A favourite Christmas moment

We have been watching a lot of The Waltons recently. It’s hard to find a movie or tv programme that keeps everyone happy, given the age range of our children, from 6 to 13. The Waltons seems to fit nicely. And it’s so darn wholesome too. Husband and I can sit back and feel smug about the lessons that our children are learning of the values of family life, the common sense morality, the homespun wisdom… Many of the episodes are familiar, so they must have had a big effect on me when I watched them over 30 years ago. I loved The Waltons, as a child. Now I see my own children equally caught up, with 6-yo deciding she wants to be called Elizabeth, and the boys arguing over whether Ben should or shouldn’t have told the family that he had failed to shoot a turkey for Thanksgiving, and had ended up buying it instead.

It’s not all easy watching. In the depression in rural Virginia, the family and their community struggle to make ends meet. The children go to school in bare feet. The programmes don’t shy away from traumatic events. Mary Ellen’s husband was killed at Pearl Harbor in a recent episode we saw. But they are rich stories, and though things don’t always end well, there is good at the core. And there's a great theme tune to boot.

I have to confess that my inner teenager has a bit of a girlie crush on Johnboy. My inner teenager is fickle, because when I watched The Waltons decades ago as a real teenager, it was the dreamy Jason or the impetuous Ben who held my interest. But now it’s Johnboy. It’s the struggling writer thing that I’ve fallen for. There he is, lynchpin of the family, wavering between boyhood and manhood, more parent than older brother to the younger brood, and then each evening, he seeks the solitude of his own room, and writes feverishly, capturing the ordinary and the extraordinary in his stories of everyday life on Walton’s Mountain. Each episode begins with his mature reflection on the events that will unfold. He is in the story, but he is detached from it: a participant but also an observer. Johnboy Walton was a most excellent blogger, before blogging was invented.

Oh alas, Johnboy. How much easier you’d have found it these days. With broadband arriving at Walton’s Mountain, a whole world would have opened up for you. No more mailing off stories to hard-faced publishers, and waiting for disappointment after disappointment as the manuscripts are returned to you with rejection letters. No, you’d definitely be a top blogger, with your winsome tales of your siblings, and your nuggets of insight into the complexities of family life. What would your blog be called, I wonder? Perhaps one of the following: A Modern Mountain, Johnography, Mountain Tips, Bringing Up JimBob, Virginia Scribble, John Boyfoix, More than Just a Walton. Or how about The Johnota Quota? I’m glad you made it in the end, Johnboy, even with no blog to foster your nascent writing skills.

Here is one of my favourite Walton moments. It’s a blooper with an appropriate Christmas theme, which made me laugh decades ago, back in the days when you had to catch bloopers once a year on a Dennis Norden seasonal special, and savour them enough to last a Youtube-less year.