An American staple

BRANSON, Mo. – At first glance, Branson is an abomination.

As I write that, I can imagine millions of newspaper readers congratulating themselves on never having been here.

You’re wrong. Stay with me, and you’ll see why.

OK, back to abomination.

The main drag – called Highway 76 or Country Highway 76 or just “The Strip” – is an absolute mess. Traffic, if it moves at all, creeps. It is a riot of out-of-control signage.

The shows? There are 49 theaters in Branson, with two more in the works, and more than 100 shows. A partial listing: 14 Karat Country, Country Tonite, Grand Country Saturday Night, Keepin’ It Country, Presleys’ Country Jubilee.

It is also possible to come here and spend three solid days watching shows – morning, afternoon and evening shows – and see only dead people.

A list of current “tribute shows”: Two John Waynes, Red Skelton, Jim Reeves, multiple Elvises and Patsy Clines, Mark Twain, Liberace, two Hank Williamses, three-quarters of the four deceased Rat Packers (does anyone do Peter Lawford?), Norman Rockwell (doing what? Elvis caricatures?), a John Denver Dinner Show, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone.

My first lunch in Branson was a bad chicken-fried steak, which I’d always thought was impossible. Dinner, in an “Italian” restaurant, was awful, but the food was better than the waiter, who was, to his credit, apologetic, which saved his tip.

Lodging? Trigger, who is stuffed and on display at the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum here, even now is faster than the elevator to my fourth-floor motel room.

Want to party? In spring, nearly half the visitors are 65 and older. In fall and around the holidays, it’s still 40 percent.

Happy now? Worst fears reinforced?

Now, here’s the rest of it:

Branson is a hoot.

The traffic is horrible most of the time, but there’s not much you can do about that, so you learn to leave a little earlier.

The shows? I’ve seen 17 of them. These are not junky productions, by the way. Shoji Tabuchi, the violinist, doesn’t just stand on his mark and play “Orange Blossom Special” on an empty stage. Jim Stafford, early in his show, sings and dances (sort of) with two other Jim Staffords. It’s hilarious.

Only one of the 17, the Presleys’ show, was 100 percent country – and it was fun.

Ten years ago, according to Dan Lennon, vice president of marketing for the Branson Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce, maybe 75 percent of the shows were country shows. “It’s about 45 percent now,” he said.

“I know there are some older acts here,” Stafford said, “and there are some country acts, and it has a kind of a country feel about it, but there’s more diversity here than people think.

“The Shanghai Circus is terrific. And we have magicians and we have a big band (Les Brown Jr., playing his dad’s hits) – that’s 20 pieces up there and real excellent musicians.”

Several shows, including the Presleys (who, at this writing, have representatives of four generations on stage at the same time), are families performing. I’ve seen shows by the Lennon Sisters (plus assorted cousins) and the Lennon Brothers. Tabuchi goes onstage with his wife and daughter.

Stafford’s son Shea sings and plays piano in his show. His daughter G.G. plays piano and harp – and a dance number she does with a second dancer would wring tears out of a bowling ball.

“There’s something sweet,” says Stafford, “about families trying to put on shows for other families.”

In fact, even with the clutter and congestion and everything else, what makes Branson irresistible is the sweetness.

Here’s a story: The King of the Cowboys was gone, and the Queen of the West, based in California, was in a wheelchair. It was 1998. Branson was putting on a “Western festival.”

“They asked my mom to come,” said Roy Rogers Jr., called “Dusty” by everyone. “This was just a few months after Dad passed away, and I didn’t think she’d want to come – but she wanted to get out of the house a little bit.

“When we drove her up (Highway) 76, every marquee said, ‘Welcome, Dale Evans.’ My mom was just blown away by that.”

By 2003, with both his folks having died, not many people were showing up anymore at the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum, then in Victorville, a dull California town on old Route 66.

“We had two options,” said Dusty Rogers. “Either move it someplace where people come, or just close it down.

“Mom had said to bring it here, so that’s why we’re here.”

Rogers, backed by the High Riders, sings cowboy songs in a theater alongside the museum, mostly for people – and there are plenty of us – old enough to know most of the words to “Tumbleweed Trail.”

In Branson, a lot of the time the show’s stars make the effort to meet the audience afterward, shake hands, sign autographs. Dusty Rogers, moments after closing his show with (what else?) “Happy Trails,” was chatting, shaking and signing.

Later, we talked.

“I just had one lady out there talk to me,” he said, “and she says, ‘Y’know, my father was not a good father. He was very mean to my mom and beat on the kids – and your dad was kind of my surrogate father.’

“Now, to me” – Rogers almost lost it, telling this story – “that’s worth the whole thing, right there.”

Dan Lennon, a singing brother of the singing sisters, knows all about that.

“People feel personally paid-attention to here in a way you may not feel in other places,” he said. “There’s sort of a personal relationship that often develops between the visitor and the entertainer or the visitor and the person at the restaurant. It’s ‘small-town’ in that way – and in a positive way.”

To amplify Lennon’s point: The struggling waiter mentioned above, along with apologizing roughly 41 times, also took the cost of my martini off the tab, which he didn’t have to do (and, this being a small town, the $5 probably came out of his pocket).

One additional point, since we’re talking about kindness, and this relates to that awful traffic: There is, in this town, something that should be called the Branson Wave.

In no other town I know are people more willing to stop and wave merging drivers into their lane or into a turn – or to stop for pedestrians crossing streets between intersections. The waves are usually accompanied by smiles, which are almost always reciprocated.

Branson is more than shows. Silver Dollar City is a pleasant theme park that’s got enough rides and distractions to keep whining to a minimum, plus a serious cave if the whining gets to be too much. A new attraction this season is the Powder Keg, a $10 million roller coaster with a 110-foot drop.

There are five 18-hole golf courses and a couple of nine-holers in the area, including a Nicklaus-designed par-3 layout. There’s fishing for bass and some of the best trout fishing anywhere, and trails for hiking and biking.

If this is sounding like a commercial, well, maybe it’s because I know how much Branson is misunderstood.

“The farther away people are,” said Lennon, “the more they think of us as a street with theaters on it. The ones who understand a little about the Ozarks understand what a gorgeous place this is.

“Once they come, it’s always, ‘Wow …’ “

But more than any of the physical realities, there’s just a feeling about Branson. Even with plans for a monster development downtown – Branson Landing – that could change the scale of everything. Even with traffic that has no answer.

That’s why Trigger is here.

“The thing I like about Branson – and I think Yakov Smirnoff says it best – is, ‘People come to Branson to see how America used to be. I think people should come to Branson to see how America ought to be,’ ” Dusty Rogers said.

“When you have a town of 6,000 people that you get 7 million visitors to a year, there’s got to be something here people like – and they just keep coming back, year after year after year …”