Episode 2.5: The Roots

Airdate: 10/11/73

Verdie Grant (the African American woman John-Boy taught to read in episode 1.21) returns, with her eye on an itinerant farm worker named Harley Foster. But Harvey, and his son, Jody, have always lived on the road, and he believes the best experience is to be had traveling from one town to the next. Staying with the Waltons a few days bends his attitude somewhat, and so, along with Verdie’s urgings and a well-paying mechanic job, he decides to set his “roots,” as firmly as those of a small peach tree the family tries to grow.

Lynn Hamilton reprises her role of Verdie in this one, and it has the usual amount of heartstring tugging – and this time, none-too-subtle symbolism.

Verisimilitude alert: The Walton men, in one scene, are tarring wood planks. I don’t know why they are doing this, and it’s not explained, but it adds such realism to the moment – and a sense of workmanship that defines the program’s time, place, and ethos.