"...complete with matching buffoons in straw hats and overalls."

...featuring buffoon "Droopy Drawers" at the Baldknobbers, I believe.

I visited Branson both as a kid and as an adult. I liked it as it was, but I also like it as it is now.

My family travels to Branson several times a year now, mostly to Silver Dollar City. It is a 4 hour drive from South of Tulsa. The Branson traffic is a hassle, but if you learn the side roads and by-passes, you can still get to where you are going.

I was glad to see this story!!!!!!!! Thanks Ron.

Great post....actually,
vacation meccas were locally-based, just like local radio and tv stations. I guess regional would be the best word. The marketing was hardly national, but just a few states at most. People travelled very
little, and when they did, not terribly far.
A weeks vacation just one or two hundred miles from home was typical. Yes, occasionally, you would
get lucky and take a cross country trip to a national park or even Florida, most mostly it was to local tourist trap heavens like Branson. Others I can think of that grew big
from little roots would be Gatlinburg, Tenn...(
you can almost thank Dolly singlehandedly for that), Sandusky, oh(Cedar Point), Sturgis(obviously on a biker
basis, but 30 years ago it was just a little town, and still us 51 weeks of the year), Hilton Head, S.C, and Key West, which was a sleepy military base with a lanky, quiet fishing village and retirement haven attached until the cool
folks and partiers made
it grand central crazy.
I don't know if an amusement area could survive today on a regional basis. People's
expectations have increased so much that
they won't go to a place that doesn't have all the disney-esqe bells and whistles, and
air fares are slo cheap that people can afford to go to the top 5-10
national biggies in fla,
cal, etc.....That quieter vacation era will never be replicated,however. And
in many ways, like the kid whose fav toy was the box everything else came in, we prob had a better time than the kids today have anyway.
Todays kids have amusement park-like water parks, while we had postage-stamp sized pools, but I would bet we had more fun jumping off the boards than the kids today have in 5 acre water parks....
actually, I'm certain of it.....

Quieter peaceful vacations? Oh, yeah, your talking 40 years ago. Sorry. Yes, we had a much better time back then. But I would like to try to explain to younger ones how this is so. Everyone back then was so different. People weren't always trying to rip you off. You could trust people and be friendly to people and they to you. We all had a common understanding and frame of mind, an attitude with much more goodwill than now.

Life was simple and easy. Jobs were not as stressful so that mom and dad were easier to deal with. We were at peace and relaxed. Parents actually wanted to spend time with their kids, though we often took off to play with other kids. But unless you were there and experienced it, it is almost hard to believe. I have recently visited other boomer nostalgia sites and you will note a common theme. We would gladly give up all the more recent technology to go back to that time and live. Its a fact. I have many boomer friend who all say the same thing.

I tell younger adults about it and they are fascinated. I tell them how very conservative it was cause the media would make everyone believe how radical and liberal it was but hippies and liberals were actually a minority. We hardly had any in Maine.

Nature was fun and exciting. Collecting Star Fish and other exotic sea creatures is hard to compete with when your 9 or 10. We had lots of nature in Maine. We still have some but much less than in the 60s. We live too close to Mass. and Boston. They all come up here with their big cigar boats and drive drunk and kill a few of us every once in a while. They crowd the most beautiful lake in the world, Sebago, about 45 min. north of Portland. They bought lots of summer homes in Maine and drove our home prices through the roof. they bought up all over Maine cause of our ski mountains, ocean, lakes, woods, beauty, hunting, snowmobiling. NH suffers similar.

We have too much population that has filled up all those formerly little isolated towns so that now it is one endless suburbia in southern Maine. Our birth rate is low but Wealth from other big cities really liked Maine a lot and could move up here and get all our big paying jobs or go into business and survive with what they saved. And immigrants have been pouring in since 90s as well. I-295 is just like Mass. now. Yeah, it was different back when. I can't think of many ways in which its better though. We lost so much more than we gained.

If we could go back in time, none of us would be left here to tell ya how it was. If you were not there, I am sad there is not a way for you to see what it truly was like. There was nothing like it. And when I say this, remember that the 60s was not perfect by any means, but it was 100 times better than now.

And I apologize to the younger generations cause to some degree, I feel like maybe we boomers let you down in sleeping on our watch and we got nothing to pass on to you except how stupid we were. For this I am deeply ashamed and will try to make it up to you.

Interesting to read about those places. Can't say I am familiar with them other then Branson. Sounds pretty neat. Our vacations were either at the beach or up in New England.