TERRE HAUTE —
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
Griffith, the lovable and wise father figure to so many of my generation, died at age 86 in his North Carolina home on July 3, and I couldn’t help but think that morning last week when my son called to tell me the news, that I was thankful that I will still be able to listen to Andy sing “Church in the Wildwood” with Barney on the Taylors’ front porch, watch him fish for bass with his son, Opie, out on Myers Lake, and see him forever walking the streets and checking the doors of a Mayberry that we wish still existed.
For me, “The Andy Griffith Show” has always been a haven of rest. It may sound a bit sentimental, even odd for a grown man to admit, but after particularly hectic days at work, or just when I feel a little down, I find myself migrating toward our family room to watch a few reruns of a show that take me back, at least for a little while, to my childhood, to a black-and-white world where Andy Taylor could solve all problems, smooth over arguments, and make us laugh, at least for half an hour at a time.
There will never be another television show like Griffith’s. The world seems to take itself too seriously these days, and even though Andy Taylor was sheriff at a time when a war in Vietnam raged and our cities burned in anger, his show was a constant reminder over its 249 episodes that there is always a time for laughter, for family and good friends, and for taking the time to sit and rest a while. For those reasons alone, it remains, to me anyway, indisputably modern.
I grew up with Andy and Barney and Aunt Bea and Gomer Pyle. I was only 4 when the series debuted in October 1960 as a spin-off of “The Danny Thomas Show,” and, for most part, I remember watching the first-run color episodes at my grandparents’ house on Monday nights. By the time Griffith left the show in 1968, and it morphed into “Mayberry RFD,” I was already catching its early years in re-runs. I have been watching and re-watching them ever since, sometimes spending hours around a Christmastime table quoting the show’s scripture chapter and verse with my equally enthusiastic sister, Lora, a card-carrying Andy Taylor loyalist if there ever was one.
Griffith was an amazing talent. Had he never become Andy Taylor, we would still remember him as the fame-hungry “Lonesome” Rhodes in “A Face in the Crowd,” or as the toilet seat-saluting Will Stockdale in “No Time for Sergeants,” or for his “What It Was, Was Football” routine, a monologue my sister and I snickered to on a record we lost years and years ago. I think we also had a few old Spike Jones records.
These days, I use several episodes of Griffith’s show in an honors English class for a unit I call “Man and His Sense of Place,” for surely no character in the history of television was more comfortable in his own skin than the small town North Carolina sheriff who refused to wear a gun because he wanted to appear friendly. Many of my students have seen the show before, but more and more of the seniors I teach have never seen a single episode, have never heard of “Checkpoint Chickie,” Ernest T. Bass, “Miracle Salve,” or know that Barney bought his first car off of “Hub Caps” Lesh, who thought she’d gotten “… three hundred clams from the sucker of the world.” I love remedying that situation.
One of my favorite episodes, called “Class Reunion,” first aired in February 1963. Like many of the best, it was written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, although Griffith’s artistic fingerprint was on every program. “Class Reunion” shows my students why growing up and staying in a small community like Mayberry need not be a sign of weakness or a lack of ambition. As we follow one storyline in which Barney fondly recalls Ramona Wiley and her yearning for him in high school (she supposedly wrote him a note that read: “Barney beloved, the tears on my pillow bespeak the pain that is in my heart”), Andy briefly rekindles his flame for first-love Sharon DeSpain, who had left her home town to live a successful life in the big city. Andy eventually tells her that he doesn’t need to go elsewhere to live his life; Mayberry has everything he wants. “It’s a good place to raise children, a lot of good friends, a good place,” he tells her.
At the top of my list — I wrote an entire column about this episode over six years ago — is “Man in a Hurry,” which first ran in January 1963; it too was written by Fritzell and Greenbaum. In it, a Raleigh businessman named Malcolm Tucker faces car trouble in Mayberry. It being a Sunday, Tucker soon discovers that he can’t get his car fixed, that the town virtually shuts down on Sunday afternoons, and that the one available phone line is occupied by the aged Mendelbright sisters, who spend hours discussing their sleeping feet. Tucker is driven to distraction, and at one point declares, “You people live in another world.” In the end, after a memorable moment on Andy’s front porch when even the preoccupied businessman is caught up in the simple beauty of the old hymn that Andy and Barney sing in harmony, we see Tucker, a half-peeled apple in his hand, asleep in a rocking chair, apparently content, at least for a while, to let the world pass him by. It is an image of peace and contentment rarely, if ever, seen on television today.
If you already know that Briscoe Darling gets choked up when he hears “There Is a Time,” that Floyd Lawson once hit Charley Foley in the nose over an unpaid shave, that Otis Campbell passed the “Barney Fife Peter Piper Nose-Pinching Test for Drunks,” and that Clara Edwards won the blue ribbon for her pickles at the county fair (her secret is allspice) 12 years in a row, then I imagine that you’re missing Andy Griffith a bit right now. Those of us who love the show are bound to miss him.
But, in a lot of ways, Andy Taylor, who became a friend to so many of us, will live forever.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by email at hickory913@aol.com, or c/o the Tribune-Star at PO Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com for more information about his books.
Mike Lunsford
Related Photos
-
Tribune-Star columnist Mike Lunsford
Discussion
MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
- Mike Lunsford
-
-
A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
-
Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
-
Raw: New Video of Deadly Oklahoma Tornado
Jodi Arias: Death Penalty Would Cause More Pain
Raw: Aftermath of Deadly Attack in London
IRS Official Pleads 5th Amendment
Florida FBI Shooting Has Boston Bombing Links
Okla. City Mayor: Up to 13K Homes Hit by Tornado
Looking for Love? Take the Prague Metro
Police Ram House to End Hostage Standoff
Garcetti Elected Los Angeles Mayor Over Greuel
Lawyer: Feds Investigating Susan Powell Case
First Person: Baby Falcons on a New York Bridge
Today in History May 22
Paperless Scanner, Vision of the Future
Crews Race to Find Survivors of Okla. Twister
Raw: Costa Rica Volcano Roars to Life
Oklahoma: Images of Devastation, Reunion
Raw: Aerial View of Moore Tornado Damage
Former Rep. Weiner Running for New York Mayor
Raw: Students Clash With Police in Chile
Families Begin Returning to Their Homes in Moore
AK-47-wielding thug may be the most bumbling crook ever
Oklahoma Survivors, Heroes Survey Damage
Trout's cycle a boost for Angels
Kim Kardashian Flaunts Pregnant Bikini Body in Greece
NBA star pledges $1M to help tornado recovery
Shakira's Shocking Talent
Morgan Freeman falls asleep on air
GRAPHIC: Blood-Soaked Machete Killer Caught on Tape
Elin Nordegren Furious With Lindsey Vonn For Parading Kids in Public
Camera Captures Climber As He Loses Grip And Falls
Helen Mirren Meets with Dying Boy in Queen Elizabeth's Place
Crowd Chants '¡Si, Se Puede!' After Passage of Immigration Bill
DWTS Crowns a Winner
Demi Moore a Rocks Bikini at Harry Morton's Family House
Anthony Weiner: I'm running for New York City mayor
Kate Middleton's Dress Flies Up
VIRAL: Baby makes epic soccer goal
The Hangover Baby All Grown Up
