(from today's TIMES)
MAYBERRY, N.C. -- I wish I could pick up the rotary
phone, dial “O” and have Sarah get me Sheriff Taylor down at the courthouse.
But … not gonna happen.
The flags are at half-staff today in Mayberry for
sure, and maybe even as far away as Mt. Pilot.
No checkers in Floyd’s Barber Shop. No Snappy Lunch
at The Diner. No ethyl or free air at Wally’s Service Station. No sale at
Weaver’s Department Store.
Silence for a vacant chair. Shoot, Otis isn’t even
drinking today. And all. And everything.
Andy Griffith, who became a part of the fabric of
American culture with his portrayal of Sheriff Andy Taylor in “The Andy
Griffith Show,” died at 86 Tuesday morning early in his home state of North
Carolina. It seems fitting on this Fourth of July to pause and honor a man and
a character who brought so much joy to so many, simply by offering us up a
picture of an All-American guy – if the All-American guy is one who loves his
family and his son, his buddies and his neighbors, his town and his country,
and who tries to make a difference where he is, even if where he is is just a
dot on a roadmap.
This is being written by a man who’d always wanted
to grow up to be Andy – but almost turned into Otis. Yet through highs and lows,
there Andy was for us, in re-runs, the same Andy’s I’d watched when I was
little, only now I was big and he was still trying to do the next right thing.
We could always count on Ange.
Years and years ago we formed a local chapter of The
Andy Griffith Rerun Watchers Club, of which I remain president and have a
certificate and everything, right over there on the wall. We members are bound
by a familiar love, and once even marched in the Holiday in Dixie parade. (Of course
you are welcome to join as it’s free.) The only requirement for membership is a
love of Mayberry and Andy and the gang, which seems to include all but the
great unwashed who haven’t dipped into the healing waters of these magical
1960s scripts.
Andy Griffith was good before he was Andy Taylor. If
you haven’t watched the movie “No Time for Sergeants,” please do, and listen
for young Andy as Army recruit Will Stockdale, saying forlornly while looking out
a barracks window and hearing Taps, “Somebody brung their trumpet.”
He was good AFTER Sheriff Taylor too, as “Matlock”
fans declare.
But the small-town sheriff, the writing team, the
characters created and the actors, well, like fried chicken and turnip greens, that’s
as good as it gets. The town remains a character in itself: Mayberry.
The humor alone could carry the show. Opie asking
his dad, “What CAN you do with a grown woman?” Gomer telling a visitor with a
bum car, “She’s an 8-cylinder; she’ll take eight!” Or Andy telling choir leader
John Masters before they discover Gomer can sing: “Last tenor I remember us
having was Bruce flowers, and he could only sing high after a fight with his
mother.”
So beautiful. Floyd trying to remember what Calvin
Coolidge either did or didn’t say alone is worth the price of admission.
And so, I’ve always had an understanding with my
bosses: if Merle Haggard dies, I get a free three days off. If Andy dies, I get
a week. They’ve always agreed.
But here I am working. Will be back at it tomorrow. Because
this is real life, and Mayberry is not. Right? I’m not so sure…
In interviews with him that I’ve read, Andy Griffith
often cautioned us to remember that Mayberry was a fictional town, one where
any problem could be solved in 24 minutes, give or take. I understand.
But while Mayberry is fiction, nothing outside of cartoonish
Ernest T. Bass (and I do love him so) is fake or phony, not even the Darlings. These
people who live in Mayberry, we know these same people in our towns. They teach
us school and cut our hair and fix our cars. They fish Myers Lake; we fish D’Arbonne.
As Andy Griffith said, Mayberry’s not real life. But
it IS life as it COULD be, if we were more concerned about our neighbor, if we
were willing to laugh a little more, maybe not take ourselves so seriously.
Even Andrew Jackson Taylor fumbled. But always he was willing to chop one more
piece of wood, carry one more pail of water for his friends, for strangers, and
for Mayberry.
A high sheriff’s star goes out. Hurts me. So with
you, I both mourn and celebrate the life of Andy Griffith. And Andy fans will
know what I mean when I say that “we shall watch, but we shall miss him.”
-30-
