Party Time!

                                     
          As you may already know, in September we will celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the premiere of "The Waltons." When I was a boy growing up in the backwoods of Virginia during The Great Depression I could never have dreamed that　those days, those times, that little village and the events we experienced as a family, would become material for stories to be broadcast, over something we had never heard of called television, all over the world.

　　Not long ago I looked through some of the early reviews of the series when it first went on the air over CBS. I thought it might be interesting to see how we were first perceived 40 years ago.

　　In The New York Times, a writer named Anne Roiphe wrote the following:

　　"A bobwhite cry breaks the quiet of night among the firs and pines of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia "Goodnight Ma." "Goodnight John-Boy" "Goodnight Pa" and the lights of the Walton house on Walton’s Mountain somewhere in the early nineteen-thirties dim, and a million viewers turn away from their television sets, eyes wet, souls heavy with false memory and hopeless longing. C.B.S has filled another Thursday night with nostalgia, bathos, soap opera, formula plot, tear-jerking junk, and I and all those other viewers share a moment of tender shame at having been so painfully touched by such obvious commercial exploitation."

　   Commercial exploitation! Bathos! Tear-jerking junk! At this point I was so offended I was ready to cancel my subscription to The New York Times and write a scathing note to the lady. And then I read on:
      "Since every Thursday night I am reduced to ridiculous tears, I had to ask these questions and explore the program’s skill at piercing touch hides, revealing sentimental ooze that can no more be than controlled than the shift of dreams that sill wake us screaming every now and then."

　　Sentimental ooze! Come on, Miz Roiphe? 

      You keep on this away I am liable to forget that I am a　Virginia gentleman　and say something I might regret!

　　A few lines later she continues, "The Waltons" may be romantic nonsense, may bear only superficial and misleading resemblance to real life, but it is very good magic. It is a good, workable dance to scare away the evil spirits of loneliness, isolations, divorce, alcoholism, troubled children, abandoned elders, - the real companions of American family life, the real demons of the living room."

　          Romantic nonsense, Miz Roiphe?

       There was nothing the least romantic about the Great Depression of the 20’s and 30’s and we never portrayed it that way. It was a time when we were tested as a people, and we came through with courage, persistence, and faith in our country and our leaders. Poverty was just one of our challenges. It was a time when prejudice still stained many areas of the country, some racial and some religious, and we examined those issues too. The threat of Nazi Germany was becoming clear to many of us and one of our finest episodes dealt with that sport so beloved to the Nazis’ - book burning.

      But more than that, we told stories about two people who loved each other and were dedicated to raising a family. We told stories that were dedicated to the strength of the American people that brought us back from the brink of ruin.

　         Romantic nonsense! Nonsense!

　   To make matters worse the writer illustrated her piece with photographs by Walker Evans showing emaciated children, haggard women, defeated men, people in rags, filthy shacks, which prompted my sister Marion Hawks (Mary Ellen Walton) to write an outraged letter to The Times" pointing out that the photographs only added to the inaccurate portrayal of our family. I think she was even a little threatening, but you know Mary Ellen.

       After The New York Times piece it was a relief to find a review that I could relate to. It was written by critic Val Adams and his review goes as follows:

       "Circumstances surrounding the Waltons provide one of the more interesting situations of this fall’s television series. It is different from any other show on the air which does not necessarily make it good. "The Waltons" has no excitement and no glamour. It is a story about simple people – a large family of three generations living at the foot of The Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia during the Depression of the 1930."

       A little more favorable, but still it fell in the category of many other reviews which asked "Who will want to watch a series about poor people eating possum, swilling moonshine, and scratching out a living in the backwoods of Virginia during The Great Depression?"

      The answer? Huge number of viewers. You – the audience. You found the series, liked it enough to come back the following week, liked it enough to tell your friends, liked it enough to write letters of support to CBS, and by the end of the season the series had risen to the Number One position in the ratings.

      We went on the air in September. Most of the TV critics predicted a quick cancellation. Who, they continued to ask would watch a sprawling poverty-stricken backwoods family, swilling moonshine, feuding, and fighting, marrying each other and singing old Baptist hymns? Who would watch?

                  THE PEOPLE WATCHED!

      And by December we were the Number One show in the ratings and we stayed there for several years.

      Beginning in 1972 the series was seen on Thursday nights on CBS by an average of fifty million viewers in the United States. It was also seen in Canada and Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Fiji and in Ecuador, to mention only a few of the countries where it became popular.

       The series was awarded six Emmy awards, six Christopher Awards, The Golden Globe Award from the Foreign Press Association, The People’s Choice Award, and the highest award given in broadcast journalism: The coveted Peabody Award from the University of Georgia. The series received commendations from the Council of Christians and Jews, The Society of Southern Baptists, The Religious Public Relations Council of the United Methodist Church, and the Church o0f Latter-Day Saints. One Sunday we went beyond my wildest expectations. In a magazine called "Twin Circle," which is the voice of the National Catholic Press, a picture of the cast of The Waltons was given equal space with a picture of the Pope. At that point I began to worry that we had gone too far

        For each of us who were involved in the series it has changed our lives. The series became the building block for a brand new production company called Lorimar which went on to produce such memorable series as Dallas, The Blue Knight, and Eight is Enough and another of my long running series, Falcon Crest. For the actors, writers, directors and crew it meant more than ten years of steady employment, dependable income in an industry where such good fortune comes to few people. And even though the series caused some of the actors to be type cast, known only for their Walton roles, it did opoen doors, bring them to prominence in the industry and made their names and faces known wherever in the world there was a television set.

        The show also provided a special kind of relationship to those of us involved. Because of kind of stories we told and because we were all portraying members of a family, we came together as "family" – a relationship that continues right down to today. We attend each other’s wedding, anniversaries, birthdays, funerals, christenings, bar mitzvahs. And so it was that we mourned as a family when we had to say goodbye to such special members of the cast, such beloved actors as Ellen Corby and Will Geer.

　   None of us had thought ahead to the effect the show would have on my family. Because the series was based on the character and structure of my own family it was important that I be true to the way my family members they were portrayed. This required my being in my office near the set all during the day attending casting sessions, network meetings, screenings, story meeting, and then at night writing or rewriting scripts to insure that they gave a honest representation of my family members. This became a burden on my own family when I realized that I was devoting more attention to a television family than my own and that I had not been home for dinner in months. It was a sober and shocking revelation. Believe me I was home for dinner from then on.

         It was a bit of a family affair. Both my daughter, Caroline and my son, Scott were extras in "The Homecoming." And then my son, Scott, a writer, came aboard as a regular contributor to the series. His script, "The Reunion," became the last scheduled episode when we finished our first run.

         To the audience The Waltons brought an hour of television each week that supplied a very personal and intimate experience to a vast number of people here at home and in every country of the world. Even today, forty years after the original first run, the series is being shown on three different cable channels, Hallmark, INSP, and GMA. I receive mountains of mail, sadly more than I can ever answer, and most of the letters say either "Your stories remind me of my own life." Or "This is how I wish my own life had been."

        Change also came to my own family back in Virginia. Because the character were based on my mother and father, my brothers and sisters, they became known by their television names - my brother Cliff as Jason, my Sister Audrey as Erin, Brother Jim became Jim-Bob and so on.

        And my hometown became a tourist destination! Fans from other countries and many other states came looking for the locations we had mentioned on the show such as Rockfish, The Dew Drop Inn, Drusilla’s Pond, the Baldwin residence and The Baptist Church and The Walton Museum.

       The Hamner home is today listed on the Register of Historic Homes in Virginia and is owned by a local family. The house was a "company house" built in the 20’s and needed repair. Pam Rutherford, the present owner, renovated it and refurnished it and today there is a tour of it for a modest fee.

       One of my favorite memories came one day after the series has become a hit. I often phoned my mother on Thursday nights right after the show to see how she felt about what she had seen, and her responses were always favorable. And then one day when I called, she spoke with me for a moment and then said, "I can’t talk long. There’s this nice young couple here. They’ve come all the way from Ireland and they just love the show!"

        There’s even a Walton Mountain B and B directly in front of the old home place, an excellent home away from home if you are staying overnight in Schuyler. It is attractive and comfortably furnished, the food is great and an extensive collection of Walton memorabilia is available (including autographed copies of "Good Night John Boy"

　   There are two celebrations of the 40th Anniversary coming up in September. On Friday, September 28th there will be the traditional reunion of the Walton International Fan Club, hosted by President Carolyn Grinnell. As usual many cast members will be in attendance giving fan and actors an opportunity to mingle and Carolyn has promised a surprise or two. The party will be held at:

                    6:oo pm at The Holiday Inn
                       Burbank Media Center,
                    The South Pacific Ballroom
                    150 East Angeleno Avenue
                         Burbank, Ca. 91502

        The dinner is sold out, but occasionally there are cancellations. To see if any spaces do become available call Carolyn at 336-993-2752 or her e-mail at
thewaltonsinternationalfanclub@mail.com

         The following evening, Saturday September 29th there will be another celebration of our 40th Anniversary. Celebrating Family and Education, the proceeds will go to Kami Colter’s Environmental Charter School. Hosted by William Keck, Senior Editor at "TV Guide," the event will be held at The Wilshire Eubell Theater beginning at 6 o’clock.

     For ticket or further information visit the event’s website
                      www.waltons40th.com      　

      So come and join us at either or both of these celebrations. Some of you have already made arrangement to be with us. People are have already made plans to travel from Australia, Canada, Germany and England as well as many of our own states. Many cast members will appear at both parties. I will attend both of these events and look forward to seeing you.
　
Warm Walton Wishes
Earl Hamner

A BACKWARD LOOK

My roots in the Virginia earth are deep. My mother’s people came here from the walled city of Lucca in the Tuscany region of Italy. They came as indentured servants to Thomas Jefferson who intended to start a wine industry in Virginia. They brought cuttings from their vines but the grapes did not adapt to the Virginia soil, and withered away.

Not so the Gianinni clan. On land granted to them by Mr. Jefferson they became farmers in the shadow of Monticello Mountain. They prospered in Albemarle County and intermarried with a group of footwashing Baptists.

At the same time my father’s people had emigrated from Wales, leaving their village of Hanmer near the northern border of Wales and England. They had acquired land along the James River and were raising tobacco. They tended to be tall and thin, a sentimental crew, who loved their families, and their wine, and who had to be goaded by their wives to attend church, but once there they could out sing the clearest and loudest voice in the choir.

Somehow descendants of these two clans, in the Great American Melting Pot tradition, found each other, married, and their descendants, the families of my mother and my father, early in the new century moved to a small village in Nelson County to work in the soapstone quarries and mill. When my Grandfather Hamner developed polio, and was no longer able to take care of his family, my own father, at twelve years of age quit school, and took a job toting water to workers in the soapstone quarries at Schuyler. My mother graduated from high school but, as she used to claim, she went through high school eight more times while coaching each of her children through to graduation.

Of their eight children seven of them were normal, but one was strange. That was me.

I was an odd looking boy, leaping to six feet tall when I was fourteen, all long, skinny wrists, unruly red hair, shoulders slumped in an attempt to lean closer to my companions.


Earl and friends at Schuyler High School. 1939.

We were in the midst of the Great Depression of the Twenties and Thirties. Like our neighbors we were self-sufficient but cash money was almost non-existent. And I had a secret, strange and impossible dream.

Years later, when I was writing the screenplay for my television movie “The Homecoming” I tried to put into words some of those alien, confused, and mysterious yearnings.

In the play, Olivia, John-Boy’s mother has just discovered a tablet the boy has hidden under his mattress. She demands to know what is in it. He replies:
“You know what’s in this tablet, Mama? All my secret thoughts- how I feel, and what I think about. Things I never told anybody ‘till now. What it’s like late at night to hear a whippoorwill call and its mate call back, the rumble of the midnight train crossen the trestle at Rockfish, watchen water go by in the creek and knowen that some day it’ll reach the ocean and wonderen if I’ll ever see the ocean. Sometimes I hike over to Route 29 and watch the people in their cars and wagons go by and I wonder what their lives are like. Things stay in my mind, Mama. I can’t forget anything. It all gets bottled up and sometimes I feel like a crazy man. Can’t sleep or rest till I rush off up here and write it in that tablet.

“I do vow,” replied Olivia.

“If things had been different, Mama, I think I could have done somethen with my life. What I would have liked, Mama, was to have tried . . .to be .. a writer!
“If that’s what you want, couldn’t you still try? “ Asked Olivia.

“It wouldn’t be right,” he answered. “Not in these times. It takes a college education to be a writer and even if we had the money it wouldn’t be right to risk it all on me. And anyway I can’t disappoint my daddy. He’s got his heart set on me taking up a trade.”

Olivia replied, “He just want you to know how to make a living.”
“I could sure never do that scribblen things down in a tablet.”

But time would prove me wrong. Through the intervention of Laura Horsley, the wife of our company doctor I received a scholarship to the University of Richmond. But that was only half the battle. The scholarship paid for tuition only. There was still food and board, textbooks to be bought, fees of several kinds. Through the generosity of three of my father’s sisters I was taken into their home in Richmond and given food and lodging. Our local Baptist minister gave me a crash course in Latin, one of the requirements the University needed before I could qualify to accept the scholarship. My father ruefully parted with the white shirt he had planned to be buried in, and my mother spent the money she earned from selling eggs and buttermilk to buy me a suit from Sears and Roebuck. She showed a picture of it to me in the catalogue before it arrived – “the fabric is of green herringbone, with vest to match and an extra pair of trousers.” And it cost nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents. Took every cent of my mother’s buttermilk money!

I entered the University of Richmond in the autumn of 1940. I was unsure of myself, in an alien world, among other boys who were obviously more sophisticated in their manner and dress. The largest city I had visited until now was Charlottesville, usually on a Saturday morning when country people clogged Main Street in their horse and buggies. I had never ridden a streetcar, driven a car, or talked on a telephone.

But I was on time for my first class, and the strangeness gradually went away. The tall boy with the red hair wearing the green herringbone suit was on his way! A writer was in the making!

That was the autumn of 1940. And just recently, decades later, I received the following stunning announcement.”

LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA ANNOUNCEMENT

Earl Hamner to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award

Nelson County native Earl Hamner, writer of novels, television shows, and movies and the force behind the semiautobiographical television series The Waltons, will receive the 2011 Literary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia at the 14th Annual Literary Awards Celebration on October 15, 2011.

Hamner grew up in Schuyler, Virginia, with seven brothers and sisters. From an early age he exhibited a love of words and writing. When he was six his poem, “My Dog” was published on the Children’s Page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. His potential was recognized and he received encouragement from his teachers and members of the tight-knit community.

Hamner received a scholarship to the University of Richmond, but midway through his sophomore year Hamner was drafted. He spent time learning to drive tanks and diffuse mines, but his ability to type landed him in the Quartermaster Corps. While in the U.S. Army Hamner began to submit stories for publication.

After his discharge in March 1946 he returned to Richmond and briefly worked for local radio station WMBG. In the fall of 1946 Hamner enrolled in the school of broadcasting at the University of Cincinnati and graduated in 1948.

Shortly after graduation Hamner went to New York City and found work as a radio writer for NBC. His first book, Fifty Roads to Town, was published by Random House in 1953 and in 1961 his novel Spencer’s Mountain was published by Dial Press.

He began writing scripts for episodes of the Twilight Zone and CBS Playhouse. The film rights to Spencer’s Mountain were purchased by Warner Bros. and Hamner was on his way as a success in Hollywood. In 1970 The Homecoming was published by Random House and became a CBS special starring Patricia Neal and later was the basis of the long-running and hugely popular television series The Waltons. Hamner garnered additional fame as a writer for Falcon Crest, a prime time soap opera, which aired on CBS from 1981 to 1990.

Hamner has received numerous honors including:

TV-Radio Writers Award (1967)

George Foster Peabody Award for Distinguished Journalism (1972)

Virginian of the Year Award from Virginia Press Association (1973)

An Emmy for Best Drama Series for The Waltons (1974)

National Association of Television Executives Man of the Year Award (1974)

Virginian Association of Broadcasters Award (1975)

Frederic Ziv Award from the University of Cincinnati for Outstanding Achievement in Telecommunication

P.S. I know I'm shameless, but I couldn't resist adding that my new book ODETTE, A GOOSE OF TOULOUSE, has just been published and is selling briskly on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.

And I just received word that a new short story, 'The Woods Colt," has been selected for inclusion in an anthology of mystery and fantasy to be published in the fall.
Warm Virginia greetings by way of California!

Earl

A THANKSGIVING MEMORY

By

Earl Hamner

In the beginning my hometown of Schuyler, Virginia, was a company town, the home of The Alberene Stone Corporation that quarried and milled soapstone. We lived in company built houses and bought our goods from the company store. Schuyler had been a prosperous little village but when the Great Depression came the mill closed. My father found work in Waynesboro and could only be home with his family on holidays and weekends.

I remember a Thanksgiving from those years. Mornings were strangely quiet because the whistle calling the workers to the mill was still in observance of the holiday. On this Thanksgiving morning the sound that woke us was that of my father, home for the holiday, building a fire in the wood-burning cook stove. He drenched the wood with kerosene and when he lit it with a match the flames mad a whooshing sound as they roared up the chimney.

Shortly, he called down the hall to my mother, “Sweetheart,” which was his name for her till his dying day. My mother answered, “I’m on my way,” and joined him in the kitchen. They spoke quietly to each other, sharing private moments. Soon the sound of coffee percolating and the aroma of sizzling bacon would drift up to our rooms.

We descended upon them, eight red headed brothers and sisters, crowding around the stove to warm up. Breakfast was served at a long wooden trestle table my father had built and while we ate he would admire his brood and call us his “thoroughbreds.”

Each of us was assigned chores. The girls helped our mother wash and dry the dishes, make the beds, washing and iron the clothes. The boys tended to outside chores. There was the cow to be milked. She was a brown and white Guernsey. My father had bought her from Miss Dolly Hall for forty dollars. Miss Dolly had named her Chance because she gave a “good chance” of butter. The chickens had been up before us and were waiting for the grain we tossed to them on the frosty ground. Feeding the pigs was a melancholy chore. They had intelligent eyes and looked up trustingly as we poured slops into their tough. I knew, and it pained me, but they were unaware that they did not have long to live.

Our Father had brought home the turkey the day before. He had shot it over on Wales Mountain and my mother was already preparing it for the oven when company began to arrive.

We were part of two great clans. My mother’s family, the Gianinnis, was of Italian descent and came from the town of Lucca in the Tuscany region. The earliest to arrive in our country was Antionio and his wife. Antonio had been brought over by Phillip Mazzi, a neighbor of Thomas Jefferson’s and eventually he became one of Jefferson’s gardeners. They were tall blond people for the most part, God fearing Baptist with strong family bonds.

In addition to my mother’s family, most of whom lived close by, my father’s people, aunts and uncles and cousins would arrive from Richmond and Petersburg. We were in awe of the city cousins. They used slang words that were new to us such as “guy” “jerk” or “kiddo” which made us feel naïve and countrified. We children would travel in packs, playing the old games of Hide and Go Seek, Olly, Olly Oxen Free, and in the nearby school yard we would shoot baskets or play baseball, or find a plowed field where we searched for arrowheads and fools gold.

In the house the conversation grew in pitch and volume as everybody talked at once. Hardly anybody heard what the other was saying but everybody knew what was going on. We are a family of storytellers. No event is without significance to us, and all that happens becomes a part of our history. We keep and share every detail. Our reunions become a verbal history of birth and death, of failures and accomplishments, of hardships and good times and just celebrating the joy of being together again. Being an aspiring writer I shamelessly kept notes!

At one point everybody piled into cars and went to the graveyard where we paid respects to our dead. The more recent graves bore markers with names and dates carved or engraved on them. In the older section we came to earlier graves marked simply by a single primitive stone with no lettering to tell the name of who rested beneath it.

On the way home one of the uncles made a detour down to Esmont to visit the Staples Sisters who made bootleg apple brandy. He brought a bottle back with him and it was surreptitiously passed from one of the uncles to the other. If she caught sight of it one of the wives would disapprove but her scolding did not last long for someone moved to the piano and soon all the grown ups had their arms around each other, swaying back and forth while singing “In the Garden” or “Down by The Old Mill Stream” or “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

In the late afternoon dinner was served. If my Grandmother Gianinni was there she would say a proper grace, but if she was not my father said, “Look out, Lord, we’re gonna eat!” A grace that Miss Ora looked upon with great disfavor. What a feast ensued! The turkey, golden brown, had a minimum of birdshot left in it! The applesauce was made from fruit we had gathered from an abandoned orchard down on Mt. Alto. The butter beans, the corn, and the peas came come from our summer garden and canned by my mother. The potatoes flavored with Chance’s rich butter were not mashed but creamed. Finally desserts. The sweet potato pie, still warm from the oven, was encased in a crust so crumbly and sweet that it alone could have been a dessert. And then came the pumpkin pie, steaming aromas of brown sugar and nutmeg, and all laced with generous portions of whipped cream. All of it was accompanied by milk for the children, coffee for the adults and if requested iced tea as sweet as sugar cane.

At sundown out-of-town guests drifted off to whatever relative had taken them in for the night. Others, sated with food and companionship, gathered around the radio for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Thanksgiving message. Sleepy, exhausted children were carted off to bed. It was a family custom that we would call goodnight to each other from room to room and finally, we would drift off to sleep secure in the knowledge that we were home, safe and loved.

They were challenging times, those Depression Years. They seem so distant now. We thought we were poor, but in them we were richer than we knew.

The house where we lived fell into disrepair for a while, but happily it was bought by someone I respect and admire and am most grateful to, a fellow Virginian, Pam Rutherford. She has restored the house from top to bottom. I was afraid that when I visited there after the restoration I might be disappointed but Pam has paid such incredible attention to detail that when I was there a couple of weeks ago I walked thought the door and I was home again.

In memory I go there each night. I stand beside the gate, look up to the house, and once again I hear the voices of my mother and father, my brothers and sisters as we call goodnight to each other before we sleep.

The end.

WELCOME TO SCHUYLER

We Virginians are not known for modesty in describing the virtues of our commonwealth. We are tempted to use such descriptive phrases as most beautiful, most legendary, most historic, most hospitable, mother of the most presidents but most of the time good manners finally overtake us and we simply say, “Why don’t y’all come to see us?”

Many of you have asked for information about how to get to my hometown and what to do when you get here. With summer upon us when you will probably be traveling I hope the following will be helpful:

Schuyler is located roughly in the very center of Virginia in Nelson County, an area rich in history and unspoiled beauty. Nelson is nestled between the Blue Ridge Mountains to the West and the James River to the east. A large portion of the western section of the county is the George Washington National Forest. To visit the area is to step back in time. A perfect destination for you to explore our way of life, our good food, our beautiful rivers and streams, and even our moonshine or “recipe” as we call it around here.

If you are traveling by air the closest airport is in Charlottesville. Wonderful things to see and do in Charlottesville, but we’re headed for Schuyler. You need to go south on Route 29. The road winds through scenic rural Virginia and rises almost imperceptibly because you are headed for mountain country. Neat farms, antique shops, gas stations, apple orchards, vegetable stands color the way. Frequently Virginia Historical Markers will point out the birthplace of our famous sons or daughters or the site of a long ago Civil War battle.

You have to look for it or you might miss it. Route 6. Turn left here. Slow down and take the time to decelerate, to leave the frantic pace of cities behind you and take the time to savor all the beauty and serenity that is ahead.

It would be easy to describe these places in terms of dates and statistics, but I want you to enjoy your visit to my home in a personal way. I want you to experience it as I have experienced it and have written about it in my books and on television.

This road holds family memories. My father came along here on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1933.

When the depression came the mill closed. Clay Spencer found work as a mechanist at the Du Pont Company in Waynesboro that was forty miles away. During the week he lived in a boarding house. He had no car so every Friday night he would take the Trailways bus that let him off at Hickory Creek. From here he would walk or hitchhike if a car happened past, the remaining six miles. From “The Homecoming.”

On this road Brother Jim once struck a deer on a sharp curve one foggy night and barely survived the encounter. Brother Cliff and I caught minnows under the Faber Bridge. We pass the old apple storage shed, then the Volunteer Fire Department building, past Faber, and the lovely Shiloh Baptist Church on the right hand side of the road. Soon we are in wild country of hardwood trees under-grown with dogwood and red bud – a sight in the spring that will lift your heart.

There may be a sign there indicating Schuyler or Irish Road. Keep going! You’re getting close to Route 800, and you will turn right and climb gently two miles up toward the village of Schuyler.

The first sign of human habitation you come upon is on the left -a row of neat frame houses with porches decorated with rocking chairs or even an old washing machine. Now the road bends sharply to the right and downhill. Suddenly you arrive at an open confusing area. A small white clapboard building to the left is the remains of the old Schuyler Post Office.

To get an overall picture of Schuyler of today you need to know that it is the relic of a company town, a mill town. It was built on soapstone. As it name implies soapstone is very soft. It’s most important ingredient is talc, the softest mineral. Because it is so easily quarried and shaped it was very useful as a building material. At a point it was discovered that the largest vein of soapstone in the world existed under what is now Schuyler and its surrounding area.

Commercial harvesting of soapstone had been underway at a nearby village called Alberene, but when it was determined that Schuyler sat on the motherlode of the stone the company moved its operation to Schuyler.

While its wages were low, overall the company was benign. It established a hospital with a resident doctor, a commissary where employees could “charge:” against their earnings, occasional dental service. Whole neighborhoods came into being, - rows of two story clapboard homes in areas called Goldmine, named after the site of an abandoned gold mine. Riverside Drive, named after the row of homes bordering a stretch of the Rockfish River and Stumptown, named after the number of stumps that had been left when the lumber for the buildings had been harvested.

The company and the village prospered until 1934 when the mill closed its doors throwing 450 employees out of work. One of them was my father.

This area was once the center of a thriving community. Next to the post office are the remains of what was once a company owned and operated restaurant and pool hall, facing you is a building that housed many of the company offices as well as a commissary, butcher shop and drug store. There is not a soul in sight. The village is deserted.

Not quite. Sometimes if you are fortunate you will find an employee of the present owner of the mill who will give you a tour. My Grandfather Colonel Anderson Gianinni worked in the carpenter shop. He built crates in which to ship the great slabs of soapstone. My father worked as a mechanist at a shop about an eighth of a mile to the left where he spent much of his time repairing the machines that cut and polished the stone.

Past the soapstone plant the road climbs upward and there at the top of the hill, pause for a moment, then cautiously (it’s on a blind curve) cross the road and park in front of the Walton Mountain B and B.

This is the ideal place to begin your exploration of Schuyler because it is the center of a triangle formed by the Hamner house, the Schuyler School and the Baptist Church. – The center of the three most influential forces on my life and my writing.

Stop and say hello to Scott Pound, one of the owners of the B and B. He is a genial host and will show you some of the rooms, which are handsomely and comfortably furnished with good Virginia antiques. With very little urging he will even take you by his show room – a store - where he has all sorts of Walton memorabilia, collectables, gifts, antique reproductions and primitive country décor as well as copies of my books, for sale – the only place in Schuyler where autographed copies of my books are available.

The B and B was known as Walker’s Store back in thee old days because it was operated by Willie Walker, the son of Schuyler Walker head of one of the earliest families to settle in the area who gave it the name of Schuyler. For many years the store was vacant and seeking escape from that multitude of brothers and sisters as a teenager I used to hideout there for the solitude I needed in which to write.

We do a lot of porch sitting in that part of the country. Have a seat on the deck of the B&B and look to your right: From here you have a good view of the Baptist Church. Back in those depression years, on any Sunday morning, you might have seen my brothers and sisters and me on our way to church.

With our hair combed and our faces scrubbed within an inch of our lives and all dressed up in our Sunday best, we would head for Sunday school. My sister Marion usually led the way. She was the feisty yon and often got in fights, usually when she was standing up for one of her younger brothers. From “A Joyful Noise”

Back in those primitive days I was frightened by blood and thunder, fire and brimstone preachers. But today I believe in the hands of our present minister, Pastor Tom Fowler, a more loving, more forgiving God may reside there. Pastor Tom is a friend and I know he would want to invite you to stop by and attend services. You should go inside just to see the restored Sanctuary, which is now as it was when I was a child. Large beams cross the worship space, tied together intricately, and ancient colored glass windows adorn the sanctuary, giving it a feeling of more expensive stained glass. It is simple, but eloquent, a plain country church, where my family went for worship every Sunday. The basement served as a temporary school for a period long ago, when the Schuyler Elementary School building burned to the ground. I was in the Second Grade that year and my homeroom was in the basement of the present building. My mother is remembered at the church by a simple soapstone plaque embedded in the outdoor pavilion.

On past the church there is an overgrown path that leads to where Drusilla’s Pond was located. After work my father used to take the whole gang fishing.

Each child had his own fishing pole, and you never heard such squealing and screaming as they started pulling in silver perch and sun perch and once in a while a bass or catfish. When the sun goes down something sinister comes over Druysilla’s Pond. Old skillpot turtles rise to the surface and like sentinels gaze out across the darkening water. Bullfrogs lurk along the shore and start their ghostly croaking. A while crane sweeps down and comes to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree. Long ago two of our cousins were drowned in the pond and if you dare to stay till darkness falls you might see poor Arlene and Eddie through the thick stand of pines that grow on the water’s edge. From “You Can’t Get There From Here.”.

Another landmark is just over the hill past the church. It is the site of Powerhouse Number One and the dam over the Rockfish is still a sight to see. Under the bridge used to be a dependable and productive fishing site. My father once caught a thirty-pound carp there. None of us ever actually saw the fish because he said he gave it away and we believed him. We had no reason to doubt him, but the story of the struggle to land the behemoth grew better, longer and more dramatic each time he told it.

Home. To me in spite of the passing time and the fact that no Hamner still lives it will always be all that the word implies. It is the place that I come from. It was where during a desperate time in our national history my mother and father raised eight children and gave us the love and security to face an uncertain future.

Take a moment and look up through the wisteria arch to the while clapboard house with the porch that extends across the font. This is what is now known as the Hamner House, and indeed we did live there for most of our lives. Today it is owned by a caring and civic-minded Virginian, Pamela Rutherford. The house was built in 1925 as a residence for employees of the Alberene Stone Company. When the company closed because of the depression my father bought the house for five hundred dollars. By 1970’s it had fallen into disrepair and my brother, Jim, the last family member to live there, had moved out. Even the underpinning of soapstone was collapsing. To her everlasting credit, Mrs. Rutherford bought the house and is doing an incredible job of restoring it and has even managed to have it listed as one of Virginia’s historic home. The restoration of the house is a work in progress with much interior painting and furnishing still to come. If you had looked through the kitchen window when I was still a boy you would have seen the family at breakfast.

They were seated at a table nine feet long. Clay had built it himself and it was flanked on either side by wooden benches. There were eight children in all. Each one had red hair, but on each head the shade of red was different. Each of them was small of bone and lean. Some of them were freckled and some were not and some had the brown eyes of their father and some had their mother’s green eyes, but on each of them there was some stamp of grace of build and movement, and it was this that Clay voiced when he said, as he often did, “Every one of my babies is a thoroughbred. You ever in y our life see any thing so pretty?”

Olivia looked up from the frying pan where she was frying eggs to each individual’s liking, and said, “If I had my way my children would never grow up. I’d just keep them little for the rest of their lives.” From “Spencer’s Mountain.”

When I was growing up there each of us had chores to do. It has been torn down now but back in those days there was a barn at the far end of the yard. As the eldest it became my duty to milk the family cow when my father went off to Waynesboro to work.

Clay-Boy sat on a three-legged stool, while he milked the Guernsey cow, Chance his head resting tightly in her flanks. It wasn’t a job he minded. The cow placidly chewed her mash, occasionally giving him a companionable flick of her tail. Once she turned and lowed briefly and examined him with her dark, serious, luminous eyes, thanking him, Clay-Boy supposed, for the extra bucket of mash he had given her since it was Christmas Eve. From “The Homecoming.”

Look up to the house from the front yard and picture a boy seated behind the window to the right. He is tall and thin and red headed. He is working at a desk he has constructed himself and he is writing with a pencil in a Big Five tablet. It is his deepest yearning to be a writer, and toward that end he is keeping a journal, a record of the weather, of observations about people, all those events that make up his day, his deepest feelings which he shares with no one and consequently he hides the tablet under the mattress of his bed.

OLIVIA
What in the world would anybody hide a tablet for?

JOHN-BOY
Mama, I’ve got a right to some kind of privacy around here.

OLIVIA
Is it something you’re ashamed of?

JOHN-BOY
No, ma’am.

OLIVIA
Then why are you hiding it?

JOHN-BOY
Know what’s in this tablet, Mama? All my secret thoughts, how I feel and what I think about. What its like late at night to hear a whippoorwill call and its mate call back, The rumble of the midnight train crossen the trestle at Rockfish, watchen water go by in the creek and knowen that someday it will reach the ocean and wondering if some day I will ever see an ocean and what a wonder that would be. Sometimes I hike over to the highway and watch the busses go by and all the people in them and wonder what they’re like and what they say to each other and where they’re bound for.

OLIVIA
(wonderingly)
I do vow.

JOHN-BOY
If things had been different, sometime I think I might have become a writer.

OLIVIA
Can’t you still, son?

JOHN-BOY
It takes a college education, Mama; I don’t see much chance of that.

From the film of “The Homecoming.”

Across the road, where the Post Office is now, there was a pasture where we kept our cow, Chance. It had once been an orchard and there were a few crab apple trees still alive. I remembember a special morning in spring and I described it in “Spencer’s Mountain.”

Suddenly a flock of goldfinches flew into the orchard, thousands of little golden bundles that might have been flung from the morning sun into the pale green fog-damp orchard. They would cling to the young branches, fill the air with their canary-like warbling long enough to announce the new day and then disperse to their separate chores of eating or singing or courting. Each spring they came to the orchard and some mornings they came in such number that the pale green leaves would be concealed and the trees would become a swaying mass of gold and singing.

I remember going to sleep in that house. You would expect way out there in the country the night would be quiet but not so.

Outside the night was filled with sound. The high mechanical screech of the cicada was a metallic din that gradually fell silent. A turtledove called. His mate answered, far off, and then her voice sounded again and his voice called out, closer now. In the distance, flowing over the pine trees from the swamp, past the pond, came the thousand-voice choir of frogs. Once only came the saddest sound in the world, the single unanswered voice of a whippoorwill, but there was no one to hear it. Everyone in the house was asleep.

In memory I say goodnight to that house. I hear the slap of a screen door closing for the night. Inside the children finish their homework and prepare for bed. After the last light is out they call good night to each other. Three thousand miles and seventy years away I still hear those sweet voices.

On the very last episode of The Waltons when the story has been told there is a shot of the house and as the lights fade to dark, John-Boy as a man reads the following:

I had returned to the mountains once again to find the inspiration I needed to write. Soon I was back in New York City, laboring over yet another book, and because of the renewed courage they brought me; I would never forget all the people I had known there. I hope you’ll remember this house as I do. The mystical blue ridges that stretch beyond it into infinity’ the sound of warm voices drifting out upon the night air, a family waiting, and a light in the window. Goodnight.

As we leave my old home and continue up the road we go past what was once my old school that now houses The Walton Museum. The center room facing the road was traditionally the senior’s room. In the graduating class of 1940 we were Lynette Bradshaw, Verdie Hamilton, Jean Kidd, Elaine Mawyer, Edith Drumheller Ragland, Jane Rainey, Louise Rainey, Christine Shumaker, Estelle Thomas, Elsie Tillman, Dorothy Witt and me, the only boy in the class! Remembering my graduation day I wrote this closing narration for ‘The Graduation” episode of The Waltons.”

JOHN BOY AS A MAN
We could not have known on that day the momentous events that were to follow. But that small school and those teachers had prepared us and that preparation helped sustain us through those turbulent years, through war through depression, the death of kings and presidents and through those lesser day to day experiences which added together make up the fabric of our lives.

To the left of the schoolhouse was the basketball court. In my senior year I had a desperate crush on the teacher, Miss Elsie Mayo, who coached the girl’s basketball team. It was my first love affair and I wrote about it in my book “Generous Women.”


Her blonde hair moved in a constantly changing pattern of beauty as she moved alongside the members of the team calling out encouragement. To my anguish I learned that she was dating the boy’s gym instructor, T. Dan Gusmerotti. He was dark and handsome and I hated him. At the senior dance I finally managed to dance with Miss Elsie. That voluptuous blonde hair touched my cheek. My feet behaved, and carried away with ecstasy, I began to croon!

‘Careless, now that you’ve got me loving you,

You’re careless, careless in everything you do…

She seemed unaware of the depth of my passion and kept looking over my shoulder to T. Dan Gusmerotti. I am sure she had no idea how heartbroken I was when at the end of the school year she married the man!

The long wooden building to the left of the basketball court was the earliest school in the community. Today it has been turned into residential units. A few hundred feet up the road to the left is a small convenience store and filling station that has become a landmark. Back in the early days it was owned by a family named Sneed. It was the inspiration for Ike Godsey’s Country store on “The Waltons.” Ike’s wife, Corabeth was the only person on the mountain who hated it. She used to call it “this cultural backwater!” Do stop by and say hello or buy some gas or an ice cream.

Continuing on past the store for only a hundred or so feet is a road that goes left. Just in sight down this road is the building where I was born. Back then it was a hospital operated by the Alberene Stone Corporation. Today it is a private residence. Treasured friends still live there.

Other houses along this stretch include the Baptist Parsonage, The Morris House where my Aunt Bessie lived with her husband, Sam Morris and their childen, The Hamner House that was once the home of my Grandmother and Grandfather Hamner.

The last house along this road to the left is the Norvell house. My father’s sister, Lily, said to be the most beautiful of the Hamner girls married Ernest Norvel. All of the family has gone except for one daughter who still lives there. Nearby is the family graveyard where my grandparents, Cliff and Susan Henry Hamner, my mother and father, Earl and Doris Hamner and some others dear to me are at rest.

Stay on this road and you are now on your way to Rockfish and I have to make a confession. As I wrote my stories and books I needed a small town nearby to Walton’s Mountain and while I did not invent Rockfish I did enhance it a bit. In truth is one lonely little building – a former post office - with one chair sitting on the porch. But it is worth the trip because you are now on one of the most beautiful stretches of road in Virginia.

Much of the way you will be adjacent to the Rockfish River. Today the river is a placid stream that moves gently along its rocky bed, but 1969 it turned into a monster. Hurricane Camille dropped torrents of rain that causes catastrophic damage to all of Nelson County and especially along this stretch of the river. Homes, barns, livestock. trucks, trailer homes and people were caught in its mighty flood and swept away. In Nelson alone some one hundred and twenty eight people lost their lives.

The road eventually reaches Route 29. If you turn left here you will reach Lovingston, our countyseat. Your first shop should be The Visitor’s Center at 8445 Thomas Nelson Highway. Or you can call ahead for information to 800.282.8223. Or dial up info@nelsoncounty.com. Once at the center a hospitable and knowledgeable group of folks will happily answer your inquiries and recommend some of the many sites of interest in the area. If you have any difficulty in finding the activity you are looking for one or two of them will probably close the office and lead you there.

Often visitors are so taken with the area they want to move there. Pick up a copy of Nelson County Life (it’s free and fun to read) for listings of some of the wonderful homes for sale in the area.

Pride compels me to urge you to ask for directions to The Earl Hamner Theater. At the visitor’s center they will know the schedule of what music or theater is available while you are in the area. Enjoy!

Before leaving Lovingston, be sure to stop by the Lovingston Cafe for lunch, dinner, or a snack. The food is down home and the waitress may address you as “Honey” but like the rest of us, she just wants you to feel at home, as welcome as the flowers in May, and that if you have the time we hope you will stay a while.

Where the River Road meets Route 29 you also have the option of turning right. You are now twenty-six miles from Charlottesville, two hours by car from Richmond and three hours from Washington, D.C. Ahead are picturesque small towns, museums, theaters, parks, hotels, restaurants, country inns, wineries, and shopping venues, are waiting for you.

And as we say to all departing visitors, “Hope you folks enjoyed yourselves as much as we enjoyed having you. Y’all come back soon, you hear?”