January 02, 2026
The Journey was a collection of creative writing by Saluda High School, Saluda, South Carolina. Narrated by Earl Hamner, Jr., creator of the Waltons, this ETV Classic film weaves stories from the writing of the students.
A journey, whether through memories or dreams, holds the present in perspective, and bids hope for the future. We hope that you will enjoy this lovely, lyrical recollection of times now passed as much as we did.
Side Notes
- Arletta Raley and her obituary.
- Earl Hammer (1923-2016) He won the Christopher Award five times and also took home the coveted George Foster Peabody Award in 1972 and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama (Continuing) in 1973 for The Waltons despite having achieved this level of success and international recognition, he remained the real-life John-Boy Walton, never losing his affection for the folkways, old stories, traditions, and manners of the family united in loving community with its members, close friends, and the larger community, living on family land or on long-familiar ground. In his autobiographical works of imagination especially--Spencer's Mountain, the CBS drama Appalachian Autumn, The Homecoming, and even the nighttime drama Falcon Crest--the past forever flows into the present. In one of the narrations that bookended an episode of The Waltons, Hamner wrote: "Some men are drawn to oceans, they cannot breathe unless the air is scented with a salty mist. Others are drawn to land that is flat, and the air is sullen and is leaden as August. My people were drawn to mountains. They came when the country was young and they settled in the upland country of Virginia that is still misted with a haze of blue which gives those mountains their name. . . . In my time, I have come to know them. . . . I have walked the land in the footsteps of all my fathers. I saw yesterday and now look to tomorrow."
- William Faulkner (1897-1962), who came from an old southern family, grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He joined the Canadian, and later the British, Royal Air Force during the First World War, studied for a while at the University of Mississippi, and temporarily worked for a New York bookstore and a New Orleans newspaper. Except for some trips to Europe and Asia, and a few brief stays in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, he worked on his novels and short stories on a farm in Oxford.
