“Where are y'all from?” a charming woman asked my husband, Carl, and me as we approached her counter at the Mount Airy Visitors Center.
When we responded “California,” she enthusiastically commented, “Welcome! We have so many visitors from all over!”
We had driven here to this small, friendly town of some 10,600 in the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains that is about an hour from my cousins’ homes in Wilkes County. I had visited my Southern relatives many times since childhood, but this was my first visit to Mount Airy, the hometown of actor Andy Griffith and an inspiration for small-town Mayberry in the popular 1960s television series “The Andy Griffith Show.”
After picking up tourist pamphlets, we went next door to Barney’s Cafe to have a delicious Barney Burger. There, we noted a large map of the United States and another of the world on the wall by the door. Both maps were covered with hundreds of colored pins from visitors all over the world. Most must have been like me, growing up on the show that ran from 1960 to 1968. It wasn’t actually filmed here, however, but in Los Angeles.
As actor Ron Howard, who played young Opie, wrote in his bestselling book “The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family,” the opening whistling scene in which he and Griffith (who played his father, Sheriff Andy Taylor) carry fishing poles slung over their shoulders was filmed in L.A.’s Franklin Canyon Park. Howard was only 6 when the series began; 14 when it ended.
“The ‘67–’68 season was No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings,” he writes, “drawing 35 million viewers a week.” Today, grandparents who watched the original shows bring their grandchildren (who, in recent years, have seen the nostalgic, mostly black-and-white series via cable TV) to tour Mount Airy. It makes for a great, generational family outing.
The quirky, funny, eccentric cast of characters—which included Deputy Barney Fife, Aunt Bee, Gomer and Goober Pyle, Otis, and Floyd the Barber—epitomized folksy Southern charm, warmth, and humor in dealing with various small-town catastrophes. Each 30-minute episode ended with a happy outcome and a moral lesson.
We toured a row of shops, several with souvenirs—T-shirts plastered with faces of Andy, Barney, Floyd, and other Mayberry characters; fridge magnets; books about Mayberry and Mount Airy, including “Mayberry Trivia: 1,500 Questions About a TV Classic” and “Aunt Bee’s Mayberry Cookbook: Recipes and Memories From America’s Friendliest Town”; CDs of Andy singing hymns; and a 39-disc set of all 249 episodes of the show. It was like Mayberry on steroids.
But that’s not all: Tourists rave about taking the guided hourlong ride around town in a 1965 Ford Galaxie 500 squad car (priced at $50 for up to four passengers). That’s on our list for next time. Diehard Mayberry fans can spend the night at Andy Griffith’s childhood home at 711 E. Haymore St., where he lived from age 8 to 18.
During our three-hour visit, we had a chance to tour the Andy Griffith Museum (next door to the Andy Griffith Playhouse), which was fascinating, with photos, scripts, clothing, scene replicas, and mementos from his acting days. Visitors are handed a sheriff’s “badge” to wear during the tour. Statues of Andy and Opie in front with their fishing poles make for a perfect photo op.
In September, the annual Mayberry Days draws thousands with a weeklong series of events, including a parade, concerts, actor appearances, contests, competitions, and other activities for the family.
As Howard writes in his book about the last day of filming in 1968, Andy spoke to the crew and actors: “I want to thank y'all for your good work, and you didn’t just make a successful TV show. You brought the town of Mayberry to life. In doing that, you brought my childhood to life again, week after week. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”
