ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 5, 1996 TAG: 9602050055
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
Now that the Super Bowl is over - for which persons with any taste whatsoever should be grateful - we have reached the end of another holiday season.
And goodness knows a holiday season doesn't pass without many of us thinking about the Waltons - who made keeping Christmas into an art form.
I thought it might be interesting to visit the Waltons in a non-deck-the-halls-time to see if they suffer from the same post-holiday depression many of us feel.
"Well, folks down to the Dew Drop Inn are sayin' the Pro Bowl was fixed, just like the Super Bowl," says Pa Walton, coming into the kitchen where Ma Walton is making a modest post-holiday meal of Beef Wellington.
"This damned dough won't ever do right," says Ma, who rarely uses a bad word, at least in this column. "How the hell do they expect you to do Beef Wellington when you can't get the damned dough right?"
"Really, Olivia," Pa Walton says, "you shouldn't use language like that, despite the fact that you're obviously into post-holiday stress, which me and the girls down to the Dew Drop discuss a lot."
"Go wreck one of the cars on U.S. 250 while on the way to the psych ward at the university hospital and take those floozies with you," Ma Walton says, hurling the dough across the room.
"What doest thou in anger, thou shalt repent in remorse," says Grandpa Walton - who is a bad mood because all the Christmas liquor is gone; not to mention getting beaned by Olivia's doughball as he enters the kitchen.
When John-Boy comes into the kitchen he is no longer a nice lad who writes in his copybook all the time and waits, wide-eyed, to be discovered.
"This family is dysfunctional," he says. "The first chance I get I'm stealing one of the cars out there and running away to work on The Charlottesville Daily Progress."
Then other Walton children - usually so sweet you worry that they might be snatched up to heaven before your eyes - enter sluggishly.
"Oh, no," they say as a chorus. "She's trying to make Beef Wellington again. She should stick to pheasant-under-glass, which is a real simple Nelson County dish."
"A family that stays together is nuts," says Grandma, entering the kitchen in her usual foul mood.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand," says Grandpa Walton.
"Which is a pretty good reason to get back to the Dew Drop and scuzz down a few," says Pa Walton.
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB