Adventures with my Sister

When I was in Dallas recently, my sister (Shirley) came down and we spent several days traveling together. We drove to Oklahoma City to see my brother and his wife. Then we drove over to Ft. Smith, Ark. where she lives. Our plans included going to Branson, Mo. to see some of the shows there. We arrived in Ft. Smith Sunday afternoon and then left for Banson late Monday morning.

Driving with Shirley is an adventure. I think she could probably be a NASCAR driver, along with my daughter. She is from the South (which you definitely have to be in order to be a NASCAR driver), can start and stop on a dime (and sometimes does), gets where she is going in about half the time that I can get there, and before you know it she is parked and out of the car--she has things to get done.

It is about 2 1/2 hours up to Branson from Ft. Smith. As we were getting close to Fayetteville (not sure how to spell that) she was trying to remember how to go around it and get to the highway north. I kept telling her that she needs to have a map of Arkansas in the car and then she could know definitely what exit to take. That didn't seem to appeal to her. We did have an atlas of the states and I tried to tell her several times that we were not on the right road. She is always very optimistic and knew she would find the right road, and eventually did. Can you tell that she is the first born and I'm the middle child?

We didn't do badly on the time it took to get to Branson. Just before we got to our motel, we saw the theater that we were going to go to that night. It was only about 1/2 mile from the Motel. I suggested that maybe we could walk when it was time to go. We had been sitting for a while and it would be good to just walk. We were going to see Shoji Tabuchi (a Japanese violinist) at his theater. It started at 8:00 so we left the motel about 7:00. We wanted to visit the gift shop and then go see the women's bathroom at the Theater. I've been hearing for years about this bathroom. I'll include a picture of it. When we got there Shirley went to get our tickets that we had reserved. She got out the sheet that she had written all our reservation numbers on and then realized that we weren't to see this show until Tuesday afternoon. We were to go to see the Presley Family (not Elvis) instead.

One thing we have in common with each other is a good sense of humor. We also can laugh at ourselves. So off we went, laughing, in a hurry to walk back to the motel to get the car. I tried to forget that I was the one who suggested we walk to the theater. Then we had the task of finding the back way to the Presley Theater. In Branson you don't want to go down main street when you are in a hurry. After much ado (yes, Shirley knew exactly how to get there) with a little searching we got there about 10 minutes before it started. My friend, Sharon, had recommended that we go to this show and it was very good. The music was outstanding.

We did go see Shoji Tuesday afternoon and he was great. He also had a small orchestra and dancers that were wonderful. Tuesday night we went to see Andy Williams. Shirley and I were teenagers when he was popular, oh so many years ago. He is 76 and still has a very strong voice. I had my picture taken with him at his theater as you can see. Alright, it is only a cardboard picture of him. The songs he sang brought back many memories.

Wednesday morning we left for Ft. Smith and then the next day back to Dallas. It was a very fun time with Shirley and I love sharing adventures with her.