- [first lines]
- Narrator: There was beauty on Waltons Mountain at any time of the year. But, looking back, the time I treasure most is spring when the days were growing longer and the promise of summer was ahead. They were the kind of days made for dreaming. But being the oldest of seven children during the Depression didn't leave much time for daydreams.I remember a morning in the 1930's when I'd been sent to the store to oversee the buying of a pair of shoes for my youngest sister, Elizabeth.
- Elizabeth Walton: You know anything about raccoons?
- Gino: Never saw one until today.
- Elizabeth Walton: I'll let you play with Pete when he's well again.
- Gino: Big deal.
- Elizabeth Walton: Yeah!
- John Walton, Sr.: Not that I enjoy getting anyone arrested. Sometimes I think there might be a better way to settle problems.
- John-Boy Walton: Look, Gino, we may be a bunch of dirt-poor hicks, but we got something a lot of other people miss. My mother and father happen to really love each other, and they happen to love their children. I've done an awful lot of thinking about what makes this family work and I think it's because there's love enough to go around and some to spare.