Reprint
of an article by Joseph Bell that appeared in The
Radio Times 14 February 1974 just prior
to the first UK show of the series.
During the Christmas of 1971 a TV special called The Homecoming went out on American television. It introduced members of a family called The
Waltons, and since then millions of American viewers have watched that same family on their screens every week. The Waltons are based on the writings of Earl Hamner Jr whose autobiographcal book Spencer's Mountain was turned into a movie, and whose work sparked off the TV Walton family. Hamner Jr is the eldest son of a family of eight; his mother, Doris, is still living, though his father died recently.
The Hamner children, now grown, are, in order of age: Earl Jr, who as well as being a writer is the father of two; he's the prototype for John-Boy; then there's Cliff, a cost estimator and draughtsman (he's Jason in the TV series); Marian, housewife and mother (Mary Ellen); Audrey, an employment councellor and mother of five (Erin); Paul, a shoe-store manager, and Bill a construction foreman (these two sons have been combined in the single TV character of Ben for budgetary and other reasons); Jim, a bank official (Jim Bob) and Nancy, the youngest, who is a teacher (Elizabeth).
This was, and is, a family, says Earl Jr today, whose "members
always knew where we came from and who our people had been for many generations, with the sense of belonging that goes along with that knowledge - and with being a Virginian".
Although most of the Hamner children grew up during the Depression years, there was never any sense of deprivation. "We weren't poverty-stricken", says Earl
Jr. "We simply had an absence of money". Earl Sr was a skilled machinist who was never out of work very long. He was also an expert hunter and always kept game on the family table. When he discovered a hill that was especially rich with game, he scared off fellow hunters in Schuyler by telling them he'd stumbled on a huge snake that had apparently escaped from a visiting circus. As a result Earl had the hill all to himself as long as he wanted it. He was a magician with tools, creating baseball bats for the kids on his lathe while Grandma provided the balls by sewing a covering over a walnut wrapped with layers of string.
Earl Sr never saw The Homecoming, his son's big TV success. Earl Jr was just beginning to write it when the head of the Hamner clan sat up abruptly in bed at two o'clock one morning and said to his wife, "I'm dying" - and he did, from a heart attack. "He died in great style", says Marian. Since then Doris has lived on steadfastly in Schuyler, terribly lonely at first in spite of the family around her. Now the loneliness has eased a bit because of the people who stop almost daily in Schuyler to visit her - people with licence plates from
Luisiana, Iowa and Maine have enquired at the Chamber of Commerce in Charlottesville for directions to "the Walton place".
Recently, among hundreds of letters she receives, Doris read a pathetic little note from a boy in the Midwest who wrote wistfully: "My home life is so different from yours. We don't talk to each other very much. I wish I could have lived in your house". "Maybe",
says Doris, "it comes back to the Golden Rule. How often we told that to our children - and tried to apply it in our dealings with each other and with people outside the family. If we could REALLY "do unto others as we would have them do unto us" maybe we wouldn't need any other rules. At least that's the way it worked in our household".
