The Waltons weren't poor

No. It's too twee but not in the cute way that the original was. Also no realism which is a shame because I thought a remake could address that.

They got by, all kids went to School and they had two hot meals a day (and lunch). They ran two cars (ok a truck and JB’s little car). Compared to some of the poorer people up the mountain they were well off.

I don't think I can 😳 I was brought up on both of these and can't imagine remakes at all. Are you enjoying it?

The depiction of people in the USA back in those times, regarding contraception and women's choices, are so strange. My grandma had 14 kids and always said she wanted more. She was born in 1920 and had her first child in 1934.

She wasn't forced into her lifestyle so it is so interesting to me how people just assume something is true because they made it up, someone else said so or they think it should be that way based on standards of today.

She wasn't raised poor but married poor out of love and against her parents wishes.

People were 'poor' even though they ate. Poor is different than destitute.

My 'poor' grandma also owned chickens, broke their necks herself when they could no longer lay eggs. She had a garden and a car that she rarely drove because she didn't have a license.

Her older children gave their clothes to their siblings when they outgrew them. Some, not all, had shoes. They didn't always have three meals a day and sometimes skipped meals for a day or so. Some times were harder than others.

Her neighbors were destitute. They couldn't afford a garden or chickens. My grandma would help their family out as much as possible.

My grandpa was a bricklayer.

He built the house that was able to accommodate 14 kids with the help of his father in law on land that he bought before marrying my grandma.

Slightly off topic but is anyone watching the new LHOTP on netflix?

Did they ever claim to be dirt poor though. I thought it was more 'we didn't have much but had each other' sort of thing.

They probably thought they were, don't you think? Relative to the Baldwin sisters, or Ike Godsey even! I remember one episode where Olivia says she remembers how they never failed to save a few dollars a week but now they didn't even have a dollar for something.
(I've just realised I'm coming across as a bit of a Waltons weirdo 🤣).

I have had the summer bug from hell for 3 weeks and The Waltons have kept me going 🤣 I've had the very same thoughts as you OP. There's struggling to maintain your previous lifestyle and comforts and then there was dirt poor. They were not dirt poor.

My grandparents were poor and had sixteen children. In a house with two bedrooms.

I never thought that the Walton family were meant to portray the people living in absolute poverty like the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath were. Rather, they had been a fairly well to do family who were suffering the effects of the depression. They had their sawmill and the mountain but business wasn't good due to nobody wanting to buy lumber. The real dirt-poor were the cousins of the family, Boone Walton with his moonshine. In later episodes Mary Ellen visits the very poor families living up in the hills who never come down. If you visit the area around Schuyler, Virginia where Earl Hamner came from, there is still a lot of poverty amongst mountain people.

Can their poverty ever compare to the slums surrounding the factories across England/Scotland? At least no-one was actively choosing to not pay enough wages, or build mansions, while children died from the slum housing they collected rent on. I never realised they were supposed to be poor, because life looked exceptionally good to what my GM described, including the death of her brother from TB.

TIL they’re two different programmes 😳

They may have been 'cash poor' but have good means for making and maintaining a living.
However, they were rich in a family's goodness and love, and are an example to us all in how to live on a mountain in the USA in the 1930s. Goodnight Mary Ellen 😀

See, now I have The Waltons and LHOTP theme tunes both stuck in my head.
If I block one, the other one appears in its place. 👂 🪱

I think that's why I loved it as a teen, it was working class poor as we knew it

We had a roof over our heads and food on the table, but sod all else , no money for sweets or treats

What I really loved was the love within the family

So until you've been that poor...walk a mile in their shoes

Or their bare feet.

They couldn't grow enough veg to feed a family of 11 for very long and I don't remember them having 'stock'? Maybe one cow for milk, but they didn't butcher and eat meat.

I see your Grapes of Wrath and I raise you The Trouble I've Seen by the late, great Martha Gelhorn. A book of factual short stories/recollections of life during the Great Depression. The last story about child prostitution is so awful I couldn't finish it.

The Waltons had it easy in comparison, although they could have benefited from some contraception. Also, surely the most pressing thing aboug the Waltons is why the mother actresses real name is/was Michael. That used to really confuse child me 😅

Coming from an English working class family where mum was one of 11 and dad 10. The idea that contraception was used is blown out of the water by the number of families who lost 5 or more children in the first war. Just a few years before the Walton children were born.

The depression meant that no one was building, so there was no one buying the Walton's timber.

When you say they could grow their own food, have you ever tried it...it's very time consuming, at any time a pest or too much water, or too little can ruin a crop.

Elvis Presley was born in 1935, his dad went to prison for altering a food cheque. Jerry lee Lewis was born in 38 and his dad went to prison for moonshine....both from the deep south. Elvis' dad built the house he was born in, a shot gun shack

The white farmers were known as red necks from time spent in the fields working

Appalachia is still the poorest part of the us...

So until you've been that poor...walk a mile in their shoes

I mean, to be fair, Grandpa Walton generally talked a load of bollocks.