My grandfather used to say that nobody owns a mountain; but getting born, and living, and dying in its shadow, we loved Walton’s Mountain and felt it was ours. The Walton family had endured in that part of the Blue Ridge for over 200 years. A short time in the history of a mountain. Still, our roots had grown deep in its earth.
When I was growing up there with my brothers and sisters, I was certain that no one on Earth had quite so good a life. I was fifteen and growing at an alarming rate. Each morning, I woke convinced that I had added another inch to my height while I slept.
I was trying hard to fill my father’s shoes that winter. We were in the middle of the Depression, and the mill, on which our village depended, had closed. My father had found work in a town 50 miles away and he could only be with us on weekends. On Christmas Eve, early in the afternoon, we had already started looking forward to his homecoming. (Prologue from The Homecoming)
FAMILY TIES
And so, one Christmas night in 1972, my mom had my brother and me get ready for bed to join her in watching the premier of the CBS movie based on the popular 1970 book, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story by Earl Hamner, Jr.
It was my first Christmas without my dad, since he was stationed overseas.
On the inside of my closet door hung a chart where I counted down the days until he’d return home in another eight months.
Gathering with my mom and little brother on the couch to watch the movie with hot homemade cocoa and sugar cookies, I saw a similar story with a different take.
My mom told me that the narrator for the opening and closing monologue in the movie was the voice of Earl Hamner, who wrote a book about his family, upon which this movie was based.
Even though I lived in the 1970s suburbs of San Antonio, Texas, this 1930s Virginia story felt like home.
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, a Great Depression Era family wondered whether their father would arrive home on Christmas Eve in the midst of a snow and ice storm.
In 1933 we were in the grip of the Great Depression.
The soapstone mill and quarry upon which our village depended had closed and with it went payrolls, the company operated commissary, the cheerful sounds of a busy industry and a pleasant sense of security.
People struggled to keep their families fed. In my family we relied on our family vegetable garden, my father’s hunting and fishing, fruit and berries that were free for the picking.
For some modest monetary income, my father took a job forty miles away in Waynesboro. He worked there five days a week and returned home on Friday evening.
To get home he had to take a bus to Hickory Creek where Route 6 meets Route 29. From there he would either hitchhike or walk the six miles [to Schuyler].
On Christmas Eve of that year my father was late arriving home. A heavy snow had fallen and there were reports of accidents on Route 29.
My mother was worried and, in the age-old practice, the mother sent the oldest son to look for his father.
That is what happened to me that night, and the events of that night became the inspiration for this book. (A Biography Earl Hamner, Pearson, pp60-61)
HOMECOMING TEXAS TRADITION
Whenever the movie showed on TV in future years, we’d gather around to watch it again, with hot homemade cocoa and sugar cookies, as it brought nostalgia familiar to how I was raised by my parents and my mom’s parents from Pennsylvania.
After the invention of VCRs, I obtained a DVD of The Homecoming, which I had my kids watch with me every Christmas, while telling them all about how I was first introduced with hot cocoa and sugar cookies with my mom and brother…as I served my kids hot cocoa and sugar cookies while watching the movie.
VISITING WALTON’S MOUNTAIN
Moving to Virginia from Texas in 2009 with my kids, we visited Walton’s Mountain, south of Charlottesville, in the summer of 2016.
Easily caught eight miles from our Northern Virginia house is route 29, down which we rode one hundred miles to Hickory Creek, where we turned onto Route 6 for the six mile drive to the town of Schuyler, we drove along a winding country road along the Rockfish River to a place where the road just stops. (A Biography Earl Hamner, Pearson, p xix)
We had arrived at Walton’s Mountain of TV fame.
While there, I purchased A Biography Earl Hamner: From Walton’s Mountain to Tomorrow by James E. Pearson, Jr., upon which I learned a lot of answers to many questions I’ve had about his works, one of which is about this movie that I grew up with.
HOMECOMING VIRGINIA TRADITION
Bringing to Virginia from Texas our Christmas traditions of hot cocoa and sugar cookies while watching The Homecoming, we added the unique to us adventure of chopping down a Christmas tree, like John Boy.
Well, almost like John Boy, who had an entire mountain from which to choose with Grandpa’s help.
Unlike in Texas, we now had a Christmas tree farm in our backyard where my son takes the saw to replicate John Boy’s Christmas task.
This year, six months after visiting Walton’s Mountain, the kids geeked out when they found a tree with an abandoned bird’s nest, reminding them of Mary Ellen in The Homecoming.
That the perfect tree my kids chose for us, this year.
MOVIE TRIVIA
Reaching into his family tree to name his characters for the TV production, Hamner chose Walton from his father’s side of the family.
To cut production costs, scenes were shot in the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming instead of traveling 3000 miles to the Blue Ridge, where it rarely snows.
In real life, there were eight Hamner children, but Lorimor Productions said seven would be cheaper, so Ben became a composite character of two of Earl’s brothers, while the rest of the Walton children each reflected a different Hamner sibling.
Hearing on the radio that ice on the road resulted in a bus accident, Mama sends 15-year-old John Boy to look for his father.
In real life, this account truly happened, except Earl Hamner was only 10 years old.
HONORING FAMILY AND FRIENDS
The story of John Boy wanting to become a writer reflected the true ambition of Earl Hamner, a first-generation college student that unfolds in the tv series.
Knowing that that they were too poor for him to attend college, John Boy dreamed of becoming a writer, while secretly writing a journal of his experieces.
In honor of his father, who had not finished high school, Earl Hamner wrote a surprise ending to the movie…which changed the family’s life.
Rounding out the Walton storyline are the endearing personas brought to life on the screen, which Kami Cotler (actress for the youngest of the Walton children, Elizabeth) described:
Earl Hamner was able to look at all the different characters and personalities he grew up with and find a way to prize them with their flaws. (A Biography Earl Hamner, Pearson, p88)
Introduced in this movie are true-to-life stories of the Walton neighbors: Charley Snead (the Christmas Robin Hood bandit), the elderly Baldwin sisters (who unwittingly make bootleg whiskey, calling it Papa’s Recipe), and more.
While writing about family experiences, Hamner focused on honoring his loved ones.
You know, Thomas Wolfe “couldn’t go home again” because of the things he’d written, but I can go home, and do, because I’ve written with affection about our life together. (Margaret Fife Tanguay’s interview with Earl Hamner recorded in A Biography Earl Hamner, Pearson, p87)
SUCCESSFUL MOVIE LED TO THE WALTONS TV SERIES
Shocked by the ratings for this Christmas movie, CBS hired Earl Hamner to create a tv show spin-off, which lasted for nine successful seasons with 13 Emmies.
Every night after an airing of The Waltons on Thursday nights, Hamner called his mother to ask how she liked the show.
For 148 episodes, from 1974 to 1981, she served as technical advisor for The Waltons.
EPILOGUE 2021
Discovering The Waltons on tv in 2021, I sat and watched while hand stitching my numerous quilts, since I hadn’t seen any of the shows since they first aired.
After each show I researched from Earl Hamner’s blog, assuming the writers were stretching the imagination on some story lines.
Yet time and again I learned that many of those stories were built around true incidents in his family’s life: such as Mary Ellen selling John Boy’s typewriter, Jim Bob’s discovery of a peacock that he raised as a pet and named Rover, a traveling circus, polio, a circuit traveling mountain nurse, and more.
