Waltons 1.22: The Bicycle

Airdate: 3/1/73

Living in dream worlds to escape the realities of the Depression is the running theme of this episode, covering two storylines. In the first, a blacksmith named Curtis Norton (Ned Beatty) learns that a woman he had met during their high school reunion in Richmond has accepted his marriage proposal; this problem is, she has fallen in love not with him but with the poetry of his letters to her, which were written by John Boy. A starry-eyed idealist, she is brought back to earth when she discovers the true identity of the letter-writer, and that Curtis’ love may not be glamorous but is genuine. In the other, a frazzled Olivia revisits her childhood with a bicycle from Ike Godsey’s shop: it ignites her long dormant dreams of singing for the opera and she begins to spend long moments away from home with the church choir.

Like Glen Campbell sang in “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife” in 1968, “Livvy” wonders what might have been, and this discontent is indeed what fuelled the nascent feminist movement in 1973, as articulated a decade earlier by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. Despite making grade strides in the struggle for equality in 1919 with the right to vote, most women were confined again during the Depression and throughout the 40s and 50s when hard times and war marginalized the freedoms they had worked hard to achieve. I surmise that John and Olivia’s marriage was more equal than was typical for the time period, but, of course, it was still the 30s, and the attitude toward a woman riding a bicycle by herself is subtlety conveyed by John Walton when he asks his wife, “What will the people think?” Boy, we’ve come a long way.

The other plotline is charming (a sort of reinvention of Cyrano De Bergerac) but undone, in my mind at least, by the fact that Curtis and his fiancé are totally wrong for each other. Let’s face it: she was misled by this guy, she shows up and is completely disillusioned, and should go back home! I’m not sold on Olivia’s counsel that she “may never find” what she’s looking for. But, it’s in keeping with the idea of compromise, and who knows, maybe they stayed together, living a long and happy life on Walton’s Mountain!