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Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Waltons 1.20: The Deed


Airdate: 2/8/73

A lumber company plans to develop on Walton’s Mountain, and when Grandpa and John-Boy to stop them, they learn that the family has no legal claim to the land as no one ever registered for a deed. To do so would require a court filing fee of 200 dollars, and so the family scrimps and saves the meet the magic number. John Boy, feeling as though he should take action, journeys to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he finds work as a machinist. He gets a taste of city life when he gets robbed by two thugs and loses his first week’s earnings. Undaunted, he accepts a loan from a pretty girl who is also staying at his boarding house, and helps capture the two thugs to get a reward of 50 dollars, enough to help the family get the money to save their land.

One of the first episodes to deal head-on with the grim realities of the Depression. The land barons and developers really do pose a formidable threat, and John Boys’s first taste of life outside the Mountain helps burst his, and our, bubble just a bit. This episode’s dĂ©nouement is appropriately bow-tied, but it sure does come on pretty quick.

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