Pilot

“These were the faces of the pioneers. By crossing the mountains, I had crossed into another time.” – Christy Huddleston

‘Christy’ is a series based on the 1967 novel. In 1912 a young woman left her home to teach schoolchildren in the mountains of East Tennessee. God is spoken of in the series but it doesn’t preach at you. It provides basic morals to further the story. The leading role stars Kellie Martin as Christy Huddleston, whose previous role includes ‘Life Goes On’, an American family that struggles with middle America life. It was Michael Landon who helped boost her career by getting a part in his angelic ‘Highway to Heaven.’

Christy was moved to take action by the speech of a missionary leader visiting church. They needed a teacher and she eagerly volunteered by riding a train from Asheville, NC to El Pano, TN. It’s roughly a 60-mile adventure. Christy made another 7-mile walk with the mailman to get to her schoolhouse in Cutter Gap. The cove and Cutter Gap are often used interchangeably. The closest modern cities are Knoxville, TN and her home Asheville, NC.

Christy’s fictitious setting is called Cutter Gap. It’s a cove nestled in the mountains that’s riddled with superstition and poverty. Christy notices the area appears as if it was stepping back into time or to another place. It’s 1912 and looks to be in the mid to late 1800s. There are no modern houses but shacks or in some few instances a cabin. The area is absent of electricity and running water. Children walk around shoeless because the area is so poor. Walk in the wrong area without warning and you’ll find a shotgun in your face.

Sometimes a show needs on location filming. The executive producer knew a Hollywood set or location in California would never work for what he wanted to accomplish. He thoroughly scouted up and down east Tennessee to get the perfect location. It was a farm located in Townsend, Tennessee. It was a hollow (pronounced: hall-er in TN) that provided a cove but more importantly a view of the Great Smoky Mountains. The view was pivotal for the show, as it provided such beautiful views for the audience.

Christy doesn’t get to the mission before she encounters a ruckus involving a severe injury in the cove. Bob Allen suffered an injury to the head, and he was on his way to pick up Christy, who had already left El Pano. It was an accident of a falling tree or was it? The area is riddled with feuding, especially between the Allen and Taylor families. There’s only one doctor in the cove, and that’s Neil MacNeill. He often has to take quick decisive actions due to the nature of an injury or illness. Here in the mountains one has to fetch someone, or in layman’s terms send a message by foot to one another. There are no telephones or technology here in Cutter Gap.

Christy finally arrives to the mission and is greeted by the preacher, David Grantland. David, his sister Ida and Miss Alice, the Quaker from Pennsylvania make up the whole of the mission’s workers. Dr. Neil MacNeill is the settled highlander with a Scottish background, and was long there before the mission. He’s a mountain man but well educated, unlike the folks living in the cove. He understands the locals better and insists the mission not to pressure them. Miss Alice becomes a mentor for the group spiritually. Ida helps with different chores in the mission, and the preacher gives the cove spiritual food, all the while trying to find his true purpose there.

The creators of the show were fans of the novel ‘Christy’ by Catherine Marshall. She was born in Johnson City, TN in 1914 and is the daughter of Leonora Wood. Catherine was telling the story of her mother. The novel is considered historical fiction, a mix of fact and fiction to entice the reader. The novel is 90-percent true according to a family member and around 2/3 to 3/4 accurate in the TV show. Executive producer Ken Wales struggled through 19 years in getting the rights for the story from MGM and bringing it to TV. He even mortgaged his house to accomplish this goal even when being teased by others. He never gave up. At the time, the CBS Network was looking for more family oriented television and Christy got picked up. The Pilot was marketed as a movie and was given the go ahead for more episodes.

Christy’s first day of teaching the children shows her ‘taking the roll’. The children vary dramatically in age from roughly 6-years to 18-years old. In quite a humorous light, the children describe their home addresses by word, “when you come to the fork in the trail, you just scoot under the fence.” There are no physical addresses for the mailman who delivers there. The smell is overwhelming to her in the wooden schoolhouse. The children aren’t use to showers and proper sanitation. Pigs are found underneath the school, and she soon finds out the main trouble maker amidst the class, Lundy Taylor.

The schoolhouse doubles as a church. This was quite common for poor areas of the United States especially in the mountains. Your bathroom was a wooden outhouse. Instead of studio movie sets, the show built every structure on-site by hand in Townsend, Tennessee, next to the Great Smokies. For many then and perhaps still today, the area may be considered quite remote and difficult to get to with movie film cameras. This skyrocketed the price to produce the Pilot and subsequent episodes, rounding out at an estimated $1.2 million for each episode in 1994.

Christy becomes so overwhelmed by the immense poverty, lack of sanitation and illiteracy that she eventually breaks down and is consoled by Miss Alice. These children don’t know how to read or write and for a matter of fact their parents don’t either. Their native accent and way of speaking is far from average. It throws a hidden veil over them because in some aspects they’re quite smart. One child doesn’t speak, and Christy doesn’t know why. These are the facts of the area and although they endure hardship their spirits aren’t entirely broken. It becomes a normal way of life by being born into such a remote, hidden location.

Christy falls into a river while riding horse back with preacher David Grantland. A fishing Dr. MacNeill sees this, and both he and the preacher battle for ‘the woman in distress’. They all take refuge warming up in Dr. MacNeill’s cabin. He gives Christy a new dress which will eventually become an interesting plot point for the show. The preacher and doctor become competitors between one another, for the love of Christy. However it’s a secret battle, as neither become overtly aggressive.

The people of Cutter Gap become belligerent to Christy after her arrival. They try to burn down the schoolhouse with her in it and wreck the place. They don’t take kindly to her nor what the mission has become. She finds a friend named Fairlight amidst the chaos. Christy tries to work her way through the challenges that are set before her, by trying to befriend a hostile community.

The Pilot brings so many highs and lows to make the storyline interesting. Christy’s shunned in one approach, greeted with love by the preacher, and is faced with the visual depression that is etched across the face of the children. It shines a light that peers into a hidden world of poverty and illiteracy. It’s a problem that still plagues the world today. How can you cope through such difficulties and how can you help those who are deprived of these basic necessities? The show asks the basic questions of life that we all have, and makes us focus on how we can overcome our obstacles.

Great beauty graces the mountains as well as the face of a woman. Underneath this beauty can lie a deep hidden struggle within. This is true for Cutter Gap, the world at large, and the story and life of Christy.