Branson, Day Two

I woke up with the alarm and felt around in my mouth, thankful my crown was firmly in place.

We left the hotel shortly after 8:00 and arrived at our first stop two hours later.

I had never heard of the Mitchell Car Company but they had produced some beautiful automobiles at the same time as Henry Ford rolled out his first one.  There are only 150 in existence anymore and the tiny town of Booneville boasts a museum housing some of the finest.  Booneville boasts very little else, I suspect. Beautiful flowers with some of the largest begonias I've ever seen were all around the parking lot but there were virtually no signs of life anywhere except inside the privately owned building that held the polished and fully functioning cars from over one hundred years ago.  The owner, a great, great, great (not sure how many greats) grandson of the original Mitchell, was enthusiastic as he explained things to us and asked that we not touch anything because our oily hands would leave smudges. He said it better than that but we understood exactly what he meant.  I kept my hands in my pockets lest I succumb to temptation.

While the town seemed abandoned in the sweltering, oppressive heat, the museum in which we were almost the only visitors, had at least six or seven tour guides who were as proud of the history displayed within as was the owner who greeted us on our arrival. They were all friendly and helpful but quick to remind those of us who were in danger of forgetting the “don’t touch” order.  We seized the chance to take our group photo since we had plenty of people who could snap a few with our phones and the tour guides willingly complied.  With minimal confusion, all forty-seven of us managed to get into the picture and look fairly good doing it.

Next stop was for a box lunch at another museum just minutes away.  It was lovely and, more importantly, air-conditioned, and the lunches were tasty and fresh.  More history was all around us as we ate at tables set up in the middle of displays of American Indians (Sacagawea), various explorers, and several random skeletons, posed on chairs and rowing the life-size sailing vessel taking up the middle of the room. I’m not sure where they fit in; maybe to remind us how dangerous the trek west had been.

Then it was off to Warm Springs Ranch, the Budweiser Clydesdale horse farm where those majestic equestrian delights are bred, trained, and finally sent on the road to wow audiences throughout the United States and Canada.

We toured the barns where the pregnant mares are housed in horse luxury.  Each foal will be born at 150-175 pounds and their mothers’ labor pains will only last five to thirty-five minutes.  Seems a little unfair.  It took me about twelve hours to birth a seven-pounder.

These huge horses are an average of 18 hands high, which for those of us unfamiliar with horse-speak is six feet at the withers.  If you don’t know what withers are, well, I refer you to Google.  An adult weighs in at an incredible 1900 to 2600 pounds.  When they passed around the enormous horse shoes we were all duly impressed.  We saw protective mothers with their babies, proud stallions, pregnant ladies-in-waiting, and older geldings used for training adolescents.  All of them were beautiful with grooming multiple times a day, clean, sweet-smelling wood shavings bedding their stalls, exercise corrals, and general pampering all around.

Only someone living under a rock, or maybe just without a TV, has not seen the amazing Clydesdale commercials.  They bring me to tears.  Besides the tear-inducing commercials, the team also goes on tour, always ten horses, eight on the team and two for spares.  It takes three tractor trailers and a van with seven handlers to do the one hundred annual shows during the three hundred days they are on the road.  Two of those traveling with the team are drivers.  With seventy-five pounds of weight pressing on their fingers from the reins used to control the team, it stands to reason they need to change off every now and then.

Brief mention was also made of their mascot Dalmatians, five or six of them currently on tour with the team.  They live with the horses in perfect harmony from birth to old age, a veritable canine utopia.

The heat was stifling, even with multiple five-foot fans spinning throughout the barns, and  more than a few of us were happy to accept the free ice-cold Buds handed out at the end of the tour.

Several hours further down the highway we stopped at Lambert’s Café for supper.  It wasn’t just supper.  It was a fun experience.  The walls were covered with old license plates and memorabilia and the kids who made up the wait staff were all dressed in white shirts, red suspenders and red bow ties.  There was much frivolity and the dinner rolls were thrown.  Sometimes from quite a distance.  All that was required to get one was to raise both hands, prepare to catch, and wait for your hot, delicious roll to come sailing through the air. A minute later a girl followed with sorghum molasses in a paint can, ladling it onto the rolls, as much as you like.

Enthusiastic hawkers strolled around with carts laden with hot cinnamon rolls, calling out to the patrons, encouraging them to partake. Servers came through with “pass-arounds,” side dishes like fried okra, black-eyed peas, baked beans, and fried potatoes.  The drinks came in quart-size mugs, the place mats were brown paper towels off the roll, and all the young people taking our orders, bringing our food in over-sized frying pans that served as plates, and refilling our drinks (I’m not sure anyone actually managed to empty theirs even once) seemed to be having a jolly good time. And we did as well.

Groaning with the weight of our intake, we boarded the bus and looked forward to our hotel where we will stay for the next three days.  I might manage to stay awake for a card game or two yet.

As of this writing we are lost, thanks to an errant GPS with a wicked sense of humor.   It’s all good though. I haven’t lost anymore crowns.

PS.

Safe and Sound in our lovely hotel room in the heart of Branson's tourist district after some incredible maneuvering by Noah The Magnificent.  We even have our own balcony.  I am quite content.