After my grandmother died in 2002, I ran across a video tape in her things and it brought back great memories. I had purchased that particular video for her several years earlier. It contained two episodes of a television show called Christy--based on the novel of the same name by Catherine Marshall.
Do you remember the series?
It ran from 1994 to 1995 and it was one of those rare television shows that could bring an adult grandson together with his grandmother to watch it every week. I was interested in the series because my grandma said the show depicted a life that was very similar to her own upbringing.
Here's a brief synopsis about the series from Amazon.com:
Determination, faith, and optimism are powerful forces that enable individuals to positively affect the lives of themselves and others. Christy...is the story of an idealistic 19-year-old woman named Christy Huddleston (Kellie Martin) who sets out for the wilderness of the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee in 1912 on a mission to educate the children of the remote community of Cutter Gap. A well-to-do girl raised in the city, Christy is shocked and completely unprepared for the extreme poverty, ignorance, and superstitious tendencies of Cutter Gap's people, but resolves to persevere in her commitment to better the lives of her young students. Each day brings a fresh lesson for the children and a new struggle that inspires Christy to draw upon and re-examine her own faith while striving to disprove local superstitions and replace long-held animosities and prejudices with virtues like forgiveness and respect.
I'd watch my grandma watch the show and she seemed to get lost in each episode. Grandma was born in 1915 and grew up poor in a small town in Arkansas. Christy was set in 1912 in a little town in Tennessee and it depicted families that were extremely poor, but often quite happy.
Sometimes they'd have a "singin'," sometimes they'd play spoons, sometimes they'd read the Bible. Nearly always, families shared meals together, and did manual labor together, and struggled to make ends meet together. And the occasional character brewed moonshine.
Grandma would nod and point as a scene reminded her of something she used to do. And then she'd launch into a story during the commercials. I should have had a tape recording running as she spoke, but that would have seemed too intrusive. Instead, I just drank it all in, trying to get a grasp on my heritage.
A couple of months ago, I was walking through a Best Buy and I spotted the entire Christy series on DVD. I purchased it and just started working my way through it. It is even better than I remember it. And while it feels odd watching episodes without getting grandma's input, it makes me feel closer to the generations who went before me in my family.
