Going to the original source of stories is one of my favorite things to do. Like many of you, The Waltons television show is one of my favorites. If you grew up when I did, you might remember the story on which it was based. The television drama writer first wrote about growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountain of Virginia in a great book called Spencer’s Mountain, written in 1961. I recently reread it.
Spencer’s Mountain was made into a movie in 1963. Like The Waltons, it is about a young man growing up in a mountain community in Virginia during the time surrounding the Great Depression. While The Waltons is ever popular, Spencer’s Mountain is a more realistic depiction of people, families, and morays of the time. It is a tale of a young man who excels in school and desperately wants to see the bigger world he has learned about in his high school education. He and his family live in the house provided by the company where his father works in the soapstone mines and its factory. The story is based on the growing-up years of Earl Hamner, Jr., the author, and creator of The Waltons, Falcon Crest, and writer of many television shorts from The Twilight Zone to Gentle Ben. He is also the voice-over narrator of The Waltons and the one who talks at the end of each show as the family bids “Good night” to all in the house they all inhabit.
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Spencer’s Mountain is about the life of a young man called Clay Boy Spencer. He is named after his father, a hardworking, hard-drinking, and loving father of many children. Clay Spencer is married to a religious woman, Olivia Spencer, who disapproves of his drinking and cursing but loves her husband and children dearly. She is an overprotective mother who is proud of her oldest son and wants what is best for him but dreads that his success will pull him away from the mountain and his family.
The family, like many from the Depression, knows hard times. Clay Spencer has one dream of his own, to build a house on the property that has been in his family since the Revolutionary War. It is what he lives for, but he never seems to be able to do more than start. Caring for his family, working at the factory and in the mines, and helping others in the community takes all his time.
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Clay Spencer has many brothers, and all but one live in close proximity. At the beginning of the book, they go on an annual Thanksgiving hunt. Clay Boy, against his mother’s wishes, sneaks out with them on the hunt and kills a rare white deer. It seems to be a prophecy of things to come. In a highly superstitious culture, it is a foreboding that some say is of good, others bad. It changes Clay Boy’s image and his life.
The book is chocked full of rich characters. Like the movie and the television show, one of the most interesting is Grandfather Spencer/Walton. He is the family’s patriarch and a charming, handsome older man dealing with some early signs of dementia. He is, like his son, a bit of a drinker of the recipe and an old man with an eye for the ladies. He also deeply respects the old ways and is a lover of the heritage revealed in the old graveyard on Spencer’s Mountain.
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The movie setting of Spencer’s Mountain was moved to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. One of my most vivid memories was of the beautiful scenery throughout the movie. Henry Fonda plays the patriarchal role of Clay Spencer and Maureen O’Hara, the mother, Olivia. While this reader and movie watcher appreciates the scenery from the movie, I am glad that The Waltons was moved back to the original setting in the novel, in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia.
Author Earl Hamner, Jr. was born in Schuyler, Virginia, in 1923. It was a company town, like the one in Spencer’s Mountain. Like John Boy and Clay Boy, he was the oldest of many children and likely showed academic and writing talent at an early age. Hamner, like John Boy and Clay Boy, the characters that he wrote about, attended the University of Richmond on a scholarship. In 1943, when he was a sophomore in college, he was drafted to serve in the Army. He served in the Quartermaster Corps in France after the Normandy invasion.
Earl Hamner returned to Virginia and worked for a radio station. There he fell in love with storytelling. He enrolled in a broadcasting program at Northwestern University and graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in Broadcast Journalism. He stayed in radio broadcasting and began to write seriously. His first novel was Fifty Roads to Town. Random House published it in 1953. While writing, Hamner continued his career in radio broadcasting in New York City. He interviewed some of the greats of the time, including Eleanor Roosevelt.
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Radio evolved into television, and he began submitting scripts for shows. In 1954 he married, and he and his wife had two children. They later played children in the script based on the Spencer’s Mountain story called The Homecoming, which later evolved into The Walton’s.
Hamner often said he was surprised to be a success in Hollywood. He often inserted his folk-type stories into scripts that he wrote and praised his friend Rod Sterling, creator and producer of The Twilight Zone, for being courageous enough to use his work.
The Walton’s became one of television’s most popular series, winning numerous awards and accolades. Hamner is one of my favorite writers of Appalachia. His emotional way of storytelling hits the reader’s heart. His remembrances of challenging times and good people who successfully lived and loved despite their difficulties touches the soul of many.
Hamner’s work is and should be lauded as groundbreaking work that exposed the world to the beauty and hardships of life in the Blue Ridge Mountains and its people. He has left us a treasure of family stories. His tales of good people and the ability of education to lift one from the throws of poverty and realize dreams are timeless.
Hamner was close to actor Ralph Waite who portrayed the father figure on The Waltons. When Waite died, Hamner said it was like losing his own father all over again. Earl Hamner, Jr. passed two years after Waite in 2016, at the age of ninety-two.
