A TV Land Merry Christmas!

These are my favorite shows of all-time. And they wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Archie, Edith, Meathead and Gloria from "All in the Family".

Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone".

Felix (right) and Oscar from "The Odd Couple".

Andy, Barnie, Opie, Aunt Bea and Andy's girlfriend (?) from "The Andy Griffith Show".

And last but not least, the Walton clan from "The Waltons".

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.

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"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".

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Happy Birthday, Earl Hamner, Jr.!

86 years young today! Earl is the creator of the hit TV series, "The Waltons", among others. As a huge fan of the show, it was an honor to have made Earl's aquaintance several times and consider him a friend. "The Waltons" was the inspiration for me to take up writing years ago - a pleasure I indulge in to this day. Thank you, Earl, and Happy Birthday.

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Origami No. 18. One Reason I Write.

I stole this from my friend, Earl Hamner, Jr., creator of "The Waltons". He quoted William Faulkner in an interview a couple years ago and, well - why I would I argue with Earl Hamner (or Faulkner, for that matter)?

"... my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before...

...It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

- excerpt from William Faulkner's acceptance speech for the 1950 Nobel Prize

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