Yakov Smirnov and friends

What do you think of when you hear that name? Apparently we don't get out nearly enough, because we had thought he was funny. He writes a funny AARP column, and I had seen him many times on TV. However, apparently YS has made some serious changes to his act for the Branson crowd, or we are on drugs. Take your pick.

He's the only comedy act IN Branson, which was why we went. Also, it was raining. We went to Table Rock Lake State Park earlier for a hike with the kids, but it started raining on the way back to the hotel, so we went to see a show. We thought it would be more wordly and sophisticated than the rest of the Jesus-drivel being advertised. Every other subtitle is "God and Country" and we find that way too narrow-mindless.



Of couse the theatre was full of geezers, with us at the way younger end of the spectrum. There wasn't a child in the place, which I thought boded well. Even when a couple younger than we came in at the last minute, I didn't think anything was wrong. Well, he came out and started telling jokes, most of which we had heard in some form on other occasions. Every fifteen minutes or so, YS would disappear and a Russian dance troupe came out, and they, at least, did a good job. Whenever Smirnov came back, he was wearing something else.

There was a presentation about his citizenship and his patriotic art and the whole thing got schmaltzier by the minute. The woman next to me, along with many others, kept taking flash pictures even though we'd been asked not to. And the dance troupe came and went, and at one point we thought it was over, but no, it was just an intermission for shilling and autographs and pictures. For fun I took pictures of people taking pictures.



Then the show started up again, and he pretended he was President and answered pre-written questions from shills in the audience. Next was a long and confused ramble about married love involving only straight people and red, white and blue magnets. Then he started in with the hyper-patriotism again, and when he started crying, we left. The whole thing was both a waste and a learning experience. There wasn't much religion, but there wasn't much clarity of thought, either. On the whole, Branson is an intellectual wasteland stuck in a 1950s time-warp. We were really glad to move on come Tuesday morning.

I'm about a day and a half behind with this. Smirnov was Sunday. Monday Joyce was still fighting a sore throat and sinus probems from the smoke in the restaurants, so we didn't do anything except hang around the hotel. Went and sat in the hot tub and swam and that seemed to help. Got up and out early today so we could make a side trip to the Ingalls-Wilder museum near Springfield. It's a very pleasant spot, green and peaceful and apparently fertile, so we could se why they stopped traveling at last. They still traveled on vacations and visits but they never moved again.






That went well, and we drove on toward Independence in and out of rain. Spring is just barely here and the entire countryside is just beautiful. We haven't seen a spring in a long time, and we are really enjoying all the budding trees and new flowers. We arrived in Blue Spring in the early evening, and called a local sandwich joint who delivered our supper.

Next stop: Harry S Truman historical sites. We're just wild about Harry!

Eating in Branson

Has anyone ever done an anthropological study of a culture just by visiting its eating establishments? Because there have to be a few theses, dissertations and monographs in there someplace. We are learning a lot just by observing people in restaurants.

Take Saturday night. Please! But seriously, folks, we went to Applebee's, because we could walk there. And what luck! We arrived just before a whole busload of . . . Mennonites? Okay, I know that Mennonites have a much more modern philosophy than the Amish, but in Branson, a place known for entertainment? Of course, at that point, we had only been in Branson for half an hour, and had seen very little of it.

We entered with about eight Mennonites, and all sat down to wait for a table. Since there were only two of us, we were called first. But we did have a funny little encounter with them. They were all young adults. The men looked fairly normal. You couldn't have told them from average 21st century guys on the street. The women, however, do look different. For instance , they don't wear makeup, and that's sensible. They wear flat shoes, and that makes sense, too. But then they go and ruin it all by adding in the long prairie dresses and the little dixie cup hats. And here's another indication they're more "worldly" than the Amish: as soon as they all sat down, one woman jumped up again and announced she was headed to the restroom. At this, all the other women leaped up and ran off after her, causing all the men to laugh and comment. So I turned to them and said, "Why don't you have some fun with this? When they come back, you all jump off and run off to the men's room together!" They laughed at that, too, but I don't know if they did it because we got our table before the women came back.

During dinner, we were surounded by screaming brats evenly spaced around the restaurant. In among them were loud, apparently drunk geezers. Or maybe they were just off their meds, who knows? I'm allowed to say these things because I'm a geezer ON meds, so I ought to know.

Next morning, Joyce went to the "free" breakfast the motel provides, and this was Sunday morning. She said it was pretty quiet for a while, but at about 9:15, a whole crowd of people came in, all dressed up for church. Among them were a little girl and an older woman who might have been her grandmother. And Grandma said to the little girl, "You kin putcher BAH-bull rat cheer!" So Joyce, fearful of evangelism, got up and left. They were also playing Faux News on the TV in there, but Joyce had turned the volume all the way down while she was eating.

We guessed the group was headed for one of the local revivals all around town, or a church service for Mother's Day, or whatever. And here's a part I don't get: why carry a Bible to church? Don't churches HAVE Bibles? I can see carrying your Bible to someplace where there might not be one, like a whorehouse or a crack house. But Bibles are standard church equipment. They have the same ones in all the pews and Sunday schools so everyone can have the same one and be on the same page. Back down in Arkansas, we saw a bumper sticker : "If it ain't King James, it ain't Bible." Really? What did Jesus use, then? So even fundie churches must all have stacks of KJVs lying around. You can leave your own home.

Went out for Chinese that night. Once again, they had a smoking section, and as we all know, smoke can't read signs, so we had to get up and move. After two nights of restaurants with smoking (Applebee's, too) Joyce ended up with a sore throat so we stayed in all day, except to use the swimming pool. I got pictures; it's really nice.





From now on, if we get to a restaurant and there's smoking, we'll get ours to go. And by the way, if this is the hyper-religious capital of the Midwest, and smoking is a vice, why do they encourage it, especially in restaurants? I can't imagine these good Christian folks could be so hypocritical!!!!

Tomorrow: all about Yakov Smirnov. Hang on to your hats.