Branson Memorial Day
Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at 09:39AM
An Unnamed Baldnobber
     It's Memorial Day '16 in Branson, Missouri, a Midwest Destination Resort Town in the Ozark Mountains. Traffic is gridlocked with as many as 50,000  vacationers seeking connection to their imagined bucolic 19th century past complete with cabins and fishing and fiddle music. They will find it, although expensive and only shoddily replicated. In early December, after Branson's Tourism Commision extracts the last Vacation Dollars for A Country Christmas, our Town will transformer back to it's authentic, small, unexplainable Republican, Bible Belt Town.  By then we will be reliant for Winter Funding on Hillary's Entitlement Deposits compliments of Beijing.
     My sister and I retired here during the '08 "economic adjustment". Although our parents were from this region, and of this culture, we have had a hard time feeling "at home".  We often muse about moving  just to reinforce our apartness from District 9, this, twilight zone, place that we believe Ronald Regan created by accident.  Our speculation is that Reagan's universal appeal and oozing charisma, ingratiated his politics to rural regions inhabited by mythic souls that were never able to differentiate between Borax and "trickle down economics".  The result was that it mixed up the rich, the poor, the Jesus loving, and the Wall Street loving; all in one stew.  A generation later, at least here in the rural heartland, we are so "purpose confused" that we have fallen down the culturally rabbit hole.  
     I have included below a satire verse recently offered for my sisters 60 something birthday. It is strong biased humour, but it points to some sad truth about Our Town. 

 

 

                              A Branson Birthday

                         

An hour of years, plus three, stranded in Branson

A small step up from a Valley Girl, indentured to Manson

 

Expansive forests blemished by constricted minds

 Low energy citizens self organized on a spectrum of kinds

 

Each has a dynamic yielding a low tide existence

 All Instinct driven, with little, if any, reasonied resistance

 

It's druggies, and militia, and conspiracist, and welfarist, and Jesus Promoters, three ways

But, alas, not so many Asians, or Muslims, or Phd's, or gays

 

For Some

It's meth and heroin and bath salts when they're too wasted to steal

They know there's a church on the corner for a pillow and a meal

 

For Many

It's imagined "survival by conflict", sanctioned  from heaven

Pick ups advertising "don't tread on me" or my AK-47

 

For a Whole Lot

It's "yessiree, life would be better if the f'in liberals would let us be free

So long, of course, that they keep sending money to my daddy and me

 

For Even More

It's bad backs, and knees, and and stomachs, and heads, inside and out

Disability by 40, "that's what I'm talking about"

As soon as my D-card next loads I'll send you the rent

Alimony and tires and Bingo, this months done went

 

For Almost Everyone

In this life, I am joint-venturing with Jesus and, praise the Lord, I am thereby shielded from scorn

It is only for his glory that he let me be born

So if I seem inattentive, or lax, or uninterested, or irrational, or bitter, or malevolent, or vindictive,, or deceitful, or just plain bored

Well, that's too damn bad, cause first comes me and the Lord

 

Yes, it's a wonderful life and I know you just love it here,  with all of the slothfulness, selfishness and fear

So, Hurray for Branson, shed not a tear; We'll celebrate same time, same place, next yearr

 

BROTHER

 

 

 

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