John Boy's Journal - Personal journal kept by John Boy Walton (Richard Thomas) on the family drama THE WALTONS/CBS/1972-81. John Boy was the oldest of seven children living on Walton's Mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural Jefferson County, Virginia. Alone in his room John Boy recorded his private thoughts and stories of his family, friends and his life on Walton's Mountain. With dreams of someday becoming a writer, John Boy enrolled as an English major in Boatwright University and while there established his own newspaper The Blue Ridge Chronicle. When John Boy's novel was accepted by a publisher, he left Walton's Mountain and moved to New York. At the outbreak of World War II, he became a war correspondent in London and later wrote for the Stars and Stripes in Paris. In the made-for-TV movie The Homecoming-A Christmas Story (the 1971 pilot for the series) John Boy kept the door to his room locked when he wrote in his journal. His mother (Patricia Neal) wondered what was going on in there and later discovered John Boy's hidden journal. In later years John Boy remarked "I used to think I'd be married to my writing, and books would be my children." Soon after saying that he got engaged to a beautiful editor. The series was based on the movie Spencer's Mountain (1963) written by Earl Hamner Jr. who based the story on his own youthful Depression days in rural Virginia. Earl Hamner, Jr also narrated the series as the voice of John Boy.