Advent: Eighth Note: This the eighth part of a twenty-four part series running through December 24th. To read the previous installments in a convenient form, go here. We take a hard left at Springfield, Missouri and head down the Ozark trail to Branson. Night has fallen hard and for miles Daniel and I have only the twin ellipses of the headlights to entertain us. You have fallen fast asleep on my lap and are having puppy dreams. The buzz of the asphalt occasionally changes as we pass through areas of roadwork and then returns to steady white noise. Then they start to talk to us: Andy Williams tells us he's singing with Glen Campbell, Billy Ray Cyrus is all teeth as he invites us to The Americana Theatre, Loretta Lynn and the Lennon Brothers, Elvis Presley and his Superstars, The Jesus Christ Ensemble, they're all calling to us from the road and they're all heartily welcoming us to Branson, where Vegas and Nashville meet! We pull off at the massive interchange and promptly take a right, passing the Passion Pavillion and down a winding road that becomes more winding, more narrow and finally turns to dirt. Daniel pulls the car to a halt and gives me exactly thirty seconds to figure out how I got us there. We turn around and head back the way we came and eventually come upon a small lakeside cabin labeled "Visitor's Center". We wake you up gently and by the time I open the door, you're insane again, jumping wildly and panting like I'm dangling a double quarter pounder with cheese over your head, which I'm not, so you need to cut it out. We jaunt over to the cabin, which is lined inside with wall to wall brochures and happens to be the home of a small Scottish Terrier, which you immediately start barking at, damning it to multiple lifetimes of eternal torment and embarrassing Daniel and I to no end. I scoop you up and hold you back from your murderous urges. Daniel goes up to the visitor's desk and asks the heavily bearded, trucker hat wearing receptionist, just exactly where Branson is. "You need to take a left. You're at the top of Branson and your just going back and forth. Go down. And please get your dog out of here. She's scaring Biff." Five minutes later, Branson is laid out for us like a neon honky-tonk jewel. We're trapped in gridlock for the first time since we left Manhattan and we're assaulted by fourty foot tall giant bouffants and freon arrows pointing us to hundreds of football field sized parking lots. "It says here", pointing to my Branson is Music Country! guide, "that Branson has more theatre seats than all the theatre's in New York combined." "This is so weird." Twenty minutes and a half mile later, we find a Motel 8 with a vacancy sign on and we pull in and do the doggie subterfuge trick to sneak you in to the room. We're exhausted. "Can you believe this morning we were in Terra Haute, Indiana?" Daniel asks me, sprawled out on the plaid patterned king size bed. I join him and let every muscle in my body go limp. "But we're in Branson! What the hell are we doing in Branson?" Daniel starts repeating the name over and over again like a mantra, expanding it first to three syllables, then six, then finally expanding it into one long hiss, that gets you, puppy all excited, much like say, a cloud in the sky or a dust mite, excites you. You start pouncing on us, jumping up on the bed and nailing us each in our stomachs and then flying under the bed, where you wait all of a nanosecond to do it ALL OVER AGAIN. "Oooooooh! I'm gonna getchyu puppy!" "We're gonna getchyu!" And we're off. Daniel leaps down on the floor and you scurry wildly under the bed and out the other side where I chase you back up on the bed and bark at you and I almost catch you, but your too fast. Back you go under the bed, but Matthew's still there so you do a one-eighty and head back out the other side, but just then I stick my head down from the bed and grin at you. "Hi Puppy!" You flip out and start darting madly back and forth under the bed and then out of the bed again where you tear across the carpet and back under the bed and now, we've finally got you cornered and what do you do, you big wimp you, but flip over on your belly and start to cry. We pull you out from under the bed, pick you up and rubbing your belly, tell you just what a very good dog you are. We're starving so we head back to Jizelle to hit up a McDonalds. It's 10:30 now and the roads are deserted. We have the entire town to ourselves, it seems. "This place is so weird", Daniel repeats for the sixth time in two hours. We get into the McDonalds and they are closing up for the evening, just a few stragglers left, in fact. After scooting by three or four aluminum walkers, we're suddenly very aware that we are the youngest people in this McDonalds by a good fifty years. It begins to all make sense. Loretta Williams, empty roads by 10:30, gift shops ornamented with a thousand windchimes; we're in Old People's Paradise. Sure, there's a small group of high schooler's chowing down on fries, but they sit listlessly, eyes glazed over from stolen bottles of their grandparents medication, but clearly, we are not Branson's demographic. Noticing that applesauce is served on the menu, Daniel turns to me and says, "This is so cool."

posted by Japhy at 12/07/2002 09:00:00 PM || #