"I bought Earl Hamner, Jr., lunch".

Above: Earl Hamner, Jr. and I in his office in Studio City.

Or, "Earl thinks I look like Rod Serling" or "One of the most fulfilling lunches I've ever had". Any of the three will do.

Earl is the creator of the hit television series, The Waltons, the retelling of his life growing up in the town of Schuyler, Virginia. It spawned from the television movie he wrote, The Homecoming - which was a book, then a play. Earl has been a mentor, of sorts, to me. The character John Boy (in The Waltons, and the real Earl Hamner) was the inspiration for me to become a writer (and major in Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater).

Earl also wrote 8 episodes for the classic TV series, The Twilight Zone, among them "Black Leather Jackets", "The Bewitching Pool" and "The Hunt". Matter of face, it was Rod Serling who gave Earl his first break in writing here in LA. Funny - Earl mentioned to me that I reminded him of Rod Serling - he's never said that before and we've talked on several occasions. Funny - when I was performing in the musical "Blood Brothers" as The Narrator here in LA, many people said my character reminded them of Rod Serling's "narrator" in The Twilight Zone.

So we had lunch last Friday and we talked about writing and Earl regaled me with his own stories growing up on "Walton's Mountain", and he asked about my writing and my plans to move back to Wisconsin. At 86, Earl could pass for a man in his 60's. As we chit chatted in his office - an office he's had in Studio City since 1960, mind you, he mentioned he's found a market for some short stories that he's working on and what a treat it was that he can still write at his age. I watched Earl at his desk and I thought, "that's me, Earl is me". Writers have to write, it's that simple.

Earl showed me some of the things he'd written on his blog (see website here) - we writers love to talk about the ideas we're working on.

As I readied myself to leave, I told Earl that I'm not saying "goodbye" to him...more like "see you later". I will see him when I visit California. " 'Night, Earl".