"The Walton's"

Fifty-some years ago, I watched a television series based on the lives of a Depression-era family, “The Walton’s.” I’m sure I was attracted to the show mainly because the weekly episodes had so much similarity to the stories my mother told about her own experiences as a child of the Depression. Even though I knew that the program, “The Walton’s,” was probably an overly-idealized representation of the times, I watched the show each week and found myself longing for that wonderful era, for such understanding parents, for wise grandparents, and a houseful of brothers and sisters.

My mother’s stories were usually happy and it seemed to me that “The Walton’s” story lines merely confirmed her own childhood memories. One of her stories I heard most often was about the years that my mother and two of her sisters sang together in small country churches in southeastern Ohio as “The Scott Sisters.” She remembered that singing for a church meant more than merely entertaining; it also meant that her entire family ate well that day because of the carry-in dinners prepared by the ladies of the churches where they performed. But there were other stories, the sad ones, about the death of four little brothers and sisters during the influenza epidemic of 1918 that spoke to the harsh reality of those days.  

So why is it, despite evidence to the contrary, that we hold onto the impression that “the good old days” were so good? Why do we long for those days and think only of the charm of an earlier time without looking more truthfully at the unhappiness that was bound to have been as much a part of everyday life? Why do we romanticize those days when the truth is that there was poverty, hunger, and disease that we somehow manage to minimize if not overlook?

I think that this exaggerated view of families in the past serves to damage, to some degree, our current notions about what a family should look like and act like today. I’m sure that when we invited our son Matt to move back home two years ago, I was hopeful that our family would be somewhat like the days when our sons were in high school and the house was always a little chaotic with their friends running in and out, the phone ringing all the time, and all of us actually interacting with each other on a daily basis. I’ve probably idealized those years, too, but wouldn’t Matt’s move back home be a lot like the Depression-era families that included not just two, but sometimes three generations under one roof? Oh, and to think of the wisdom of the elders that was passed down to the younger generations--at least in the narratives of “The Walton’s.” So why did it come as a surprise to me that our son’s return home and combining of two generations did not bear any resemblance at all to the family that I had envisioned?

Why is it that I cannot see in my son, the musician, a young man who may have actually inherited from his grandmother the talent to be a successful singer and song-writer? Singing before an audience was for my mother a way of helping to feed her family. But, unfortunately, I see my son’s interest in music as a waste of time because it brings him no monetary reward or even a free meal.  Preparing for “open-mike night” only means time spent practicing instead of earning money or studying for his degree. It means listening to the strumming of chords while I’m trying to write a blog for my professor. It means, at least on one occasion, asking Matt—not kindly at all--to please find another place to play so that I could take the university’s math placement test, a timed exam, because I needed, “just forty-four more minutes! That’s all I’m asking for!”  

No, we are not “The Walton’s.” And Matt, the song-writer, may actually have as much or more talent than John-boy, the aspiring author who later wrote and narrated the “The Walton’s” series. But I am certainly not “Momma,” that patient and wise woman who skillfully handled the problems the family encountered in the weekly episodes. No, my friends, we are not “The Walton’s.”