Beverly Hillbillies - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Beverly Hillbillies

A Facebook friend posted this MTV Beverly Hillbillies spoof by Wierd Al Yankovich that brought back memories from yesteryear. The show, which debuted in 1962 and ran for 9 years, was a family favorite that made us all laugh. I can especially remember Dad chuckling spontaneously while viewing every episode. I think his childhood during the Great Depression was a lot like the Clampett clan before they moved to California after striking oil on their property in Arkansas's Ozark mountains. They drove their truck pictured here with all their godly possessions and settled in a Beverly Hills mansion.

The series starts as Jed Clampett, an impoverished and widowed mountaineer, is living alongside an oil-rich swamp with his daughter Ellie Mae and mother-in-law Granny. A surveyor for the OK Oil Company realizes the size of the oil field, and the company pays him a fortune for the right to drill on his land.

Patriarch Jed's cousin Pearl prods him to move to California after being told his modest property could yield $25 million, while pressuring him into taking her son Jethro along. The family moves into a mansion in wealthy Beverly Hills, California, next door to Jed's banker, Milburn Drysdale, and his wife, Margaret, who has zero tolerance for hillbillies.

Incidentally, the Hillbillies mansion pictured here recently sold for $150 million to Rupert Murdock’s son. The Clampett's called the huge swimming pool their “cement pond”.

The Clampett's brought a moral, unsophisticated, and minimalist lifestyle to the swanky, self-obsessed and superficial California community. Double entendres and cultural misconceptions are the core of the sitcom's humor. Plots often involve the outlandish efforts Drysdale makes to keep the Clampett's' money in his bank and his wife's efforts to rid the neighborhood of "those hillbillies." The family's periodic attempts to return to the mountains are often prompted by Granny's perceiving a slight from one of the "city folk".

The popular show was followed by two other "country cousin” TV series on CBS: Petticoat Junction and its spin-off Green Acres, which reversed the rags-to-riches, country-to-city model of The Beverly Hillbillies.

The Beverly Hillbillies' theme song, "The Ballad of Jed Clampett”, was performed by bluegrass stars Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs playing banjo and guitar while Jerry Scoggins sang the lyrics during the opening and ending credits of each episode. The song actually reached number 44 on Billboard Hot 100 pop music chart and number one on the Billboard Hot Country chart.

10 little know facts about the Beverly Hillbillies:
https://screenrant.com/beverly-hillbillies-facts-never-knew/

Jethro played by Max Baer is the only cast member still living at age 83.

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