No. 36 - The Trip to Bountiful (1985)

A Story Of An Extraordinary Journey...

Rated: PG (Parental Guidance)

Director: Peter Masterson; Screenplay: Horton Foote

Starring: Geraldine Page, John Heard, Carlin Glynn, Richard Bradford, Rebecca De Mornay, Kevin Cooney

Movie Introduction: Carrie Watts (Page) may be old, but she suffers no shortage of spirit and determination. She lives with her brow-beaten son Ludie (Heard) and harping daughter-in-law Jessie Mae (Glynn). When she expresses a desire to travel to her see her childhood home in Bountiful, Texas, Jessie Mae blatantly refuses. Early the next day Carrie, who has hidden her government check that month, strikes out anyway, alone. She quickly learns that she must travel by bus and that there are no longer stops at Bountiful. She buys a ticket to get her as close as possible. En route she meets a pleasant young woman (De Mornay) with whom she shares both secrets and memories. At the bus' final stop, she finds herself stranded at a small town bus stop, her journey ended, completely heart-broken.  

Defining Moment: so close

Mrs. Watts has endured so much to get to the small Texas town that is closest to her beloved Bountiful. However, they are onto her. The sheriff has been called. She's being held at the bus station awaiting her son to arrive and to take her back to their city apartment in Houston. This proud lady realizes that she is beaten, a prisoner, unable to reach her goal. She crumbles into the chair, clutching her heart. Tears pouring. How can she have come so far, only to be stopped now?   

Something subtle you might have missed:  traveling by bus

People still travel by bus, but not like they used to. In the early 1970's, Mom and I took the Greyhound bus once a summer between El Paso and Abilene, Texas, a long ten-hour bus ride. Each trip was an adventure that I anticipated. Every single time, I'd start the trip my scribbling a list of the small towns we'd stop at along the way. Tye, Merkel, Sweetwater, Big Spring, Midland, Odessa, Monahans, Pecos, Van Horn. Then that long stretch along the Mexican border. No towns until Ysleta. I would always fall asleep and never finish the list. We loved the bus terminal in Pecos because they had a nice little restaurant. It was such a nice time for Mom and I - we felt so independent, as we braved the landscape of the lonesome Texas highway.  

Memorable Quotes:

"You are lucky to be married to the man you love... Awful lucky."- Carrie Watts

"I don't know of anything prettier, than a scissortail flyin' through the sky!" - Carrie Watts

Dad's Review:

Elsie. You only get one real mother and mine was Elsie Louise Straley Durham. She was a Texas gal, through and through. She had loving parents. Her father believed in education. I think that fact, in conjunction with attending college, helped Mom elevate herself. After her divorce, she went back to school and received her Nursing degree, becoming an LVN (Licensed Vocational Nurse) at age 47.  

This film, which incidentally my mother loved watching, reminds me of Mom in many ways. Geraldine Page’s mannerisms as Mrs. Carrie Watts are so familiar.  It is the little things her character does: how she sings old Church of Christ hymns, the value of her purse and its sizable contents, that sly little smile she lets out every once in a while. Sweet. Humble. Concerned. Slightly mischievous. She's also a woman who has lived through pain. Just like Carrie, Elsie, weathered the Depression, a husband away during the War, the death of her sister in a horrible car crash, a bitter divorce.

It is amazing how Mrs. Paige hits those moments so well in the film. 

It takes me back to a time and place filled with bittersweet memories.

Like Mrs. Watts, Mom loved the "home place". In 1976, Elsie and I lived in the suburbs of El Paso. I was about to go into seventh grade. We decided to move back home which was Callahan County, Texas. Within both of us, there was always this tug, an instinct if you will, to move back there. In the summer of 1975 we did just that. The old house was deserted, so we cleaned up the messes and had the raccoons removed from the overhead crawl space. We purchased a new water pump and put down some tile floors in a couple of the rooms. Surprisingly the original gas cook stove still worked. We bought some chickens and planted a garden. We made it a home again - our home. That memory is everything to me.

We happily lived there for until I left for college. She lived there until she couldn’t any longer.

Mom was one of the great ones.

I find the relationship between Mrs. Watts and her son, Ludie, particularly poignant. My father didn't show open affection to his mom.  We see Mrs. Watts doting over Ludie, because, for her, he’s forever her baby. It cuts like a knife when he is short with her, when he acts like he doesn’t remember things from his childhood, when he won't hold her hand.  It also kills her to have to endure her step-daughter’s cruelty. But endure it, she will, for her son. 

My mother doted over me like that, and I’m sure I acted embarrassed more than once. Mom, please forgive me.

The film’s main plot is the small adventure of her escape and the trip itself. Mrs. Watts sneaks away, boards a bus, and travels to a town near Bountiful (the bus no longer goes to Bountiful, which is all but a ghost town). She befriends a young lady along the way and we see her sweetness as she recounts her marriage, and the issues that came with it. She also reveals the pain she experienced when her true love married another woman just to spite her.

But, does she make it to Bountiful? I won’t spoil the ending, but it is a fitting conclusion to this wonderful, heartfelt story.

Onto No. 37... Large Salmon