Big Chief Notebok Paper and Right Smart Men

A certain segment of the population aged most likely between the ages of 45 and 75 will know that reference in the title right away. Most will not.

For those of us who grew up watching The Waltons on Thursday night we also might remember that the pilot episode aired as a Christmas movie called the Homecoming in 1971. The next fall the series began its nine year run.

Having not seen it in reruns for a couple of years I was thinking about The Homecoming this past Christmas season. For me what we might have perceived as hokey in the seventies by the time I had children of my own expressed values and feelings that I wish I could replicate in my own family. I have some success at that but today's world is much different than the world my parents grew up in in the 1930's.

In this movie set in The Depression the father John Walton is away working. There is a question of his arriving home in time for Christmas. We meet the family but the whole plot, besides the roadside Pentecostal preachers giving out broken dolls, and the oldest daughter calling her brother a piss ant is the waiting for the Father to return home.

In the series John Waite of course played this character but in the movie he was played by, I believe, Hoyt Axton. It was a small role, just at the end.

As we all know John Boy wants to be a writer. His mother, played by Patricia Neal in the pilot, wonders if he is smoking cigarettes as his door is always locked. He is doing nothing of the sort, nothing untoward at all. He is simply writing. Young boys did not write much in depression area Virgina, certainly not without it being assigned.

In the end the Father comes home and has a sack of presents for the kids. Nothing elaborate, these were not elaborate times. My children and I read the Little House Books and we always joke that for Christmas they will get an orange, a cup with their name on it, mittens and a peppermint stick. And if they are extra good they can use the pig bladder as a balloon. If you have not read the books you do not get the joke. Suffice to say that what was funny when they were single digits now gets eye rolls and right Dad's.

So all the children have been given something from the sack, the younger ones assured that Mr. Walton had got the presents from Santa on his trip. At the end with the children dispersed and happy John Boy and his Dad are left. The younger says that he is sure that Santa did not leave any presents for him, he being too old for such things. His father pauses and speaks to him as he reaches in the bag and pulls out a few large pads of Big Chief notebook paper and comments to his son to the effect that " I don't know much about the writing trade but I know if you want to do it you need to set your mind to it" or something to that effect. The end of the quote escapes me. The young man, played by Richard Thomas, responds to his fathers saying that somehow word got all the way to the North Pole that someone wanted to be a writer. John Boy responds that Santa, he must be a right smart man.

Would we all not want a father like that. One who knows our desires and dreams when we have not even expressed them out loud, barely to ourselves. Would we all not like to live in a place where receiving notebook paper would make a young man wipe away tears of gratitude.

I know, I know I romanticize the past. Still this scene never fails to choke me up. It says something about fathers and sons. It says something about values. It says something about what is missing in today's culture.

Based on my previous Rick Santorum column it says something about how it is possible that there is a huge segment of the population that can be tapped with cultural and family issues.

I have seen Big Chief Notebook paper. I wish my Dad were here to give me some.