Call me John Boy Walton

The name Earl Hamner Jr. might not elicit knowing looks from people under the age of 50, but the name John Boy Walton does. If it doesn’t, pick a rainy afternoon and flip to the Hallmark channel. You might catch a re-run of “The Waltons.”

The 1970s series, set in the mountains of Virginia and based on a slew of red-headed children crammed into a house with their parents and a set of grandparents during the Great Depression, won’t disappoint. It’s overly dramatic and sometimes trite — it was, after all, made in the 1970s — but it’s well-written and nostalgic. Just one episode will give you a case of the warm fuzzies.

Growing up, I watched re-runs with my parents who viewed the episodes as they aired decades before. We laughed at the set; arid and scraggly California mountains don’t approximate the Appalachians flush and lush with life. We loved hearing the names of familiar places — Charlottesville, Waynesboro, Roanoke — and knowing that “The Waltons” shared our corner of the world with people across the nation.

I favored Elizabeth, the youngest Walton sibling with an affinity for critters she sneaked home, but I identified with John Boy, the fictional version of the show’s writer, Earl Hamner Jr.

John Boy spent his evening hours pouring over his school books and when he went to college, the fictitious Boatwright University modeled after Hamner’s alma mater, the University of Richmond, he initially felt like a freshwater fish plucked out of a clear stream and dropped into a brackish river. During high school, I prostrated myself over textbooks and forced myself to learn calculus equations I will never use again. College also sent me away from the mountains to the eastern side of Virginia, and like John Boy, I appeared to be the only Appalachian American in every classroom.

People in college couldn’t believe I’d gone to a school that housed an agriculture department. To many I met, I quickly became the sole representation of rural America, and thankfully, I had plenty of stories from my childhood with which to regale them. Instead of diligently studying, my mind wandered, much like John Boy’s did, to the far-off hills of home.

Despite the detour of World War II, John Boy’s path from college to success as a writer unfolded in a rather linear trajectory. Hamner’s, however, did not. Before “Spencer’s Mountain,” the book that came alive as “The Waltons” on the television screen, or writing for “The Twilight Zone,” Hamner landed in the Midwest — Chicago, specifically — writing for a radio show.

I had forgotten Hamner’s Midwestern radio show days until I walked into Benzer Pharmacy in Colfax a few weeks ago. The soda fountain, with its mid-century modern lamps, ancient Coca-Cola signs and red and black swivel stools reminded me of Timberlake’s Drug Store in Charlottesville, Va., another relic still concocting chocolate sodas and malted milkshakes.

As a child, Timberlake’s fascinated me. When we drove over the mountain to Charlottesville on Saturdays, I loved leaning on the polished granite countertop, watching toast pop from chrome appliances and listening to the whir of the milkshake emulsifiers. The menu booklets, worn from the many paws before mine, still contained sodas with egg-white froth. I stuck to chocolate or cherry cola, no egg involved.

Timberlake's held the same fascination for Hamner. Established in 1890, Timberlake's had about 40 years of reputation built before Hamner stepped through its doors. He once told a now-defunct weekly newspaper he felt self-conscious about sitting down at the lunch counter next to the Charlottesvillians in their "fancy clothes," but it didn't prevent him from buying chocolate sodas with money he earned peach-picking one summer.

I’d like to imagine Hamner finding a soda fountain in Chicago years later and still feeling that child-like excitement that surrounds the novelty of a good chocolate soda. In honor of Hamner, I’ll occasionally pop into Benzer Pharmacy and set my sights on a confection.

Although I’m far removed from my fish-out-of-water early college days, I’m still John Boy Walton, another displaced Appalachian American who wants to spin pretty words.

Catch me writing scripts in Hollywood in a few years?

Contact Phoebe Marie Brannock at
pbrannock@newtondailynews.com