Christmas at Eagle Pond by Donald Hall

I picked up this short book at the library just before Christmas. A short story of just 73 pages it is just long enough to let you set in front of the fire for a half hour or so and imagine a Christmas from long ago.

The author Donald Hall is a former poet laureate of the United States and writes like one. The story tells of the Christmas of 1940. The author, twelve at the time, and living is Connecticut is sent by train to spend Christmas with his Grandparents at Eagle Pond in New Hampshire. His mother has had an operation and so, though he loves his parents, he is actually quite thrilled to be joining his grandparents for the holiday. He explains that he often spends his summers with them but seeing the house and pond under a blanket of snow is a completely new experience.

The story is told over a course of five days. The days leading up to the holiday are spend preparing. He spends time with " Gramp" milking cows, feeding horses, and listening to some of the many stories his grandfather tells. His Aunt, his Mother's Sister joins them and they attend a Christmas pageant at the church.

We meet aunts and uncles, we hear about people long gone such as Freeman Morrison a man with a heart of gold that had something broken in him when his father punished him as a boy, a wound not healed until he found a shiny sled abandoned on the mountain as a grown man. His Grandfather is one of those gems of those times, no matter the season there is plenty to do and with, as he says the exception of coffee, salt and pepper the homestead is self sufficient.

A nod to Mr. Hall's unknown future is presented when for Christmas from his Grandfather he receives a book of Great American Poems. It seems even then both Hall and those who loved him knew his predilection for the written word.

In the end of the book is a confession of sorts from the author one that gives the book a wry twist but does nothing to diminish one's enjoyment just experienced.

Hall's novella hits all the right notes and while it will not solve any of the problems of the world it will take one and all back to a time that we all should miss. A time when simple things were blessed things. A time when, like the Ingalls girls with their very own tin cups and an orange for Christmas and John Boy Walton with a tear in his eye over the gift of some Big Chief writing paper, a present that would today be considered small had more meaning than the largest pile of " stuff " one could receive today.

I am sure I romanticize the world of The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie and now Eagle Pond. It might well be that the stories themselves are romanticized versions of how it really was. When one feels, however, like something is missing in today's world but does not exactly know what it is a reading of Christmas at Eagle Pond, stunning in it's simplicity will let you know what you are missing in your holiday and perhaps in your soul.

A Walton Family Thanksgiving

In the first half of the nineties CBS returned to Waltons mountain for a Series of television movies. The Waltons, of course, had been a staple of the networks lineup in the seventies and the timing of nostalgia made the movies a good bet to garner a dependable audience.

The first movie in that series was A Walton Family Thanksgiving centering on the family as they gathered together for the holiday in 1963. As any history buff knows this year also coincided with the Kennedy assassination which allows the series, while catching us up with the family members, to show their reactions to the events of that fateful time.

One thing must be said, most child stars do not become great actors and actresses. The young people who played the children on The Waltons certainly are of that group. It would seem that a good portion of them have done no acting whatsoever, not a bad thing, they have moved on and lived there lives, it does however mean that the acting in this sort of a reunion show will be stilted.

Everyone that is remembered from the series makes an appearance. Ike and Corabeth, their daughter Amy, Verdi the black person on Walton's mountain, even Yancy Tucker. With the exception of the departed Will Geer the whole cast returns.

One has to put away the calculator to make this work. The characters of the show, primarily the children, are played younger than they would be in a direct timeline from the original show. At one point even John thinking of Grandpa says to himself Pa, you have been gone 15 years and it seems like just yesterday. Actually on a strict timeline Zeb has gone been gone about twenty years.

Watching Ben try to cry about baby Virginia (somehow she died) or Jim Bob show sadness after a rebuke from Mary Ellen, it is clear that great acting will not be on this show.

Still Ralph Waite is extremely likable and I cannot tell you how much seeing the very old Ellen Corby ( she reminds me of my Mother who died at 88 a couple of years ago) and the show just works.

When we were young it was the family we as kids made fun of while we secretly wanted to be a part of. I grew up a country kid and I could understand a bit of the life these people led and knew that it was a blessed existence if only a life that was lived on a television screen.

As the episode ends and all the family troubles that the children have been struggling with are resolved , as John Kennedy has been laid to rest, as John Boy sits out front with his lady friend and they all say goodnight like they have on every episode one thing becomes clear. For this person, me, this sometimes sarcastic, usually cynical ( though I try not to be as much) person one thing is clear. I still would like to be part of that family. That is why bad acting will make not a hoot of difference to anybody who grew up with this show.

It is a chance to revisit not only our own childhood but for many of us a childhood we dreamed about whilst in it. How many chances do you get to do that in your mid forties.