Andy griffith cast8/15/2023 ![]() ![]() Bragg and having a father who served in the National Guard there, the memories of those deaths, McDonald”s assertion that a bunch of “hippies” killed his family, and the subsequent trials in Raleigh are my equivalent of the Manson murders). Bragg accused of killing his wife and children (As a kid growing up 75 minutes from Ft. I never saw an episode of “Matlock,” Griffith”s detective series from the ’80s and ’90s, and I don”t remember him at all as the federal prosecutor in the made-for-TV movie “Fatal Vision,” which told the story of Jeffrey McDonald, a Green Beret stationed at Ft. I occasionally accompanied him to smalls towns just like Mayberry where nobody knew a stranger, everybody was your friend and there was always a cold soft drink (usually a Sun Drop in a glass bottle) waiting for Walt”s daughter. My father traveled the state a great deal for work when I was growing up. Oh sure, it was fine for Floyd the Barber to poke fun at service station attendants Gomer or Goober, but they”d circle the wagons right fast if an outsider tried to do so. Even though there were broad characterizations, Griffith never made fun of his own and understood the difference between a stereotype and a caricature. Yes, it was an idealized version of southern country life, but it didn”t feel that farfetched, perhaps because Griffith knew the area so well and threw in so many aspects of his own childhood. There was always time to sit and pick for a spell, often with Andy on guitar. ![]() No pie for them.Įven better was when someone would come through Mayberry (an inordinate number of cars seemed to breakdown there), who just happened to have superior musical skills, like Flatt & Scruggs or The Dillards (as The Darlings). Well, Andy would sit right down and set them straight with his sly, homespun wisdom. And heaven help those big city folks (usually from the North, if I recall correctly) who came through Mayberry thinking they could pull one over on the local rubes. Nothing ever happened in Mayberry that Andy couldn”t fix within an half-hour episode, whether it was someone stealing Aunt Bee”s pie recipe or Opie lying or Otis needing to sleep one off in the drunk tank…again. Plus, Raleigh was seen as a thriving metropolis and destination on the show: Deputy Barney Fife frequently talked about coming to Raleigh on vacation, staying at the YMCA, and taking in a picture show. “The Andy Griffith Show” was the first television series that I had knowledge of being set in North Carolina and every time someone mentioned Raleigh in an episode, this little girl”s heart would swell with pride that all over the country people were hearing the name of my home town. Mayberry may have been a fictional town that stood in for Griffith”s real hometown of Mt. Not only did the widowed father take care of his boy, Opie (with the help of Aunt Bee, or “Aint” Bee, as everyone on the show pronounced it), he saw to it that none of Mayberry”s fine denizens came to any harm. Though Griffith played Andy Taylor, the sheriff of Mayberry, and I”m quite sure his jurisdiction did not extend beyond the city limits, it felt like his avuncular, benevolent presence watched over all of us. (Read Alan Sepinwall’s fine appreciation here). I never met him, but for anyone in North Carolina who was raised watching “The Andy Griffith Show” whether in real time or in its continual reruns, Griffith was the closest thing we had to a human god who wasn”t famous for throwing a ball or was named Billy Graham. When I heard of Andy Griffith”s death this morning, it felt like I”d lost an uncle. I grew up in Raleigh, N.C., or The Big City, as it was referred to on “The Andy Griffith Show.”
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