive carefully, love America, shop in a factory outlet and rent a billboard.

It was a fitting introduction to the down-home friendliness, Bible-thumping Americana and ravenous commercialism that has turned little old Branson upside-down.

But first, some history:

Blood feuds and banjos

Branson is in Taney County, Missouri, which is a sea of hills from one end to the other featuring land "too darn hard to even drill a posthole in," according to one local. Settled in the early 1800s, its settlers built log cabins, cut wood and developed a culture that was insular, God-fearing and violent.

Arguably the most ferocious post-Civil War vigilante group in the nation was the Baldknobbers, a group of Taney County businessmen, preachers, saloon owners and ne'er-do-wells. The Baldknobbers started out by beating and hanging murderers and wife-beaters, but soon took on farmers whose land they coveted, or people who looked cross-eyed at them in the street.

The Baldknobbers' era ended abruptly, and Branson would have stayed a stop on the rail line between Kansas City and Memphis had not a Chicago man come to the hills for his health.

In the early 1900s, Harold Bell Wright came to Taney County to recuperate from a long illness. He was taken by its smoky hills and its natives' charm and honesty - and by their dramatic storytelling abilities.

Wright wrote a 1907 book called "Shepherd of the Hills," a melodramatic romance about the goodness of the native country people and the badness of the Baldknobbers that has sold 16 million copies to date. People started showing up from all over to see Branson, enjoy the country and fish one of the brand-new, dammed-up Ozark lakes.

In the expansion of the post-World War II economy, the pace of Branson picked up. A local family expanded the attractions of Silver Dollar City, an "authentic Ozarks village" that featured local crafts, log-sluice rides and a trip into Marvel Cave, a 20-story wonder with stalactites, stalagmites, eyeless fish and sightless bats.

But most fatefully, some local families started a Saturday night music review for tourists and locals, where people played and sang the backwoods music that hills from the Appalachians to the Ozarks generate.

On the Strip

In 1968, one of the local musical groups - the Baldknobbers - moved its show out on West Highway 76, a state route that runs west out of Branson. Other country acts started moving in. Then in 1983, a national star - Roy Clark of the "Hee Haw" show, and a cavalcade of other country and pop singers slightly past their prime, started building theaters.

The music they played there had a theme. As Arthur Frommer, author of a candid tour guide about Branson, said of the Branson experience:

"America was getting out of hand, and it was time to restore an earlier, easier way of life . . . (performers) immediately saw that they had only to play to their audience's sentiments and sense of nostalgia and they would be successful beyond their wildest dreams . . ."

Branson offered a rare treat in our electronically mediated culture - the chance to see well-produced shows, featuring real people singing real songs, at a reasonable price.

In 1991, "60 Minutes" came to Branson and pronounced it the new country-music capital of America. The flood of theaters, hotels and craft palaces turned into a deluge, and Highway 76 turned into the Strip.

My first evening in Branson, I drove out of the town on a back road, one that still offered an authentic Ozark tableau: a small enclave of ancient mobile homes that shared a meticulously maintained community garden, with a herd of goats grazing on the back lot. Then I attended "The Shepherd of the Hills" pageant, which reminded me of one of my favorite Branson experiences: sitting outside under the stars, listening to a sweet-sounding bluegrass band perform for a square-dance scene, one that had the ladies in plastic rainbonnets tapping their toes.

Then I braced myself and turned back toward Branson, traveling the Strip, negotiating the curves and gawking at:

-- Wayne Newton's gold-painted theater, a cross between the Missouri state capitol and a Roman bath.

-- Bungee jumping at the Outback restaurant, where you can eat a steak and bungee jump, in that order.

-- The Grand Palace, a theater built to resemble an enormous, blindingly white Southern plantation, a confection unimaginable to real owners of real Southern plantations, who spend a fair amount of time trying to ward off subtropical rot.

-- Ozarkland, where you can buy road-kill caps, mugs and T-shirts.

The Strip's theaters, restaurants, water slides and quilt shops were impressive, though not in the way its developers may have intended. The theaters and shops hunker down cheek-by-jowl along the Strip, or march in a crazy-quilt fashion up and down the hills. You can see the neon glitter far, far into the night. You cannot see the lovely old hickory and oak trees, which have been stripped from the Strip.

My favorite Strip sight was a sign over a burger joint featuring a hula girl, who wiggled her mechanical grass-skirt hips while a loudspeaker boomed, "What a woman like you and a man like me can do."

I was staying at the Branson House, a beautiful old bed-and-breakfast in a 1920s downtown home. I returned, poured a glass of sherry and sat on the front porch, praying for fireflies and listening to the tour buses grind their gears into the night.

The King of Branson

The next day, my fellow bed-and-breakfasters suggested that I attend the show staged by Shoji Tabuchi, a Japanese native, fiddling impresario and the uncrowned King of Branson for his ability to draw crowds at a theater that features a $35,000 pool table in the men's room.

Shoji Tabuchi, who grew up in a wealthy Japanese family, learned the violin by the classical Suzuki method. But then he heard Roy Acuff, the legendary Nashville fiddler, play "Listen to the Mockingbird" during a Japanese tour.

Tabuchi moved to America and set about making it as a country music star, working by day as an X-ray technician, fiddling by night in bands from St. Louis to Louisiana. Once he started to achieve commercial success, he came to Branson in the early 1980s and built his theater.

Decorated in tones of deep lilac and magenta, featuring wrought-iron balconies from whence spill thousands of silk flowers, the theater lobby is like the inside of a gilded candy box, one packed with thousands of eager showgoers. Some theatergoers devised a system of holding on to one another's shoulders as they snaked in a sort of retirees' rumba through the crush.

Tabuchi's show was well produced - great sets, millions of sequins, fantastic laser effects and a mainstream review of American music.

Tabuchi is a middle-aged, slender man who is one heck of a fiddler. His jokes were mostly about his own inability with the English language. But the repetitive playing on his different nationality made it seem as if he couldn't quite believe the white audience would accept him.

His show features nary an African-American performer in a musical review that features several styles of music that owe a direct debt to African-Americans and other black peoples - Caribbean, gospel, rock 'n' roll. Nor do most shows in Branson, according to Frommer's travel guide. People of a different ethnic heritage are scarce on the streets - I saw one African-American and a half-dozen Asians during a three-day stay in Branson.

Riding the Ducks

I was ready for some old-time Ozarks vacation goofiness, so I rode the Ducks - a fleet of World War II-era amphibious vehicles outfitted to carry about 20 tourists and a driver. Ours was `Captain" Rich Putman, who gunned his engine . . . and off we went, up and down the roller-coaster hills of Branson.

Like an old-time country-Western show emcee, Putnam's humor, while cornpone, was always gentle. His driving was not - our Duck hit Table Rock Lake with a thwack. The machine chugged across the lake, labored over the top of Table Rock Lake's dam and landed below, where one Branson lake stops and another, cooler, deeper one begins.

Putman turned off the engine. It was blessedly quiet.

He gave the group tips on baiting for trout (whole kernel corn and marshmallows). He said his family kept coming to the area because they loved the fishing and hunting. They "thought it would be cheaper just to move up here" from Texas, he said. "We were wrong. Ever tried to live in a tourist town?"

Later, Putman said his family had benefitted from the Branson boom - they bought and sold homes at the right time. But he acknowledged that Branson is at a crossroads.

While Branson was rated Number One in the country this year as a destination by travel agents and tour bus operator associations, a glut of hotel rooms has followed. "Quitting business" signs dot the strip.

The tourist-based economy makes for high rents and low wages for the workers who cook for, clean for and entertain visitors.

"A lot of people come here thinking they're gonna get rich," he said. "Around February, the newspapers are full of ads for auditions. But there's no job security."

There's also increasing competition for the Branson formula of Good Clean Fun - Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg in Tennessee, Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. Even Vegas is tilting its shows toward "family values."

What Putman loves about Branson is that which many visitors come and go without ever seeing - the natural beauty, a few quiet hours sitting over a favorite fishing spot.

`Spiders and Snakes'

That evening, I saw the best of Branson, improbably represented by Jim Stafford.

Stafford's roots are in country, but in the 1970s, he had a string of crossover hits on the pop radio stations, most notably 1974's "Spiders and Snakes."

By the late 1980s, however, Stafford was playing the state-fair circuit. Then he found Branson. He owns his own theater - he and his wife hire the help, plan the shows and manage the gate receipts. Even his 2-year-old son performs.

His show - a cross between vaudeville, the Smothers Brothers (whom Stafford has written for) and the school drama pageant, with a lot of Stafford's superb guitar sweetening the mix - is packed most nights.

That night, the show opened with some audience-participation songs, as little girls passed out balloon sculptures created by the the ushers.

Then Stafford, in a white coat, red tie and mustard-yellow vest, swung onto stage. His humor played to those of us bemused by the barrage of bells and whistles of life in the 1990s.

"You and me, we get along without computers just fine," he said. "We're the ones whose VCRS flash 12:00 all night long."

Eight little girls tap-danced out on the stage in feathers and chicken hats as Stafford sang: "All the happy campers come to Branson - where else can you find a chicken dancin'?"

Where, indeed?

At the crossroads

At Branson's crossroads, the intersection of Business Loop 65 and Highway 76, I watched the tour buses disgorge their passengers, who, laughing and chatting, descended on Branson's downtown, which with its two-story, early-20th century mercantile buildings, retains the charm of a classic American small town and offers a blessed respite from the Strip.

Loren MacAllister, a Dubuque, Iowa, tourist, told me things had exploded in the three years since he'd last come to Branson. MacAllister acknowledged that he was "not a crowd man." But he said that he loves the shows. When I told him I'd never been to Vegas he said, "Oh, you gotta start livin'. Before you get too old."

It then struck me that while the tour-bus crowd comes to Branson for the entertainment, more important is the congenial company they see it with. Mostly retired, with a little money and time on their hands, they could probably watch a turtle race and have a good time - as long as there's someone to share the good time with. Retirement in America can be a lonely occupation.

Branson's leaders hope to keep creating that feeling of a safe, wholesome place. But the community faces a struggle for its future.

Acknowledging that the entertainment boom of the 1990s will eventually cool, community leaders are trying other strategies: Branson as a factory-mall shopping destination; making the Branson experience more attractive to families with children.

But despite heated local opposition, gambling interests are buying up land in the area, a trend that dismays locals convinced that the area's charm lies in its country-clean image.

Meanwhile, the treasured lakes are starting to show stress from development-related pollution.

I finally tempered my nostalgia for the old Branson and tried to enjoy the new one, but nostalgia remains a powerful element in country music, not to mention the human heart.

I just hope the old Ozarks are still out there, somewhere. And that in bringing folks to their city, Branson hasn't given away the farm.

----------------------------------------------------------------- IF YOU GO Planning a Branson visit

Branson is hottest, in activity and in temperature, between Memorial Day and Labor Day. To see the Ozarks at their finest, try late April or early November, the peak of the Ozarks' blossom-laced spring and blazing autumn.

The closest major airport is at Springfield, Mo., 40 miles north (rent a car or taxi or shuttle service is available).

There are hundreds of hotels - Branson is overbuilt - so prices are low, and food prices are very reasonable by Seattle standards.

Two people can get by comfortably on $150 a day. Show tickets average about $20, though limited-run acts at the Grand Palace (like George Jones and Billy Ray Cyrus) can cost in the $40 range.

-- Lodging: You can also stay at one of several bed and breakfasts in town. Expect to spend as little as $40 a night for a double, or over $100 at a place like Big Cedar Lodge, south of Branson, a beautiful old resort built as a hunting lodge for wealthy St. Louis businessmen in the 1920s. The 1920s-era "log cabins," virtual houses with stone fireplaces and all the luxuries, are a standout.

The Sammy Lane resort, in downtown Branson on Lake Taneycomo, is a lovely example of an older-style Ozarks resort, with front porches on the lakefront and sycamore trees that sigh in the wind.

-- Activities (other than the shows):

- Silver Dollar City, Branson's premier theme park, started as an "authentic Ozarks village" built around Marvel Cave, a large underground cavern, and expanded into a multiple-attraction venue.

Visitors wind through its shaded walks and can see numerous tableaus from the historical life of the Ozarks, including storytellers and performing craftsmen. Admission (including rides and cave tour): $25 adults, $15 for children ages 4-11, under 3 free.

- The College of the Ozarks, known locally as "Hard Work U," has a national reputation for its generous financial aid - it accepts students primarily on the basis of financial need and then gives them jobs within the campus industries. Take a self-conducted tour, and visit the Ralph Foster museum for its Americana collections.

- A few hours drive northeast in Hermann, Mo., is Stone Hill Winery (daily tours). It makes high-quality wines grown from local grapes, some of which are unavailable elsewhere. The town retains much of the flavor of its 19th-century German immigrant population. Or sample Stone Hill's product at its Branson extension.

- Rent a boat or a cabin at an area resort and get away from the helter skelter of Branson. Table Rock Lake to the south and Bull Shoals Lake to the east offer bass fishing and boating. You can catch trout at Lake Taneycomo.

- Eureka Springs, Ark., 50 miles south of Branson. Eureka Springs is an almost perfectly preserved turn-of-the-century town. with

Before World War I, it was one of the most active spas in America, thanks to its mineral springs, with stately Victorian hotels and hundreds of Victorian residences lining its twisting, turning mountain streets.

After World War I, the town just went dormant, which saved it from the modernization. In the 1960s hippies moved in and, in a time-honored cycle, turned into entrepreneurs who turned Eureka Springs into a charming destination, with outdoor band shells, a botanical garden and a train station from which excursion trains depart. Despite some tacky outlying development, downtown retains its charm, with five grand Victorian-style hotels and dozens of bed and breakfasts; European-style narrow streets; a trolley; shops and some decent restaurants.

-- Information: The Branson area Chamber of Commerce provides information including phone numbers for hotel and B&B bookings, local tours, shuttle services from Springfield, and agencies that can help you reserve show tickets. Phone (417) 334-4136.

Order a Branson-Area vacation planner, with general information on the area by calling (900) 884-2726 ($1.50 a minute).

Phone the Eureka Springs Chamber of Commerce for information on the that area: (800) 6-EUREKA.

The Missouri Division of Tourism offers general information on the state: (800) 877-1234.

- Mary Ann Gwinn