Opie, Floyd, Barney, Wally, Aunt Bee, Snappy Lunch . . . Aren't these names from a 1960s TV show that's still in endless reruns somewhere?
To drive home the point, the jangly theme from that show pours, muted, from a dozen speakers along Main St. and the water tower bears a silhouette of a man and a boy with a fishing pole. Yes, it's The Andy Griffith Show, maybe better known from its rerun title Andy of Mayberry.
Mount Airy is Griffith's home town and the citizens have taken him to their hearts by replicating his fictional Mayberry downtown. But there's more than nostalgia at work here: The makeover brings something like 65,000 visitors a year to this western North Carolina town (population: 10,000).
Readers scarcely need to be reminded that Griffith played Andy Taylor, the easy-going widowed sheriff of rural Mayberry. Ronny Howard (who grew up to be movie director Ronald Howard) was his son, and they lived with Andy's Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier). Don Knotts was the inept deputy Barney Fife.
There wasn't much crime in Mayberry, so the stories revolved around the everyday problems of its citizens, problems that were, as often as not, solved in the Snappy Lunch or the Bluebird Diner (yes, it's here, too, in resurrected form), or down at Wally's service station.
Strolling around, you'll find posters and cutouts of the main characters everywhere. Most visitors end up at the Andy Griffith Museum, at the old Rockfort St. school, where Griffith first appeared on stage at the age of 10 and decided he wanted to be an actor.
Much later, guide Roger Sickmiller says, Griffith was involved with producers in Hollywood, working on the rural sitcom that became The Andy Griffith Show.
"To get the feel of a small southern town, Andy persuaded the producers and writers to come here, which is why Mount Airy is so like Mayberry," he says. "But the show wasn't filmed here; it was shot on a backlot of the Desilu studios in Hollywood."
Griffith's boyhood home is now an upscale six-bedroom B&B. The museum reviews his career on the stage, films and television, through posters, costumes, awards and other artifacts.
Visitors who get tired walking can take a "squad car" tour of the town. They ride in a 1960s Ford police cruiser, just as Andy and Barney did, driven by guide Sickmiller in khaki police uniform, just like Andy wore.
And if they have a mind to, they can get married in the cell of the (fake) Mayberry Police Station, with Sickmiller (did I mention he's a clergyman, too?) reading the vows.
Mount Airy mounts a festival called Mayberry Days every September (22-25 this year), with parades, a golf tournament, talent contests, musical events and lots more hoopla. Actors who appeared on the show are usually honoured guests; this year's line up includes Betty Lynn (who played Barney's one-time girlfriend, Thelma Lou) and Maggie Peterson Mancuso (Charlene Darling), as well as Don Knotts' daughter Karen.
-- Mount Airy is just south of the Virginia state line, 60 km northwest of Winston-Salem, N.C. For more information, see visitmayberry.com.
