Last week my wife, Joyce, and I made my long-awaited trip to Mayberry. Actually, it was to Mount Airy, N.C. As we all probably know, Mayberry is the fictional North Carolina town that was home to The Andy Griffith Show for eight seasons.
As a kid and an adult, I have watched that show so many times I can actually carry on some of the dialogue. It’s a timeless classic of simple times, long before computers, the Internet, cell phones, and every other communications device known to man.
The only way to communicate in Mayberry was face to face conversation or hopefully that Sarah (the never seen phone operator) could get you through to the person you needed to speak to. After all, they were on a “party line.”
Mount Airy is the boyhood home of Andy Griffith. Many of the names and places used on The Andy Griffith Show are actual names and places in or near Mount Airy. We visited the Andy Griffith Museum and even got to meet Betty Lynn, the actress who played Thelma Lou (Barney Fife’s girlfriend on the show).
While waiting in line to meet Thelma Lou and get my photo made with her and an autograph (yes, I was the typical starry-eyed tourist), I visited with other fans. Betty Lynn only signs once a month normally so the museum had a greater number of visitors that day than I could have imagined. I stood in line with probably more than 100 people. Included among them was a family of five from Maryland. The mother was in her 40s and she had two daughters (probably about 12 and 13) and a younger son of about 8 or 9. They had been in town the entire week and had taken in all the sights, including the tour of the town in a Mayberry replica police car.
Their love for the show is amazing. None of them (the mom or dad and certainly not the kids) were even born when the show first aired in 1960. I was only 2 years old myself. But it has become an iconic show for people of all ages.
Why?
I think it is because deep down inside we yearn for the simpler times of life — where you could sit on the front porch in a rocking chair and truly relax and have meaningful conversations, a place where everybody knows everybody and they actually care for each other, a place where your kids could roam the neighborhood and you didn’t have to worry about their safety.
We yearn for the “security” that small-town atmosphere provided. In those days, most families never locked their doors. You could walk down the street without fear of being robbed or mugged.
Mayberry was not perfect. Townspeople had their squabbles and fights. It had a town drunk, jaywalkers (a no-no in Barney’s world), gossipers, and even a bank robbery on occasion. But in the end, everyone co-existed in harmony for the most part.
Deep down, we all want a Mayberry lifestyle whether we admit it or not. But most of us are realistic enough to know that Mayberry, after all, never really existed. But we can dream and long for such a place.
We will never find Mayberry on this earth, but I can’t help but feel heaven will seem a lot like Mayberry. Andy and Barney won’t be there, but Jesus will be. How better could it be than to spend eternity with Him in heaven?
If I could enjoy a trip to a town that never even existed, think how much more I will enjoy
heaven — a place that is real and is for eternity.
