We went to Branson, Missouri for a quick trip last week, and when I came back a friend asked what it was like. It doesn’t turn out to be all that easy to describe, so if I’m going to do it, I figured I might as well turn it into a blog entry in case anyone else is interested.

Branson is, of course, the poor man’s Vegas, the home (for no reason whatsoever) to dozens and dozens of comedy and variety acts, many with their own dedicated theater. I think when I first started hearing the name in the ’80s, it was as a kind of news-of-the-weird item that the Osmond family had set up its own theater out in the middle of nowhere. “Ho ho,” I sneered. “That’s a brilliant idea. Everybody’s bound to trek for hundreds of miles to see Donny do ‘One Bad Apple’ again.”

Well, proving again that apparently I’m a moron, that’s exactly what people did. The only remnant of Osmond activity was a billboard that Merrill Osmond was performing. (”Who?” I asked. “I think that’s the youngest one,” Greg said.) But even off-season and mid-week, the main street through town was clogged with traffic and the old downtown was a parking lot. People are just dying to get to Branson. Why? Well, as near as I could figure out, here are the draws in my order of importance, which someone else might have different:

1. Cheap. We got a good ’nuff hotel room for $54 a night. Shows were $28-50, compared to $60-100 for a Vegas show and $35-150 for a play or comedy act (depends on how hot a show it is, of course). We had absolutely sensational barbecue for $4 a sandwich.
2. Corny. Is it a good thing that this is a place where Andy Williams packs his own theater five nights a week? Where Lawrence Welk has a resort named after him? Where the billboards compete for who can show the doofiest-looking hillbilly revue? Well, apparently so. Besides, with the high cornball quotient comes …
3. G-rated. I mean, seriously G-rated. I’d be surprised if there’s any act in town that has the word ‘damn’ in it or any girly-action or any jokes you couldn’t tell your 11-year-old. It may not be hip, but neither is it obscene. The humor may not be edgy, but neither is it offensive, gross, nasty or irreligious.
4. Pretty. Branson is a hilly city in the Ozarks. It’s bordered by a lake that wraps around three sides, which means you can do scenic drives and paddleboat rides. At this time of year, there were a lot of times when we’d crest a hill and be looking on a wonderful patchwork of trees changing color.
5. Cheap. I know I said it before, but c’mon. Fifty-dollar hotels? Four-dollar barbecue? I’d go to weekends at the large animal dump if they could meet those prices.

So who doesn’t want to go to Branson? I’ve been thinking about this. You do NOT want to go to Branson if:

• you see no difference between the word ‘country’ (as in country-Western) and the words ‘hillbilly’ and ‘redneck.’
• you’re the type that likes to dress all in black, unless that’s your tribute to Johnny Cash.
• you found out you have a week to live and want to go wild. Unless by any chance you only want to go hog-wild, because I think they can do that.
• you’re a strict vegan. I’m not sure whether they’d just laugh at you or cook you up and eat you, but I’m betting you wouldn’t get a warm reception.
• you’re hip or have ever been hip and want to retain any traces of your hipness.

So that’s my public service announcement. I felt safe to go because I’m not a vegan (except during Lent) and because I have never ever been hip, to my knowledge. Plus I actually like Andy Williams. I admit he’s gotten a little strange-looking in the last ten years. His skin seems to be permanently dyed orange and his teeth are painted white with matte-finish house paint. But hey, as long as he can still croon out Moon River and the theme from Godfather in that high-but-not-girly voice, I think I’d be up for it.

So I thought I was a good candidate, and even with that I wasn’t ready for the jaw-dropping moment at the nice little Lowe family show at the Lawrence Welk Resort. They’re nice, y’know. Little family with seven kids that all play instruments. I mean, they’re not really kids anymore — the youngest is 17. They’ve been performing so long that Mom could only tell us stories in her totally Avon-lady performance voice about how little Carrie had done her first number in diapers. Ha ha, ho ho. And I actually was impressed with how many instruments they could play and how well they could play them. They really shouldn’t have tried singing, Riverdancing, clogging and tap on top of it, but who am I to judge?

And it wasn’t even the moment in the absolutely obligatory Hooray for America montage when five of the kids in their sparkley red, white and blue outfits lined up with a flag and mimicked the famous picture of the soldiers planting the flag at Iwo Jima. That made me wince and grab Greg’s sleeve like at a scary movie.

But it didn’t make me make a little scream noise. What did that was earlier in the show when Mom started telling us in a bland little singsong about the time that she had had a precious little baby and his name was Kendall. But then, there were complications with his heart and he was flown to a medical center. And then they prayed.

And then Kendall died.

And then they counted their blessings.

And in the Avon-lady performance voice without any emotion in it, she said that they always dedicated the next number to Kendall. Then they did another montage exactly like the other montages they had done, with lots of enormous smiling and skip-jumping around and no genuine feeling in it at all.

I’m not sure when I made the little scream noise. It was all in such breathtakingly bad taste that it could have been any time. It probably happened at one of the many times throughout the rest of the show when they would bring a number to some noisy, obvious finale and Greg would yell out “Kendall!” just loud enough for me to hear.

So there you are. You don’t want to go to Branson without a seat-belt, as it were. But it’s not to say there aren’t laughs to be had. Just not always the ones they’ve got in mind.