Remembering Andy Griffith and Mayberry

"Mayberry was the kind of town where we imagined good people lived ordinary lives and wise Sheriff Taylor, with the help of the ever-bumbling, mishap-prone Deputy Barney Fife, outwitted crooks and maintained order.  The townspeople of Mayberry had never heard of crack cocaine.  Otis, the town drunk, wasn’t such a comical character in retrospect, but we laughed at his antics, especially when outmaneuvering Barney, even in his inebriated state.   [On the Andy Griffith Show] we never saw or heard about the crime and disruption in society so common today.  Of course it was a bit unreal, but it was just a TV show, after all.  In its time it filled a niche.  The characters were eccentric, the gossip a trifle dull, and Floyd the barber always seemed to know everything that was going on, however often he got his stories badly mixed up…"

From a newspaper column I wrote in 1991 

It’s hard to believe that Andy Griffith is gone.  I’ll never forget those remarkable characters in "fictional" Mayberry (Mt. Airy, North Carolina, Andy’s birthplace and hometown).  There was something very real and very true to life about Sheriff Taylor and Aunt Bee, Opie and Barney.  Then there was Gomer and Goober, the beloved Aunt Bee, Howard Sprague and Helen Crump, among others in that very colorful cast.   When the series aired, and on reruns for many years afterward,  those stories of a small town came to life again and again. There was plenty of homespun philosophy, lessons to be learned about life, and a comfortable sense of right order in the little universe of Mayberry.  A total of 249 episodes aired between 1960 and 1968, and each one presented a morality play in miniature.

A number of years ago, on a long road trip, I stopped briefly in Mt. Airy to explore Andy Griffith’s hometown, and ever since then I’ve wanted to go back.  The main street is quintessential small-town America/North Carolina.  I was there on a Sunday, so didn’t get a chance to eat a pork chop sandwich at the famous Snappy Lunch cafe on Main.  I passed the barbershop which was the basis for Floyd’s Barbershop in Mayberry, and I got a powerful dose of nostalgia while I was there.  But the visit was too short and too incomplete.

Twenty years ago in 1991, I was working at a small-town weekly newspaper in a very rural area of South Carolina.  I didn’t plan to stay long there, but I always liked the "idea" of small-town living, even as I over-idealized it and overlooked many of the shortcomings.

I wrote weekly columns, and one week my topic was Frances Bavier, who played perhaps my favorite character on the show, Aunt Bee. The column was titled, "Remembering Aunt Bee."  Bavier had passed away in 1989, but I spotted a newspaper story about an auction of her belongings from her house in Siler City, NC, where she lived in relative obscurity in her later years.  She was 86 when she died.

Here are some more excerpts:

Who could ever forget that voice – – slightly high-pitched, but tender and caring, as she fussed over what Andy and Opie were wearing when it was cold, whether they’d had enough to eat, or wanted another piece of pie.  Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show was everyone’s favorite aunt — amiable, lovable, an institution in the mythical small Southern town of Mayberry…I hadn’t heard much about Aunt Bee over the years. [But] she is the kind of television character who has lived on in reruns, a perpetually 60ish, matronly woman with gray hair who was otherwise ageless in our eyes.  Who could imagine Aunt Bee not bustling about in the kitchen or rushing out the door to have lunch with some of her friends…

Aunt Bee, [Andy Griffith], and Mayberry are [pleasant] symbols of an era when times weren’t really all that good considering such realities as the Cold War and Cuban missile crisis racism, and poverty.  The world seems safer now that the Iron Curtain has been torn down, but here at home the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, so not that much has changed.  We like to live comfortable illusions, however, and most of the time they serve us pretty well, except when some thing, person or event rocks the boat. When that happens we can turn on the TV and watch an episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Aunt Bee wipes away little Opie’s tears and makes the world right again.

Rest in peace, Andy, and all the departed cast members of your show.  You will be greatly missed.