That's correct Dave, I'm about 10 miles south of Mount Airy, NC (Mayberry in the show), it's where Andy Griffith was born and raised.
Sometimes I get nostalgic and think about where I grew up. It was sort of one of South Dakota's version of Mayberry. We had "Charly the Cop" that kept order and Mike Renner's dad was our version of Floyd the barber. We had our own version of Gomer and Goober too that worked at the Deep Rock station on the corner. We had Midkiff's hardware, Kibble's store, a clothing store, and Lil's Cafe (Lil Irish). I borrowed $200 to buy my first car from the bank, not from a loan committee, but from the guy that had the desk - the guy that owned the bank. He knew everyone well enough that all it took was a good character and an honest promise to may the payments. My fishin' hole was just down the hill from our house on Lewis and Clark lake.
Not only did nobody in town lock their house when they were out, most houses didn't even have locks at all. Nobody ever lost their car keys because they were all kept in the ignition switch (just in case somebody needed to move your car I guess). And every pickup came with a rack in the back window with a shotgun, a 22, and for the affluent, a Winchester lever action 3030. Our boy scouts met every week upstairs at the fire station, and the cub scouts met after school - at Mike Renner's house because his mom was the den mother. My number of closest friends doubled when I got to the 7th grade because our rural schoolhouses only went through the 6th grade so all of the farm kids showed up. Our class grew to a whopping 32 kids, but only 6 of them were girls. (They were very popular - and most of them were married before we graduated).
Saturday night was always hoppin'. As one of my friends used to call it, it was egg and daughter night - the night when farmers came to town to get rid of their eggs and daughters. The American Legion always had bingo and in December the Chamber of Commerce had drawings and gave out bags of peanuts and oranges. Squirt guns were filled at the water fountain outside the Community Hall - except for those nights when squirt guns gave way to pea shooters.
Sadly, the small, rural towns like Springfield are all pretty much gone. I think it's one of the reasons that so many people find their way to Mount Airy - to try to recapture some of the happier, less complicated times. We certainly thought we had the world by the tail, and perhaps we really did.
- Dave
