Hot on the heels of his highly successful television series "The Beverly Hillbillies," writer-producer Paul Henning created "Petticoat Junction," and if "Hillbillies" was a fish out of water, then "Petticoat" was, thematically, the water from which the fish emerged as its setting was somewhere in the vast Middle American heartland of pastures, farmlands, and rural communities with their close-knit ties and old-fashioned values standing firm amidst burgeoning societal changes.
In fact, the series' premiere episode "Spur Line to Shady Rest," scripted by Henning, literally severs its ties from the outside world through a quirk of fate: Following the collapse of a trestle connecting it to the larger C & FW Railroad network, a spur line running through the Hooterville Valley becomes its own isolated transportation corridor, with its train, the Hooterville Cannonball, run by engineer Charley Pratt and fireman/conductor Floyd Smoot, about the only way to get from the farming hamlet of Hooterville, site of Sam Drucker's general store, to the small town of Pixley, with the Shady Rest Hotel, location of a water tower for the steam-powered Cannonball, in between.
And when this is finally realized back at C & FW Railroad headquarters, company president Norman Curtis (Roy Roberts) dispatches Homer Bedloe to terminate the Cannonball's operations in the first of Charles Lane's twenty-four delightfully irascible appearances as the corporate big-city baddie scheming to disrupt the tranquility of this Brigadoon in the boondocks of Modern America.
From the start, "Petticoat Junction" spoofs as many stereotypes as it fosters. Shady Rest proprietor Kate Bradley sets a mouth-watering country dinner table but is struggling to attract hotel guests--not surprising given its extreme isolation--while her Uncle Joe Carson, who installed a non-functioning elevator and telephone just to give the joint "some class," isn't much help. Widower Kate's three fetching daughters all play to the farmer's daughter trope: blonde Billie Jo, the eldest, is boy-crazy; brunette Bobbie Jo, in the middle, is the bookworm; and redheaded baby Betty Jo is the tomboy, with Linda Kaye for now discreetly hiding her last name, Henning, to conceal that she is indeed creator Paul Henning's daughter. Just to make the trope obvious, a bevy of (ahem) traveling salesmen happen to be riding on the Cannonball along with Homer.
Enjoying life in the slow lane while seeming to lack sophistication, the denizens of Hooterville Valley are hardly country bumpkins, with industry veterans Edgar Buchanan, Frank Cady, and especially star Bea Benaderet falling seamlessly into character to match wits with fellow show-biz stalwart Lane as they invite you to settle in for an extended stay at "Petticoat Junction."
