Ep.5 - The Typewriter

"From the very beginning when I thought of writing, it was about my family, our home, and Walton's Mountain. This was my world, the only kind of life I knew well enough to tell people about. I remember a day in the 1930's when I finally felt ready to show one of my stories to someone for the very first time."

John-Boy frets about his submission. While loading the truck with an order of firewood John asks what he writes about. John-Boy says that it is mostly about his family, the things he knows about. When a response comes back from the publisher John-Boy learns that he needs a typwriter in order to submit stories to the magazine.

Grandpa and John-Boy discover that the Baldwin sisters have an old typewriter from 1908. It is their most prized possession of their late father's Judge Baldwin. They are hesitant to loan it to John-Boy until they learn that his story includes a part where he sampled their "Recipe" while searching for his father on Christmas eve.

John-Boy types his letter in the Garden Shed so that his mother won't discover that he has something belonging to the boot-legging Baldwin ladies. He hides the typewriter in an old box inside a cabinet to keep it from being discovered.

When he shows Miss Hunter the finished story she suggest he further his education and says that she would love for him to be her first student to go off to college. Mary-Ellen collects more scrap to help pay for her mae-up and sells the contents of the cabinet with the typewriter in it to the junk man, Vern Rutley, not realizing it's value. John-Boy and his father track down Vern at a tavern on Route 29 but he has already sold it. John-Boy breaks the news to the Baldwins and also learns that although his story has not been accepted the magazine has requested to see more stories. Meanwhile Mary Ellen has gone to great effort to find and buy back the typewriter for John-Boy.

• Richard Thomas narrates as John-Boy for the first time during this episode.
  
• This is the first time that John-Boy uses the garden shed for writing.
• We see the Baldwin's Recipe machine for the first time.
• This is the first reference to Miss Emily's long lost love Ashley Longworth.
• The Baldwin's cousin, Raymond wrote risqué stories and for some reason left town after "the Scandal."
• The story that John Boy has written is “The Homecoming”.
• Grandpa hears that a earthquake in Long Beach California costs $4 million damage on the radio.
• The typewriter passes through 7 different people and costs Mary Ellen $6 before she is able to return it to John-Boy.