In 1976 I spent my summer vacation in California.

My cousin was getting married in San Francisco, and my attendance at the wedding made a good excuse for the trip.

However I first arranged to spend several days in Los Angeles, where I had managed to be allowed access to watch a live filming of the television show The Waltons, due to my mother's acquaintance with one of the cast from childhood, Joe Conley, who played the store-keeper
Ike Godsey.

I watched the filming of the penultimate scene of Episode 125 The Achievement from the couch in the Walton's living room.

In the scene, the family was having dinner at their large kitchen table. This would be the last time the family would be together, as the leading character John Boy, played by Richard Thomas, was leaving the series to pursue his career as a writer in far off New York City. In reality the actor had decided to pursue other dreams.

The rooms of the house were all sets in a sound stage at the Burbank Studios, formerly known as Warner Brothers. On the far side of the complex, the outdoor façade of the house, barn and workshop stood in a clearing with several of the other familiar places only a few hundred yards away. If one climbed to the top of the mountain, often shown as a summit in the Blue Ridge, the famous Hollywood Sign would be in sight from the top.

Each of the kitchen walls were designed to be individually removed so the cameras could view the scene from different angles, focusing on each of the actors. The whole five minutes of the episode took almost an entire day to film. By the end of the day I knew the dialogue almost as well as the actors themselves from repetition.

The other sets of the show, the bed rooms, country store and even a ballroom in New York City were scattered about in the huge Quonset hut style building. While they were rearranging the walls of the set for each perspective I wandered about the nearby back lot that contained everything from the Wild West to down-town Manhattan.

At the end of the day cake and punch were served to mark Richard Thomas' last scene with the full cast. He would return the next day to film the final moments, but most of the others would not be present.

All in all it made a most memorable day, and I refused to reveal the many secrets of the plot I had learned until after the episode was shown (almost a year later.)

After word

Last week the


death of Joe Conley was announced - I’ve had this story sitting on my hard drive for several months, so perhaps this is a good time to share it.

The First-Person Stories Archive

Florida Sailor

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