Miles and miles of hills covered with trees. The Ozarks don't present many good choices to make an emergency landing, and thankfully I didn't need to try. We were flying from Tulsa, Okla., to Little Rock, Ark., and later to Branson, Mo. With the eye of a used-to-be farmer, I enjoy looking at what passes beneath my airplane.

The hills below were mostly covered in trees which look like really poor cattle pasture though the few cleared areas showed good grass.

Rarely did I see any flat land where one could grow crops such as wheat, corn or soy beans. Anything to be fed to livestock had to be imported. Straight roads weren't a possibility either.

We were obviously in chicken country with chicken houses by the hundreds stretching to each horizon. We Nebraskans live in hog country and from the air the houses look the same with the exception that hog facilities have lagoons for sewage.

Chickens and turkeys are evidently plumbed differently from pigs so don't need the offensive smelly ponds.  Flying at several thousand feet, smelling the countryside is rarely possible anyway.

We had never been to Branson before, so landed at the airport across the river and caught a taxi into town.  Walking wasn't a great plan, though. Things are spaced out American-style so one needs a car to get around. Next morning Avis was happy to solve that problem.

The three-day two-night vacation trip didn't turn out exactly as advertised because we also had to endure a three-hour pitch to buy into a time share real estate venture.

We didn't take the bait mainly because pushing the pencil showed that the cost to vacation in your timeshare promised to be exorbitant. One can rent a really nice hotel for less cost and have the option to vacation anywhere instead of being tied down to just one place.

Ann, being a retail sales pro, enjoyed the pitch, especially when one presenter carefully tore all the paper, a filled out contract and his notes, to shreds to symbolize the finality of the deal turned down.

We did catch two shows, the Andy Williams Christmas special and Manheim Steamroller.

Actually both shows were within easy walking distance from our selected hotel so parking and traffic wasn't a problem. And, speaking of traffic, Branson is a town of only about 6,500 population (I think they don't count the visitors) but traffic is generally bumper to bumper and moving really slow.

I think that is by design to get people to stop in the many stores lining the single street. I could also comment about gray-haired drivers but then I are one too!

Andy Williams is getting a little long in tooth, best guess around 86, but we thought he still put on a great show; not too different from what we used to watch 40 years ago when our little and we watched a black and white TV.

It is a little different from today's music in that the words being sung are understandable and it is real music, not a wicked nit wit drum beat. Anyway we enjoyed both spectacular shows.

Obviously Branson is carefully crafted as a tourist town. They do it well. For two days we looked for a book store but evidently older couples don't read much when they go to play -- no large book store to be found. Shopping is big, lots of restaurants to choose from although many are set up to quickly handle bus loads of people at a time and suffer from lack of ambiance. It is still a fun destination to visit and then, too, I liked the wonderful new Bass Pro emporium on their new waterfront.

I'm more of a functional kind of guy, and can appreciate a town like McCook, crafted to support the surrounding farming industry.  I'm not especially big on tourist destinations, specifically ones that have a 10 percent sales tax on everything.

McCook has a long way to go to ratchet up our own sales tax to 10 percent but I'd still urge each of you to decrease our own taxes by voting NO on the 1 cent continuation and YES on the 1/2-cent investment in our future next Tuesday.