Hotels and motels and restaurants and things

So I'm reading McCullough's biography of Harry Truman, and in it there's this joke meant to exemplify the typical small-town Missouri politician around the turn of the previous century. I think it's hilarious, and Joyce hates it.

This small-time politician wangles an invitation to a big East Coast political convention, which includes a formal banquet. So he sits at this table full of unfamiliar silverware, all dressed up, watching the others to see what to do. The waiter brings out celery, and he eats that. Next, the waiter brings out consomme, and like the people around him, the man from Missouri consumes that as well. The next course is a lobster, and the waiter places this in front of the man.

At this, the guest throws down his napkin and exclaims, "I ate your flower. I drank your dishwater. But I'll be God-damned if I'll eat your bug!" Okay, I just laughed out loud at this, again. Is it funny, or is it just me? Or is it the influence of too much Laura Ingalls Wilder?

Anyway, today we drove from Iowa, through Minnesota, and into South Dakota. It was a nice drive, and we visited a tiny roadside chapel in Luverne, and a little state park on the Minnesota prairie. The ranger told us there was nothing to see, but apparently he isn't looking anymore. If you are from Florida , there's plenty to look at and enjoy. So we made him take our money. When we left Clear Lake, it was blowing hard and freezing (to us). Wind chill was around 35 F. By the time we arrived in Sioux Falls, it was 83 F. We were finally able to get out of shoes and long pants.






But what I really want to talk about is accommodations. I'm not sure why, but not one hotel has managed to get it completely right so far. We stayed at one whose claim to fame was complete soundproofing. But they had their smoking and non-smoking r0oms all mixed up, and it stank. Several of the ones that claimed to have pools had empty, dirty or otherwise unavailable ones. Few have slow-closing hinges, so that when the clueless and inconsiderate guests let the doors go, they slam like cannon-fire. We don't seem to be able to teach manners anymore, so go ahead and stop the slamming mechanically. These hinges would not be available at all if someone had not already figured out that it is easier to fix doors than teach people. And it is easier to soundproof rooms than to ask guests to consider their neighbors.

Then there are the "free" as in, included, breakfasts. You either get plain bagels or something good. One place will have nothing but fruit and cereal; at the next, you can get sausage and biscuits. One will have hard-boiled eggs, another will have a broken toaster. We think each chain ought to at least have minimum standards, and whatever was available at 6 AM should be available at 9:45 (assuming breakfast is 6 - 10 AM). There should also always be protein option, not just a lot of different carbohydrates.

Then, the joy of beds. Marshmallow or firm? Loose sheets or fitted? The best has to be the LaQuinta effort to be European, with the blankets pulled up over sheets triple folded into some kind of strange origami. And would you like your pillows stuffed with Kleenex or whole raw potatoes? Not real sure what the decorative strips are all about on the bottom of the bed, but they are NOT much of a substitute for a comforter. Usually the dogs make a little nest out of them after they slide onto the floor. Probably not what the management had in mind.

Refrigerators come in all sizes, starting with none at all, running through breadbox to industrial washing machine. Some have freezers, some don't, some are caked with ice. I am baffled by the ones with tilted door shelves but nothing to hold items in. Every microwave is a new adventure, too.

And what is it with the postage-stamp bedside tables, one per room (that may sleep as many as four adults)? Our usual routine on arrival is to unplug the clock radio and stick it in a drawer, put the phone on the bottom shelf or on the floor, and remove all the little plastic advertising signs. This gives us enough room to put our glasses on the top when we shut off the lights.

Hmmm. I think I'll save restaurants for tomorrow.

Truman Territory

Did I say we love Missouri? Well, not Branson, but everything else so far this trip. I remember some of it from when I used to visit relatives around Hannibal when I was a kid, but Joyce hadn't seen anything except St. Louis. (Ick) Except for those pesky tornados, the climate is mild almost all year, and they can and do grow anything. Right now as spring has just arrived, it's pretty spectacular. The countryside is filled with all these trees and bushes budding in a thousand shades of green on rolling hills and along scores of creeks and rivers.

Which is why Harry Truman was so proud of Missouri, and never wanted to live anywhere but Independence. You can't really understand all that unless you come here. Of course, Harry died in 1972 and a lot about Independence has changed since then. However, luckily, for the 1976 Bicentennial, the townspeople got the idea that preserving it would be a good thing, so they managed to snatch a lot of it away from progress and it looks very like it once did.



The city has of course sprawled out to the south, so it's like two separate places. Downtown and the Truman library and home are one part and then there's where modern life goes on.

The day we were there, the preserved downtown was pretty dead, except for knots of homeless people standing around the many churches. There's a tour just of the religious locations, and we skipped that. Apparently not a lot of interest in Truman at the moment, which is too bad. Lack of teaching history has cost people the pleasure of learning about Harry and the bitch he was married to. Anyway, we took the walking tour, went through their house, and did the library and museum, and came away liking him better and hating her worse. Bess was a mean-spirited old woman when she was twelve years old. If ever anyone needed Prozac, she did. She made him miserable for the 16 years he served as Senator, Vice President and President. She basically abandoned him. Fortunately Margaret loved Washington, and spent a lot of time with him. They were very close.

You should really see the house. You just park on the street and go in, eight at a time. They got back to it in 1953 and changed nothing since, and the Parks Service has kept it the same.





The library has a wonderful setting and is just beautiful. No one around but us to enjoy it.





Anyway, the whole place is as unpretentious as he was. Just not the sort of place you would associate with a leader of a major world power. To Harry, which is how everyone refers to him, it was just another job to be done to the best of his ability. That's why we're wild about him.

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.

Ms. Toad's Never-Ending Wild Ride

Today (Saturday the 9th) we drove from Memphis to Branson, our longest leg yet, around 317 miles, or 117 miles longer than Joyce wishes to travel in one day, which she started telling me once a mile every mile past 200. Also, about the last 117 were over a narrow, winding, two lane road through the Boston Mountains of Arkansas. We passed through Toad Suck, Chigger Hollow and Booger Hollow (probably pronounced "Holler") and lived to record the events.




Picturesque but not recommended when you are transporting an extremely frantic and nervous person in the passenger seat. Of course, Joyce could have driven, in which case we might have arrived sometime Sunday, instead of late Saturday afternoon. It rained on and off all day, but there were a few spectacular views. It has just turned spring in the Ozarks, and it's chilly.



Now for Joyce's point of view. She spent Saturday riding with Maria Andretti, shifting her body to prevent the van from going over the cliffs around hairpin turns. Click on this picture to enlarge it and read the sign.




She is happy to take full credit for our arrival, without incident, in Branson. She believes she prevented numerous accidents. At the crest of the mountains, we stopped at a country store and Joyce bought a corn cob back scratcher for Lizzie's collection. Now she has one for the car and one for the room.

Arkansas was the only state so far, that I felt the need to unlock the gun from the glove compartment at rest stops. You really get the feeling that something is not quite right with many of these people. One man got out of a car and promptly told Joyce he wasn't doing too well because he had just taken a laxative and it was working. They look extremely unbalanced, and they drive in a singular manner that is characterized by parking suddenly just about anywhere and walking off, including in front of you while you are trying to exit a parking lot. Many of them are missing teeth and common items of apparel, and frequently, their brains. We were happy not to be spending the night.

However, that meant we would be spending the next several nights in Branson, blue hair capital of the Midwest. The national bird is an eagle killing something (anything!) , and the national pastime is praying and singing Gospel music, even in Chinese restaurants. We are forced to detach and just observe the local phenomena as cultural anthropologists would, because nothing here has anything to do with us.

However, that's enough for today, because it's time to go swimming in the beautiful indoor pool! Lots more on Branson and environs next time.