In the hopes
of finding his fortune out West, Jasper T. Kallikak had moved his family from
their native Appalachia, where he had worked as a coal miner, to the small town
of Nowhere, California. He had inherited a small, two-pump gas station there and
figured that, as his own boss, he would improve his lot.
Conniving and
avaricious, Jasper lived by the theme song of this mini-series, always looking
for a way to beat the system. With his overly affectionate wife Venus, his
social-climbing teenage daughter, and his mechanical genius preteen son, not to
mention his German hired hand Oscar who could barely speak English, Jasper had
quite a household. One member of the cast should have felt right at home with
this hillbillies-move-west format. Bonnie Ebsen's father Buddy had spent most of
the 1960's as Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies.
