MORNING IN MAYBERRY...

It is morning. I am sitting in a small room at the 27 room Mayberry Motor Inn in Mount Airy, NC with a coffee from the nearby McDonald’s 24 hr drive through. No coffeemaker in the room. The motel looks to have been built in the early 1960’s. It is clean and well maintained by Alma Venable, whom I would assume to be the owner. It is a clean, functional, safe place to sleep, bathe, and prepare for the new day at a fair price. In any other town, it is the type of motel that I would have driven by on the way to a chain brand where, for 50% more, I would have the reasonable assurance that there would be a coffee maker in the room and twice the floor space. Here, however, I sit in this tiny little room fully aware of the fact that it is everything I need and, in this context, everything I want. Yet I know I am just visiting a place in time, a level of expectations and acceptability, which will shift towards bigger, newer, larger, and “better” when I drive out of town today. I wish it wouldn’t.

For today, however, I am in The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D and I settle that annoying little precursor of discontent in my gut with the idea that I am Barney Fife and I am spending some adventure time in a simple room away from home at the Mount Pilot YMCA where there is a twin sized bed, no phone, and the shared bathroom is down the hall. I am Barney, sitting on the side of the bed looking out the window as the sun rises and I am thinking to myself that this is a great day to be alive in the metropolis of Mount Pilot where there is so much to see and do. I am Barney, reaching for a pen to scribble a line on the postcard that I bought at the front desk so I can send it to Andy to tell him what a swell time I am going to have, feeling the need to get it in the mail quickly so as not to beat the delivery of it back to Mayberry. I figure that it should be there in three days and I (Barney) am staying in Mount Pilot for four, a day longer than originally planned, insuring that it will be in Andy's hands before I get back to Mayberry. Barney and I smile at the idea of Andy holding the card and imagining us having such a fine time. We wonder if it might not be better to be there when he gets it so we can enjoy watching him read it for the first time. It sho' does feel gooood thinkin' 'bout gettin' thought about...

Yep, I think the office is open now. Think I’ll stroll past the replica of the Mayberry squad car and Emmett’s Repair Shop truck on the way and get me another cup of coffee. Alma has an “Aunt Bee” room in the office, too, with all kinds of memorabilia from Frances Bavier’s estate, including some items from the show. If she’s up and moving around I might get her to tell me a little bit about when she was Andy Griffith’s mother’s hair dresser back in the day. I told her when I checked in that I was born and raised in Sylacauga, AL but I had never met Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle) though I knew people who knew him personally or were kin to him. Alma told me that she had been invited down to Jim’s induction into some Hall of Fame in Alabama but she didn’t go. I don’t know if that coincided with the big Jim Nabors Day event that was held in Sylacauga years ago. I was out of town at the time. In any case, I was curious about the importance of having Jim’s friend Andy Griffith’s mother’s hair dresser on the invitation list but, hey, it’s a small town. It would have been rude not to invite her. Nooo. Uh-uh. It just wouldn’t do to be thought of as rude. No, siree, sir...

Yep. Think I’ll mosey on over there and get me that cup o’ joe…