Waltons 1.11: The Literary Man

Airdate: 11/30/72

Another wanderer stops by the Waltons, an A.J. Covington, who helps John Boy when his truck breaks down. A literate, sophisticated man, he immediately takes a liking to the intellectually curious John Boy, and vice-versa. A jack of all trades, AJ even volunteers to help the family meet a lumber contract, but inadvertently causes them to fall behind when he gets tied up in a critique of John Boy’s writing instead of chopping trees.

Meanwhile, Jim Bob is very sick, suffering from stomach pains, and John and Grandpa are getting further behind on the lumber contract. AJ diagnoses Jim Bob’s pains as appendicitis, and the boy is rushed to hospital in Charlottesville. Developing a liking for Walton’s Mountain, AJ has his eye on an abandoned cottage, and sells his watch for money he plans to use to put a down payment on the house’s back taxes. Jim Bob pulls through, and AJ hatches an idea to increase the mill’s sawing capacity by changing the ratio of the machine’s pulleys. The extra force, however, burns out the bearings, ending any hope of making the contract.

John Boy, in humble awe of AJ’s literary accomplishments, confides in his journal that he will give up writing forever, but AJ confesses that had actually written very little, instead chasing dreams of writing “the big story.” After much reflection, AJ does what he needs to do: pay one final visit to his house, the one he must now give up, and give his watch money to the Waltons to cover the lost contract. Leaving without saying goodbye, he leaves the money in a letter, thanking everyone for their hospitality, and admitting that the letter was the most he had written in years.

As an English teacher and writer, I was profoundly affected by this episode. Actor David Huddleston performs AJ as simple yet accomplished man of the world, a Walt-Whitmanesque humanist who calls the world his home, but desperately (and futilely) also wants to carve out a small tract of earth for himself. A dreamer, and a tragic underachiever, he instills in John Boy the vicarious dreams that he himself could not live out. He is a living embodiment of a frustrated soul, living a life of “quiet desperation,” never going home, only forth.

I even cried at the end of this one, a culmination of so many great scenes and moments, particularly the “chopping adjectives instead of trees” scene, and AJ’s final, soul-baring yet understated monologue in the barn (which seems to be where the best Walton’s monologues are delivered). Bravo to teleplay writer Colley Cibber, for this, the best episode so far of The Waltons.