Sentimental Journey: Back to Mayberry (2003)

Who wouldn't like to take a trip back to 1960?  That's the year the Andy Griffith Show premiered, beginning an eight-year visitation in the small town of Mayberry that still delights many hearts.  Located in a far corner of the state of make-believe, Mayberry was an old-fashioned place even then, home to many quaint, amusing characters.  It was small-town America with the sad and ugly parts left out; a place where good humor, homely virtues, and common decency still ruled.  How very far away it seems today.

Your Head Trucker swore off broadcast television thirty years ago, so I never saw this reunion special with Andy and company that was made in 2003.  But I'm enjoying it now - maybe you will, too.

 

The Mayberry Special departs at 7 o'clock on Track 1.  I've got my Pullman ticket in hand.  Who else wants to go? 

Bonus:  Marina Coates from Mockingbird Lane Design has done a brilliant job of portraying the Taylor home in 3-D. Check it out: 

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In Memoriam: Andy Griffith, 1926-2012

Andy and Opie do a little fishing.

It's a sad day for the South. Andy Griffith, beloved for his TV portrayals of decent small-town Southerners, died today at his home in Manteo, Roanoke Island, North Carolina, at the age of 86.

Even though they were different personalities and from different parts of the South, something about Griffith's portrayal of Sheriff Andy Taylor always reminds me in a vague way of my father. (As it happens, Ron Howard and I are very nearly the same age, too.) There is - or at least, there was, well into the last century - a certain kind of well-rounded, down-to-earth, easy-going Southern personality that's hard to describe but easy to recognize; and it's not the stereotypes that our friends at the North love to make fun of. Something wise and dependable and comfortable to be with, and often rather humorous around the edges - a certain attitude towards life that is not seen so often these days.

Griffith was a great actor - if you doubt it, go watch his performance as an out-of-control rockabilly star in the vastly underrated A Face in the Crowd (1957) - so it would be a mistake to think that he and Sheriff Taylor are just alike; but Griffith was a Southerner and let the real, genuine flavor of that small-town background shine through his character.  It's never the same at all when a Yankee tries to imitate Southern accents or manners;  a few have done a good job of acting, but - it's obviously just acting.  Griffith gives you the real thing, although of course he's also playing for laughs much of the time. 

I still get a kick out of watching the Andy Griffith Show from time to time. Here's one of my favorite episodes, and one of the funniest.



Amazingly, Griffith never won an Emmy, either for TAGS or for Matlock - a great injustice.

One more thing: it should be remembered to his everlasting credit that Griffith, a lifelong Democrat, came out publicly in favor of Obama's healthcare reforms in 2010, despite heavy criticism from his Republican compatriots. Here's the PSA he made at that time:



Additional: It's come to my attention that George Lindsey, who played the clownish grease monkey Goober in TAGS, has also passed away, back in May. He was a very good actor too; everybody on that show was.

Lindsey as Goober:  "Judy, Judy, Judy."

OMG: The Foxx-Floyd Connection Revealed

Why didn't I see this before now?  It's so perfectly obvious.  But first, let me fill you in:

Pam Spaulding reports that Congresswoman Virginia Foxx - you know, the bitch, and I use the word advisedly, who claimed on the floor of the House that Matthew Shepard's heinous murder was not a hate crime but a "hoax" - well, Foxx is whining now like an unrepentant schoolgirl that the President delivered "another lecture" to her party at that Republican caucus last week.

Which didn't stop her one bit from gleefully tweeting to all her followers that she did manage to get the President's autograph afterwards.  Little schizophrenia there, ya think?

Well now we know why.  Kudos to PHB commenter Kat Rose for uncovering the mystery.  Foxx represents Mt. Airy, North Carolina, birthplace of Andy Griffith, and the real-life basis for the town of Mayberry in Griffith's eponymous series from the early 1960's.

In that series, a regular character was the goofy, garrulous, few-bricks-short-of-a-load Floyd the Barber.  Fans of the show will recall that once or twice Floyd makes a passing reference to a wife, but she is never seen, nor any of their presumptive progeny.

There's a reason for that:

As Paul Harvey would have said:  Now you know . . . the rest of the story.