Reviewing Movies

Nothing illustrates the candor and understanding inherent in the characters in The Waltons better than episode 11 of this season entitled the Pony Cart. When Ninety-Year-Old Cousin Martha-Corinne Walton arrives for a visit and starts giving away her prize possessions curiosity gets aroused but Blue Ridge hospitality forbids the asking of prying questions even when the old gal's opinionated ways start wearing on her host's nerves. The delicacy with which Olivia tells her that it may be time she left epitomizes love and discretion. It is on the return journey that John-Boy learns that the cause of her visit was the fear of dying alone in an environment foreign to her. The old girl's acceptance of and resignation with the inevitability of that death enobles her as much as her feisty insistence on living life to the fullest until that end comes. Indeed her final death throes occur while she is enthusiastically picking flowers in the middle of a field of daisies. The camera cuts from that scene to the wooden marker beside her husband's in the skyline state park where John Walton Jr is tending her grave.