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