ALAN writes:

It is a curse of life that as we age, we remember certain people who were acquaintances of our parents, people who were grown-ups when we were children, and we would like so much to talk with those people now—to ask them about their lives and their memories, to talk with them grown-up to grown-up instead of child to grown-up.  But of course it is too late.  They lived and died during the years when we were busily engaged in other things that seemed important at the time.  I made that terrible mistake.

These thoughts occurred to me recently when I watched a few 1963 episodes of the television comedy series “Petticoat Junction.” They were new to me because I never watched that series in the 1960s.  But my mother enjoyed watching it, I know, because I remember overhearing the show’s familiar opening theme music.

The stories involve a widow and her three high school age daughters at the hotel they run in a small town in the country.  A train brings guests to and from the hotel.  Those episodes present exactly the kind of gentle, old-fashioned, self-effacing, heartwarming and uplifting comedy writing that my mother enjoyed.  Viewers laughed with the characters, not at them.   

The idea for “Petticoat Junction” came to its creator-writer Paul Henning when his wife told stories about her grandparents and the hotel they owned near a train stop in the small town of Eldon, Missouri.  It was called the Rock Island Hotel and then the Burris Hotel.  It is no longer there.

 What does this have to do with memories lost?

My mother was a seamstress, and a very good one, according to her friends and family.  One day in 1974 she drove to the town of Eldon to visit an old friend who lived there.  Her friend was 16 years older.  During their visit that day, she took two color snapshots of her friend standing by flowers outside her home.  In a small notebook, my mother wrote six words: “I worked with her years ago.”  And that is the pitiful extent of my knowledge of their friendship.

How and when did they meet?  I don’t know.  Where did they work together and for how long?  I don’t know.  When did her friend move to Eldon?  I don’t know.  What did they talk about on that day in 1974?  I don’t know.  It was probably the last time my mother saw her friend, although they continued to exchange Christmas cards for twenty years afterward.

Did they perchance remember the 1960s television series “Petticoat Junction” and did they know that that series was inspired by memories of the real hotel in Eldon?  I don’t know.

I will never know the answers to these questions.  My mother died in 2002.  Her friend died in 2009 at age 103.  She outlived her husband by 37 years.  They had no children.  She also outlived her seven siblings.  Her obituary stated that she loved gardening.  A young friend remembered her playing dominoes, a simple, quiet pastime in a small, quiet town like Eldon.  That is a perfect parallel to the setting in “Petticoat Junction” where veteran character actor Edgar Buchanan’s “Uncle Joe” might be found playing checkers in the hotel lobby with one of his niece’s daughters.

My grandmother and aunts played dominoes with me at our kitchen table in the early 1950s.  It was in those same years that my grandmother enjoyed watching “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” on our black and white television.  Actress Bea Benaderet appeared in that series and would appear ten years later as the hotel owner “Kate Bradley” in “Petticoat Junction”.

Some wonderful moments can be seen in those early episodes of that series. (I haven’t seen the later episodes and they may be worse.) Dresses are the standard attire of the mother and her daughters.  She upholds a traditional code of moral standards.  The most violent expression ever spoken is “Oh, my goodness!”  In one episode, she sits on the hotel porch and remarks how fortunate she is to enjoy simple pleasures and a feeling of serenity.  In another episode, the youngest of the three daughters learns the value of not winning a game of horseshoes when winning would erase the happiness of the reigning champion.  One episode includes three veteran motion picture character actors:  Douglas Dumbrille, Addison Richards, and Charles Meredith, names that I imagine are now completely forgotten except by diehard fans of Old Hollywood like me.

In the Christmas episode from 1963, the characters are heard singing Christmas carols aboard the train as it moves through the valley in the darkness of night and we see the train’s Christmas lights reflected in the water alongside the tracks—beautiful and memorable scenes, in black and white.

The train engineer in “Petticoat Junction” was portrayed by actor Smiley Burnette, whom I am confident my mother remembered as Gene Autry’s comical sidekick in the B-Westerns that were shown at small neighborhood movie houses in St. Louis in the 1930s-‘40s.

“Petticoat Junction” was one of the last American television programs to present a particular kind of comedy writing that is a moral universe distant from what passes for comedy today.  The series was created for grown-ups, not youngsters or teenagers.  Its principal characters were veteran entertainers with many years’ experience in radio, motion pictures, and television.  It was written for grown men and women old enough to remember, understand, and appreciate the simple, ordinary pleasures and problems of a family living in a small town.  It was a kind of comedy that Leftist elites in the entertainment industry would phase out in the mid-1960s and replace with hip shows like “The Monkees,”“Laugh-In,” “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” and “All in the Family,” all aimed at the young.

Faded color snapshots from 1950 show my grandmother holding me (then a baby) at the home of a friend in a small town in southern Illinois.  She, too, was a seamstress and one of twenty-six friends of my mother who worked for dress manufacturing companies.  One year in the 1950s, they had a picnic outing at Jones Park in East St. Louis:  A group of white women in a city park in a place that is now the site of urban rot, vacant lots, and vanished buildings.

In 1962-’63, my mother took me to visit another of those friends who was then retired and whose husband transformed the hill behind their home into a multi-tiered showcase of flowers.

The huge red-brick buildings where all those women worked are still there in downtown St. Louis.  One is vacant; the other has been made into hip loft apartments.   Most of them did not drive to their workplace, an idea they would have regarded as a luxury.  Public transportation was available and reliable in those years.  Local bus companies ran between St. Louis and smaller cities across the river in Southern Illinois, where some of those women lived.

I can only imagine the memories all those women took with them and the stories they could tell about working at such companies when they were part of a thriving garment industry in St. Louis from the 1930s to the 1960s.   It, too, is now long gone.

All the little connections mentioned above are no consolation for the loss of the chance to talk with those women, especially my mother’s friend in Eldon who had accumulated a century’s worth of memories.

— Comments —

Dan R. writes:

I just wanted to say that I have often been touched by Alan’s essays and wish to thank him for his contributions. We are about the same age and it’s of special interest, as one who grew up in New York City, to see both the contrasts and similarities to St. Louis back in the day.

Paul C. writes:

Alan’s essay is thoroughly enjoyable and eloquent as usual.

The first season of Petticoat Junction had Bea Benaderet as the main character.  Junction was a spin-off from the wholesome Beverly Hillbillies¸ which premiered a year earlier in 1962, when I was nine.  Bea was a relative of the Hillbillies and the mother of Jethro Bodine.  We loved it mainly because of Bea but of course also because of Edgar Buchanan (Uncle Joe “moving kind of slow” in the intro song).  Bea did not do the second season because of her health, and Buchanan, if I am not mistaken, also had to leave before or during the second season.  Those were devastating losses for such a super show.  I watched for a year or two after, but it had lost its main characters.

We need to return to those types of TV episodes and films.  It won’t be easy because Pandora’s box has been opened; our children have been exposed to explicit violence, sexuality, and other vulgarities.  A profitable organization could be created for the religious, whereby only TV channels such as MeTV would be created and allowed by parents.  Parents could block all the other channels.  Alan and I grew up with black and white TV where Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore slept in single beds even though our parents slept in full beds (before queen and king beds).  We would fall asleep with our friends while sitting on the couch watching late night horror movies such as Universal Studios’ The Wolfman, Frankenstein, and Dracula.  No explicit violence, sex, or vulgarity of any kind.  Children brought up eating this or that food will like this or that food if that is all they are exposed to.  The food will seem wonderful.

Copyright laws need to be changed to permit religious organizations to edit out irreligious content and show the movies for no profit at their student auditoriums and on their TV channels.  Copyright law is far too restrictive and allows restrictions far beyond the desire to make a decent profit.  If the studious can’t create wholesome movies that sell, the government should severely restrict the copyright protections for their unwholesome movies.  This isn’t censorship in violation of the First Amendment.  Copyright is not a Constitutional right given to artists.  It is a Constitutional right given to the federal government “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” See U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8.  This would not be an attempt to punish but to encourage these talented people to create movies with fifties and early sixties values.  Has anyone seen a vulgar, popular impressionist painting?  I have not.

Laura writes:

While I appreciate your hope for wholesome television, I don’t agree that any of the things you mention are adequate.

Corruption of minors is criminal. Even if we could keep our own children from the perversions that are dished out on screens, even in public places and schools, these are still crimes against other children. It’s sort of like saying, “Well, let’s keep our children safe from the pedophiles roaming around the playground by keeping them home,” instead of ridding the playground of pedophiles so that all children are safe.

Our government is infested with psychopaths and they could care less about this.

Only with a sweeping and profound change in our system of government will we have a livable environment for children again.

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