Sept 14
Today we made another small dent in browsing through neat craft shops. I spent part of the afternoon sitting in an old wooden rocker on a deck overlooking the woods. In the distance you can see the town of Branson winding its way among the hills. I just rocked and dreamed, listened to the rustle of the wind in the dry autumn leaves and watched the hawks soar over the valley.
September 15, 2000…..Branson, MO
‘The Festival of America’ at Silver City is a celebration of the BEST of American music, crafts and tastes! It’s held around Sept7-Oct 28 each year. Silver City is an Ozark theme park. Shady and rambling and full of joyful things! The most incredible craftsmen are hard at work.
This is the barrel maker. One of the craftsmen (a potter) asked where we were from…he could NOT believe that we knew to come to Branson. Wanted to know where we had heard about it! These are just local craftsmen not employees. Apparently some of them are not aware of how well known Branson is becoming.
The food is regional and very different. They even had rattlesnake gumbo! I passed on that…did try the Pork Rinds though.
They have live music shows all over the place. We went to see “The Cajun Connection.”
The band is from the bayous of Louisiana and they are wonderful. I’m playing a tape of theirs while I’m typing and my toe is tapp’n away! Red hot Cajun music stirs the soul.
They have one of the oldest homestead cabins in the country here. A group was singing and pick’n on the porch. Doing a ‘sing along’…I guess not enough of the audience was participating so he stopped and said. “I just wanted you folks to know that the way we pick out the ‘foreigners’ in this part of the country is by the way they don’t sing along. Now we’re not going to do anything now…we wait until after dark and folks…you’ll notice the sun is commencing to go down over my shoulder!” It was amazing how the singing picked up!
There were a number of woodcarvers at work here. That jazzed Rick…and he picked up a FEW more carving supplies!
Finished up with a ‘little’ more food…groan!
