Hooterville
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Hooterville or Tit Town, was a fictional town that was the setting of the American television sitcoms Petticoat Junction and Green Acres.
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[edit] Citizens
Hooterville county had a population of 3,000 citizens (as of 1963), such as Newt Kiley who farmed over 80 acres (320,000 m²); Ben Miller, the apple farmer; Mr. Haney (first name disputed, Eustace or Charlton), the county con man; Hank Kimball, the idiotic county agent; Sam Drucker, the only shopkeeper in Hooterville; Sarah Hotchkiss Trendell, the telephone operator; Fred Ziffel, a pig farm owner; Doris "Ruthie" Ziffel, Fred's loud and nosey wife (the couple also owned an intelligent pig named Arnold); Charley Pratt and Floyd Smoot, the engineer and conductor respectively on the local train, the Hooterville Cannonball; and Eb Dawson, the handyman for the Douglases. "Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight" was the only song that the Hooterville Volunteer Fire Department Marching Band could play--at half speed and somewhat off-key.
[edit] Petticoat Junction
Petticoat Junction (1963–70) was set in the Shady Rest Hotel, which was located 25 miles down the tracks (and apparently the sole business in the area aside from Drucker's). The Shady Rest Hotel was run by widowed Kate Bradley (played by Bea Benaderet) and her lazy, overweight uncle "Uncle Joe" Carson (Edgar Buchanan). Kate had three daughters, "boy crazy" Billie Jo, "book worm" Bobbie Jo, and "tomboy" Betty Jo. In addition to his storekeeping duties, Drucker was also the town's postmaster and publisher of the local weekly newspaper, the Hooterville World Guardian. Drucker also operated a bank, which seemed to consist largely of a cash box located under the counter in his store.
[edit] Green Acres
Green Acres (1965–71) was about a wealthy New York City couple, lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert) and his diamond-clad wife, Lisa (Eva Gabor), who give up their Park Avenue penthouse for a run-down farm, the "Haney" place. Hooterville in Green Acres was a much more wacky, surreal place than the one in Petticoat Junction, though the shows shared characters, as the humor in Green Acres was often far broader. In the shows' later years, the major overlap between the two was Sam Drucker and his combination general store, post office, and newspaper office. In this series, the town was said to be named after Horace Hooter.
[edit] Location
The location of Hooterville was never explicitly stated, but it was implied to be in or very near Illinois. In numerous episodes it was said that they were close to Chicago; in one Green Acres episode, Mr. Haney said Chicago was 300 miles (480 km) away. Another time it was said a nearby town was called Springfield, which is also the name of the capital city of Illinois & a city in Southwest Missouri Springfield, Missouri. Hooterville may also have been in the Ozarks. One of the working titles for Petticoat Junction had been Ozark Widow (another had been Whistle Stop). The cast of another CBS show, The Beverly Hillbillies, had some connection with the characters in Petticoat Junction, when Cousin Pearl contacted Granny to deliver Betty Jo Bradley's baby; the Clampetts hail from southern Missouri. The name "Hooterville" is actually first used in episode No. 6 of The Beverly Hillbillies by supporting character Jasper "Jazzbo" Depew (Phil Gordon). Sam Drucker, the grocer and Postmaster, gives the Zip Code for Hooterville as 40516 1/2. 40516 is the code for Lexington, KY, a city 375 miles from Chicago.
According to "Dave Stein's Official Petticoat Junction Site", http://petticoat.topcities.com/page1.htm , the inspiration for Hooterville came from Paul Henning's wife, Ruth. As a child, Ruth traveled by train to her grandparents' hotel in Eldon, Missouri. Eldon, Missouri is right at 300 miles, as the crow files, from Chicago. Other than distance and a hotel near the railroad tracks, though, there is little resemblance between Hooterville and Eldon, Missouri.
[edit] Towns and Cities Within 500 Miles
A larger town nearby, although not the county seat, was called "Pixley", and there is an ongoing rivalry between the two communities. Pixley was about 50 miles from Hooterville. Other towns in the area were Crabwell Corners (about 5-8 miles away), Stankwell Falls (distance never stated), Bugtussle (about 20-25 miles away), Bleedswell (distance never stated), the unnamed county seat (about 75 miles away), Springfield (distance never stated), Appleville (300 miles away), Chicago (300 miles away), and the unnamed state capital (500 miles away). Most of the above towns are also apparently near The Beverly Hillbillies "back home" town of Bugtussle. One place mentioned on Hillbillies as being near the above places is Silver Dollar City —apparently an in-joke.
In one episode of Green Acres, "How to Get from Hooterville to Pixley Without Moving", it thought the Douglas's farmhouse is in Pixley and the barn in Hooterville. By the episodes end, we learn there was an error and the farmhouse is in Hooterville after all. The barn is in Pixley and much to Oliver's surprise the rest of his farm is in Crabwell Corners, so the three towns must be of large physical areas.
In one episode of Petticoat Junction, surveyors determined that the Shady Rest Hotel was built on top of the city boundary line between Hooterville and Pixley. This implied that the two towns were much closer together than originally thought.
[edit] Inspiration
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It would seem an obvious conclusion that the name "Hooterville" was inspired by the term "hooters" for women's breasts (lengthy reference is made to this in the That 70s Show episode "Eric's Birthday"). One of the first images in the opening credits of Petticoat Junction is that of Kate's three daughters, skinny-dipping in the train's open-topped water tower, with their petticoats draped over the rim (filmed from ground level, of course). The image is reinforced by the theme song lyric, "Lots of curves, you bet / And even more when you get / To the Junction." However, following the standards of early 1960s television, this was about as sexy as it ever got. Any vague hint of sexuality was always played for laughs. This image was first started on Paul Henning's other TV series the Beverly Hillbillies on which tom boy Ellie May was seen in skin tight blue jeans and a tight blouse making the best of her "ample size."
12/26/2007 Is it really such an obvious conclusion? Was "hooters" even used as a reference to a woman's breasts in the 1960's when Petticoat junction was created? I did a quick online check for the etymology of "hooters," but found nothing conclusive. Drawing on personal experience though, I don't remember hearing breasts called "hooters" until 1977 or 1978, several years after Pettycoat Junction was off the air.
[edit] Further reading
Tropiano, Stephen (2000). TV Towns. New York, NY: TV Books L.L.C.. ISBN 1-57500-127-6.
