- Welcome back to some more
"Behind the Scenes of The Waltons."
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Today, I thought I'd share some stories
from the episode "The Dust Bowl Cousins."
This was an episode from Season One.
In this episode, cousins of our dad, John, come to visit.
They've had their farm wiped out by the dust storms
and have basically had to pack up
what few belongings they have and take to the road
in hopes of finding another place to settle.
So - interesting that most of the relatives
who came to visit us on "The Waltons"
were from our father's side of the family.
The questions come up about, you know,
why wasn't more of Olivia's family spoken about?
And they were touched on here and there, but in this case,
Cora is a cousin a couple times removed
I believe from our father
and at some point in the Walton lineage,
parcels of land were divided up
amongst the children of the Waltons
and I believe that included our grandfather, Zeb,
and Cora's grandfather.
Cora and her husband, Ham, and their son, Job,
show up and he soon starts thinking
that maybe they can get ahold of a piece of this property
that he feels should still belong to Cora.
Well, along the way,
the family causes a fair bit of trouble for the Waltons,
particularly Mary Ellen.
Their son, Job, is bad news
and Mary Ellen, being a little rebellious, as she could be,
finds herself getting into trouble.
She gets caught in the shed smoking rabbit tobacco.
Rabbit tobacco, I've never even heard of rabbit tobacco.
I can't imagine how disgusting that must be.
I don't remember what we actually were smoking,
but it wasn't anything like that
and it wasn't cigarettes.
So it was some sort of prop and I can guarantee you,
I was not inhaling it, but of course,
John-Boy comes in and finds us first
and he says he's not gonna be tattling.
And then Mama shows up.
Well, now Mary Ellen's really in trouble
and gets sent to her room
to memorize yet another set of Bible verses,
which was the standard punishment for Mary Ellen,
and for, I think, most of the children
when they got in trouble.
As I leave the shed, you briefly see
that I am wearing very short shorts.
For some reason, I seem to think
they were a pair of my shorts, but I could be wrong.
It could have been something
the wardrobe department cut off from a pair of jeans.
But I don't know.
For some reason I thought they were actually mine
and incredibly short for that period of time
on "The Waltons."
So for me, I thought it was fun and this was the '70s
and everything was short in the '70s.
So I thought it was fun to get to put on
a pair of actual short shorts for a half a second.
At another point in the episode,
Mary Ellen is found at the fishing hole again,
probably Drusilla's pond,
as was usually the the water spot that we went to.
This time, Job finds her there and she's kind of fishing.
Well, I was not a fisher woman, man, whatever.
So when I look at this and me sort of trying
to toss this little line out into the water,
I'm like, oh, that does not look like someone
who knows what they're doing fishing,
but it went by pretty quickly.
Earlier I had spoken about the episode "The Awakening,"
where Mary Ellen experiences her first kiss,
also at Drusilla's pond.
So Mary Ellen has a bit of history
with boys at this pond.
In this case, when Job makes a move on her,
she threatens him and he backs off.
Later in the episode, Job and John-Boy keep butting heads
and the question comes up for John-Boy
about what he considers worth fighting for.
And later on when he catches Job
making inappropriate advances on Mary Ellen,
he decides that's worth fighting for.
I loved in this episode
how we got the sense of all the generations,
how it really does take a village
to raise a family, to raise children.
And in this case,
Grandpa became very much the patriarch of the family,
advising John-Boy when he is uncertain
about what to do about Job accusing him of being a coward
and Grandpa gives him very wise advice.
And then when John-Boy and Job actually scuffle,
it's Grandpa who comes in
and takes them both by the scruff of the neck
and takes them off to get it sorted out.
So I loved that dynamic
of Grandpa having such a strong presence
as the patriarch of the family.
I really loved the character of Cora Walton.
Interesting that her name was Cora Walton
and later we had a Corabeth Walton,
who was also a cousin of the Waltons.
Coincidence?
I don't know.
But I thought Jay McIntosh, who played the character,
did such a wonderful job of embodying a character
who'd had a very rough life and moved around
and the family had struggled
and recognized her husband's shortcomings
in wanting to run when things got tough.
But to see the beautiful transformation that she made
when she found her inner strength again
and was willing to stand up and fight for her family
and for what she knew was right.
To know that she could go forward and build a life
that would be better for her and her family.
So I really admire the way she tackled that role
and what a lovely job she did with it.
I also loved the storyline in here with Erin and Uncle Ham.
She sees him stealing from Ike Godsey's store,
goes to John-Boy,
and tries to ask John-Boy what she should do
because she's seen someone doing something they shouldn't.
And with Erin's history of being a tattletale,
John-Boy basically says, I don't want to hear about it.
So after John-Boy shuts her down and says,
if you have a problem with someone,
you should go talk to them,
she goes and tries to confront Uncle Ham,
who goes on the attack with her.
I thought Mary did a beautiful job with that scene,
having to deal with the challenge
of a young person trying to confront an adult
about something that she knew was true,
but having no real power to do anything about it.
Of course, it all works out well in the end
because this is "The Waltons" and the family pulls together.
People learn lessons from it.
The characters on the show learn lessons from it
and frequently, hopefully the audience
learns lessons from it, too.
That was one of the wonderful things about "The Waltons."
Hopefully without being too preachy,
we represented what was right,
the difference between right and wrong,
how to deal with that,
how to live with honesty and integrity,
how to pull together as a family.
So yet again, "The Dust Bowl Cousins,"
beautiful example of life on Walton's Mountain,
how to build a community,
how to keep your family together.
Thanks for sharing this episode
of "Behind the Scenes of The Waltons."
I will be back with more.
See you then.