You Have a Great Past Just Ahead of You

July 9, 2017March 20, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 5 Comments

If you were part of the “second family”, summer vacation to you meant the beach: sand and sea and the smell and taste of salt on your skin. It’s boogie boards and sunscreen and the sound of seagulls and the sting of jelly fish and buying the tee shirt with a beagle in the hammock and going for ice cream on the sound. But if you were one of “the four” and you grew up in the land-locked midwest and it was 1980 something, summer vacation was a whole other thing. It was camping in the rain, little cereal boxes of your favorite cereals (except for the Raisin Bran which nobody wanted), trips to the ER for stitches and ear infections, and Silver Dollar City.

The first family vacation we ever took that was not to visit grandparents came about from a conversation with Paul’s brother David who insisted that the perfect vacation spot was hidden away deep in the Ozarks in an out-of-the-way spot known as Branson, Missouri. Today, of course, Branson is a destination in and of itself which draws thousands upon thousands of visitors each year to its music shows. But this was before all that. This was about a little theme park where you rode the trolley from the parking lot to the gate not because it was too far too walk but because it was one of the few “rides” the park offered and you listened to the patter of the “tour guide” who explained that you were about to step back in time – 100 years to be exact. “Welcome to Silver Dollar City – where you’ll find a great past just ahead of you!” he promised as we stepped off the trolley and into some of the best memories we would make as a family.

The first time we went was sometime in the early 80s; there is some disagreement among us as to the exact year so we’ll just call it 1980something. We sent away for the brochures and when they arrived in the mail (Seriously. That’s how we did things before the internet.), we sat down on family nights and poured over them: planning our itinerary, studying the maps and highlighting the best route from Illinois to Missouri, making a budget, writing the lists of all the things to do and take and ready before our big adventure. How many weeks (months) did we do this?

Because we had no money, we knew hotel rooms and restaurant meals were out of the question. But not to worry – for a fraction of the cost we could buy a brand new tent (I think we already had some sleeping bags we had collected along the way) and thanks to our trusty brochures we found the Blue Mountain Campground nearby (with a swimming pool and laundry facilities!) where we could pitch our tent. We could afford tickets to Silver Dollar City for a day and half and the rest of the time we would vacation at the campground: swimming and collecting wood for the fire we would build to cook our meals and toast marshmallows for the s’mores. What could possibly go wrong you ask. Let me count the ways.

1. Before using a tent for the first time it would behoove. . . (okay – cross that off my bucket list – I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence). . . it would behoove you to set it up at home to make sure (a) all the necessary pieces are present and accounted for and (b) you actually know how said pieces fit together.

2. It rains in the Ozarks. A lot. Not all tents are waterproof. Soaking wet sleeping bags require a heavy duty dryer which can only be found at a laundromat. Also, a strong storm can blow down a tent altogether.

Early one morning, after a night where no one had slept due to the soaking wet tent, the soaking wet sleeping bags, and the all round soaking wet, miserable conditions, the owners of the campground took pity on us. Chad was outside our tent – yelling. “Faye says for y’all to come on up to the house for pancakes and get those babies in outa’ this rain!!” Thank God for Chad and Faye and Ozark hospitality!

3. Camp playgrounds are all fun and games until someone parachutes out of a swing, lands in the gravel, and slices open her hand which will require a trip to the emergency room for stitches, taking up an entire afternoon of vacation. In years to come we would battle strep throat, ear infections and stomach flu – so much so that it seemed it wasn’t vacation if somebody didn’t get hurt or sick.

4. It is best not to allow a three year old to jump into the deep end of the swimming pool holding a beach ball as a flotation device. This can go south pretty quickly.

5. It turns out young children are more enamored with playing in the fire and cooking over the fire than they are with eating the food cooked in said fire. They’re not so much about the char the fire leaves on the hotdogs or the crunch of aluminum-foil-wrapped- potatoes cooked in the coals which never seemed to get done. But they did absolutely love the little individual boxes of cereal that they could open up, pour in the milk and eat right out of the box.

The tent – before it blew down in the rainstorm

And yet, for all of that, we returned to the Blue Mountain Campground again and again, year after year.

And to Silver Dollar City. After the first year we figured out that for not too much more money, we could buy a season pass and then go to the park every day for our five days of vacation. We rode the train with its steam powered engine and never grew tired of the train robbers who entertained the passengers with their scripted and improvised lines.

We were regulars at the Silver Dollar Saloon where the singing bartenders served rootbeer in frosty mugs and peanuts in the shell. The saloon girls put on their show and hauled a sucker up from the audience to mock and ridicule him and so of course the kids figured out which chair they always chose to pull their victim from and convinced Dad to sit in the chair at least once a season. In the middle of the show Carrie Nation and her Suffragettes marched in to break up the riffraff and it took the Sheriff to restore order. The girls bought garters and when they got home they practiced the Can-Can and sang “Why do they call us wild women, wild women, wild women? Why do they call us wild women when we’re just as tame as can be“. Rosie was the main saloon girl and one day on our way to the park from the campground we stopped at a convenience store to pick something up and there was Rosie – buying a loaf of bread! Day made!

Scan 18 — Good times at the Silver Dollar City Saloon.

The street theatre actors recognized the kids from year to year and incorporated them into their acts. They were on a first name basis with the Sheriff and the Deputy, with the Hatfields and McCoys. With the Rainmaker and the Undertaker who wandered the streets with his measuring tape. They loved the Story Teller and knew what time she would be at her spot to tell stories and choose them to be a part of them. They knew the musicians and where they performed and what time to catch them during the day. They knew the lady who ran the general store and the basket maker and the blacksmith.

And then there was Mercy. He was the star of Silver Dollar City. He seemed to be everywhere: interacting with the guests, heckling and teasing and aggravating and everyone loved him. He knew our kids by name and if we missed a year he would ask them where they had been. Eventually they got to know the actor behind the character. His name was Jack McDowell and they invited him to lunch and he told them about Silver Dollar City behind the scenes. We exchanged Christmas cards and kept up with him and his career for many years.

12642961_1121398154561726_7387714377258334224_n — Mercy

There were a only a few rides: the American Plunge which was a log flume ride and left your stomach at the top of the summit before plunging you down the to the bottom and the Lost River of the Ozarks inner tube ride that guaranteed a good dousing under the waterfall. There was a ball pit and a playground and a carousel, but mostly it was about the community: the musicians around every corner and the street theatre which was both predictable and spontaneous, the craftsman and the artisans. It was about the funnel cakes and the frozen lemonade and the penny candy at the general store. As the kids got a little older we would let them roam the park on their own and meet back periodically to check in at a designated spot (it was a different time and a different place). One day I was walking through the park alone and I turned a corner to find the baritone from the barbershop quartet all alone in an isolated spot singing “How Great Thou Art”. His eyes were closed, his arms lifted to the sky and it struck me that he was not performing, he was worshiping. This was a private moment, not a public one. I tried to slip away unnoticed so as to not interrupt him when he opened his eyes and saw me. He blushed a little. “I’m on my break,” he said. “I just needed to recharge.” For years I would recall that scene when I needed to recharge.

Every day at the park started with the sheriff deputizing all the kids with sheriff badges and then lining them up to stand at attention as the flag was raised. The day ended with the lowering and the folding of the flag.

Scan 33 copy 2 — The Sheriff deputizes the kids every morning. . . with a badge.

In the evening we headed to Echo Hollow, the big amphitheater, for the Silver Dollar City Jubilee: an evening of Bluegrass music and comedy with Mercy as the warm up act. They might change the show from year to year but the performers were always the same – and once again they recognized us and greeted us like old friends. And then it was back to the campground where, if we were lucky, the tent and sleeping bags would be dry and we could light a fire and Dad would pull out his harmonica and we would unwind from the the day so we could get up in the morning, eat little boxes of cereal and head back to do it all over again.

I don’t know how many times we went on this vacation. Five maybe? Six? I know we went back a couple of times after Joy was born. She danced in the streets to the music, she plummeted down the American Plunge tucked in between us and rode the Lost River of the Ozarks, squealing with delight as the water fall dumped water over our heads. She rode the carousel and ate the funnel cakes and slept in the tent. But I think it was after that that we moved east and the story shifted.

We made one trip with all of eight of us. In was in 1989. Fletcher was a year old, Joy was five and the others were . . . older. But it wasn’t the same. Some of the old, familiar faces were gone, others had taken their place who didn’t know us from the next guy and there some new, added “attractions”. Still, it was enough the same that we could say, “Oh! And remember this?!” But you could tell that change was afoot.

The last trip – 1995. And that’s Jack McDowell in the middle.

In the summer of 1995 we were making a trip to Colorado for Paul’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. Somehow somebody suggested, “What if we went through Branson and spent a day at Silver Dollar City? But maybe we sleep in a cabin.” And so we did. We wanted Fletcher to see it, to experience it, but afterwards we all sort of wished we hadn’t done it. The magic was gone. It was more like a conventional theme park – more about the plethora of rides which had been added over the years and less about the craftsmen and the music and the street theatre. Less personal somehow and more crowded. We did look up Jack McDowell. who was working someplace else by then and had lunch with him. But he had moved on too, and we all mourned the loss of the place where we had met and spent so many happy hours. We stopped by the Blue Mountain Camp Ground just to see if it was still there. It was. Chad had died some time ago and Faye was away when we stopped, but when we went in the office, there on the bulletin board was a picture of two year old Joy.

Joy reminds me that in 1999, Paul and I and she and Fletch stopped again when we were traveling west to see family. Oddly enough, I have absolutely no memories of it. Maybe it was just too different and I didn’t want to remember it that way.

One of the kids said once, “Don’t you wish you could go back to Silver Dollar City for the first time?” And that sort of captures it. It was magical. Pure and utter magic. But it’s sort of like Camelot or Brigadoon. It’s been almost 40 years since that first time and now it’s gone and there’s no way to get back to what it was no matter how much you might wish otherwise. And maybe that’s where the magic lies. The place – as we knew it – is gone. The children – as we knew them – are gone. But the stories. They are alive and well and welcome us back again and again.

Joy to the World. . . Every Day

May 10, 2015March 6, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 1 Comment

She was my easiest labor, easiest delivery and was born on the Thursday before Mother’s Day. We had some friends over for dinner: chili and cinnamon rolls – admittedly an odd menu choice for May but nonetheless, that’s what we had. Why I remember this detail is anybody’s guess. We left for the hospital about 7:00 p.m. and a couple of hours later we were the proud parents of our fifth child – Joy Leanne. Joy because it just seemed so right and Leanne because it was the middle name of her three older sisters (another story for another day) and it seemed a little odd to change things up now.

I came home from the hospital the next day. On Sunday we went to church and then to Ponderosa for lunch since it was Mother’s Day. Paul took the other four in to get a table while I stayed in the car to feed and change the baby. When I finally made my way through the very crowded restaurant (it was Mother’s Day) an older lady stopped me. “How old is your baby?” she wanted to know as she admired the little red-headed bundle in my arms. “Three days”, I answered, sweeping the room for the table for seven. “Oh honey! You might do something this stupid with your first one, but trust me. . . by your second, you’ll know better! You’ll know to stay at home and rest!” Apparently I am a slow learner.

The child was a force to be reckoned with. She walked at seven months – not a few, halting steps but she walked across the room. And she never looked back. They asked us to move her out of the nursery because she roamed the room, snatching crackers out of the babies’ hands and moving on to the next one before anyone could stop her. At home, our only recourse was for everyone to man their stations and keep her out of their stuff and away from places she shouldn’t be. There is no use trying to teach a seven month old what is off limits.

If she learned to walk early, speech was not far behind. By a year old she was talking in sentences and by two she was talking in paragraphs . . . and talking. . . and talking. . . and you never knew what she would say or sometimes even what she meant by it but you had no doubt that she knew exactly what her point was.

Her favorite song was Joy to the World and she would randomly (and loudly) serenade the family, the restaurant, her Sunday School class or herself – even in mid July. I mean when you have a song that is written about you, why would you not?? Sometimes when she was feeling particularly generous she would substitute someone else’s name in place of her own “Fletcher to the world….” and always at full volume. But mostly, and often, it was Joy to the world. When people would comment on her head full of red curls – which they always did- she would agree “Yup, it sure is cully”.

When she was almost three we had a single guy who was living in our basement for a few months while he was between houses. Joy would corner him on his way in or out and chat with him. One day she said to him, “Joe, did you know I’m getting married?”

“Really??” he asked her. “I did not know that! Who’s the lucky guy?”

“You’re looking at him!!!”

As it turns out, that relationship did not work out – but not for her lack of boldness.

In both the church and the neighborhood I was known as Joy’s mother. She knew everybody and everybody knew her and they all found her enchanting – as did we. She seemed to draw a crowd wherever she went. One day Paul took her to McDonalds for lunch. Usually on such an outing she was so busy talking that she left most of her food untouched. But this day she had eaten all of it. “Good job on the chicken nuggets!” he encouraged her. “What does that mean?” She wanted to know. “Well, it just means you ate all your chicken nuggets. So good job.” She thought about it for a minute and then said, “So was that in Spanish?” One day I was combing her hair (or trying to) when she said to me, “Mom, you know why I like you? Because most of the time, you don’t even treat me like an orphan.” There was her revelation that the Super Bowl is really only a football game (which I wrote about in the story “It’s All About the Snacks”.) It was her world and we were only visiting.

When she turned two we rented a house that had an indoor swimming pool and a sauna. Crazy, right? I was paranoid about having a baby and a pool and so we set out to teach her to swim. Before long, she could jump into the pool, turn around, swim to the side and crawl out. We worked on this routine every day, but after putting her through her paces a few times, her teeth were chattering, her little body was shivering and she would say, “Only one more time, and then I get to sit in the warmer.” And while I could do without the swimming pool, I have often wished that every house I lived in thereafter had a warmer where I could reward myself at the end of an unpleasant task.

It was in that same house where she grew into our “hobbit child”. Not because she acted like a hobbit in terms of avoiding adventurers, but because she just so looked like one. I always thought if she had been born at the right time and the right place, Peter Jackson would have totally cast her in his films.

She was about three when we got a Cocker Spaniel puppy. Always thinking ahead, she asked if the puppy would have puppies. Maybe. What would we do with the puppies? Well we would probably sell them to somebody else who wanted a puppy. It was shortly after that she learned a new baby was coming to the family and that she would get to be the big sister. She seemed to take it in stride. And then one day I heard her talking to herself: “We will have baby puppies and a baby baby. And if we want, we can always sell the baby.” Let the record show, however, that when the new baby brother arrived she was over the moon and has been a devoted and loving big sister for the last 27 years – except, of course, for the times when he was being an annoying and irritating little brother. But as far as I know, she has never once considered selling him.

Her older siblings were 12, 10, 8, and 6 when she was born, so she came into a family with a clearly defined pecking order and a history that she had not shared, which my own experience teaches me had to make her feel at times like the odd man out. But her sisters doted on her. They carried her in their bicycle baskets, put her in a cardboard box and pushed her around the house keeping her happy with an unending supply of Smartie Pills, bought her toys with their own money, threw her birthday parties, and advocated on her behalf. When she desperately wanted an American Girl doll for Christmas and I thought they were outrageously expensive, they offered to pitch in with their own money. It was their idea to give her a Victorian doll house (one that came in a kit and had to be glued together piece by piece and then painted and then decorated and furnished) and helped put it together late into the nights before Christmas. It was her brother who salvaged an old computer and repaired and restored it for her when she got older.

My mother always said that looking at her was like turning back the clock – that in her she saw me at that age. She died when Joy was only five and I’m sad that her youngest granddaughter has few, if any, memories of her. She lost her other grandmother in her early teens and this, too, robbed her of a strong and remarkable woman. But she comes from a long line of such women, and their legacy and their traditions live on in her. And for that I am grateful.

And now, 31 years after that lovely May evening when Joy came to our world, she has a husband and three little girls of her own. And I swear that sometimes it’s like turning back the clock. Each in their own way, they are like their mother: sensitive, filled with a bull-in-the-china-shop energy, and the one with the head full of “culls” (even if they are blond instead of red.)

Happy Birthday to you, my dear . . and Joy to the world. . . this and every day!

It’s All About the Snacks.

February 3, 2013March 5, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 1 Comment

In our family, Super Bowl Sunday was never about the football… unless the Bears or later the Skins were playing… and really, how often does that happen in one’s lifetime??

No. Super Bowl Sunday was always about the food. The snacks. All the stuff you got to eat on that day on any other day would have been considered indulgent and gluttonous. On this day, everything was allowable.

I think it must have been about 1987. I can’t remember if we had friends coming or it was just family – either way it would be a party and I had been cooking (junk) food for days. That afternoon I was finishing up the Chex Party Mix (this was before you bought it in a bag and actually made it from scratch). Joy was “helping” me. We mixed the three different kinds of Chex cereals, the peanuts and then poured the buttery mixture over it and put it in the oven. The M&M’s would be added later. So messy, so fun!! She was at the “helping” stage most children go through at about three or four and she was relishing the role. I remember Fletcher one Thanksgiving when he was about the same age wanting to help. He pulled a chair over to the kitchen sink where I was preparing the turkey to put in the oven. He watched for a while before he put voice to the question, “What is that?” “THIS,” I proclaimed proudly of the 20 pound foul sprawled in my sink, “is the turkey!!” “It looks like some kind of dead animal,” he said with mild alarm in his three year old voice. Well, when you put it that way. . . but I digress.

Joy was helping me with the Chex Mix for the Super Bowl party and carrying on a running dialogue – mostly with herself.“I just love the Super Bowl. I have always loved the Super Bowl. I think Super Bowl parties are the best parties ever. Don’t you love the Super Bowl? When can we have the snacks? What time will the Super Bowl start? How much longer is that? Is this YOUR favorite party? Don’t you just love Chex Mix? Can I have some Chex Mix now? Well, how much longer till the Super Bowl starts? Shall I ask the kids if they are ready for the Super Bowl? Can I fix my bowl of Chex Mix now and just hold it till it’s time for the Super Bowl to start? What shall I wear to the Super Bowl? What are you going to wear to the Super Bowl? How much longer, now?” And so it went…. for most of the afternoon. She was so excited for it all to begin. The other kids begged me to make her stop, but she was not to be shushed “She doesn’t even LIKE to watch football!” they complained. “She hates Sunday afternoons when that’s all we do. Why is this so different?” Who knew?

Finally it was time. She spread out her blanket on the floor. She brought pillows from her bed. She put on her “special party pajamas”. She brought in her favorite doll to enjoy the festivities. She straightened her blanket. She fluffed her pillows. And she oh-so-carefully carried her bowl of Chex Mix into the living room and sat on her blanket. We turned on the television. The announcers were talking, the fans were screaming, aaaand the kick-off. Joy was shocked – almost beyond words. She jumped to her little feet, whipped around with her hands on her hips and in the most accusing and disparaging tone I have ever heard in a three year old she said to me, “THIS LOOKS JUST LIKE FOOTBALL!!”

Whatever she had thought a Super Bowl party meant, never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that it was about football.