Little Things at Christmas

I went over to my mother and father's home armed with my favorite Christmas film, The Homecoming. Back in 1972 (about the time that these crazy "people" were coming door to door), my mom told us about this great tv movie that would be airing on CBS and that we all needed to watch it. I had no idea that we would all love it so much. In fact, years later they would show it on Christmas Eve and it never seemed to disappoint. When they finally stopped airing it, I purchased a copy from Amazon and we continued to watch it every year. After the success of this movie, CBS developed The Waltons television program and the rest is history. Of course, there was Spencer's Mountain before that, but who wants to get into that.

As you know, my mother grew up in Wellsville in the Southern Tier of New York State. Wellsville has always reminded me of the fictional Walton's Mountain. Both areas are very rural and have beautiful hills and my family had interesting characters just like on the television show. After watching these Waltons for so many years, I decided to read some of Earl Hamner's books and was a bit disappointed with The Homecoming. In the book, Clay Spencer seemed to be a bit of a drunk and Clay Boy was given the task of tracking him down. The first place that he looked was Ike Godsey's place. Now, Godsey seemed to be running a pool hall/saloon and Clay Boy's mother just figured that her husband was a little "under the weather" at Ike's. Well, the movie and tv show differ here a bit and on tv, Ike runs a general store.

Tammie loved this film and all of the Hacheys and Hastings would pack into my parent's family room and watch this masterpiece each year at Christmas. This year it was a bit tough to watch without my sister, but it certainly brought back great memories. I still look for my sister when I am over there and am always thinking of things to tell her. She would have loved watching the movie with us tonight and would have made the same jokes about it that she made for thirty six years. I can tell you that we always laughed, because she was damn funny!

Miracle in the barn