ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 27, 1996 TAG: 9611270006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
It won't feel like Thanksgiving without a visit to Waltons Mountain, but we're not going this year.
I don't know about you but the last time we were over there I had this sad feeling that the Waltons are washed up and dated.
I thought about writing in a little modern touch - as in having Ma Walton use her butter and egg money to buy John-Boy a computer with the latest word-processing software and a printer that doesn't screw up like mine does. And having the bus break down in the snow on the way back from Charlottesville.
I couldn't do it.
Listen, there's nothing I'll miss more this year than watching a flour-daubed Olivia Walton preparing pheasant under glass for Thanksgiving. It's just that we've got to move on.
I'm reluctantly inventing a new family for the holidays and the times in general. They are the Smirnoffs, and they wouldn't be caught dead in Nelson County.
Mother Smirnoff is an executive who has knocked a pretty good hole in the glass ceiling and would be indignant at the mere thought of getting flour on her nose.
She jets about the country and the world, looking glamorous, working on a laptop and making six figures a year.
Father Smirnoff is a playboy who is dedicated to blowing all the bread his old man left him and spends a lot of time driving around in a $47,000 car - one of four in the family motor pool.
There are Grandfather and Grandmother Smirnoff. She wears designer clothes. He dresses like Bing Crosby. Nobody pays any attention to them.
There are four children - including Alexander-Person, who wants to be a spendthrift and a high-classed bum like his daddy.
Nobody pays any attention to the other three kids, who appear to be normal when they get any lines.
In our first episode, Cook is in the kitchen of the Smirnoff mansion preparing for a gourmet-style Thanksgiving dinner when Alexander-Person comes in.
"Gee, Cook," he says. "I hope my mother finishes that hostile takeover in Dallas in time to be home for Thanksgiving."
"Don't worry, kid," Cook says. "La Tarantula will be here."
"I hope so," Alexander-Person says. "I can't wait to tell her about getting kicked out of prep school for spiking the punch at the Halloween dance."
Mother Smirnoff and her laptop don't make it home for Thanksgiving.
She opts for a cocktail party with some big oil money in Houston.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB