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Andy griffith barney6/9/2023 ![]() ![]() "Our former president had a lot of support here. Koppel asked Collins, "If I wave the political thermometer across the forehead of Mount Airy, do people here believe that Joe Biden is the legitimate president?" And went in our Main Street, and they served us, but we had to go out and eat." Maggie Rosser, Evelyn Scales Thompson and Bobby Scales, born and raised in Mount Airy, and now returnees. ![]() She and her younger brother and sister were all born here in Mount Airy, left, and returned. Mayberry is where more than 30 million Americans a week went to escape reality, which is why it's strange to find so many people half a century later searching for what made America great in a copy of a town that never was.Īnd, as Randy Collins of the Chamber of Commerce acknowledges, African Americans were all but invisible on "The Andy Griffith Show." "There were very few speaking parts," he said.Ĭollins said, "If you watch closely in the crowd scenes, I think Andy and others on the show pushed to make sure that there were people of color in the crowds, but you have to look closely." What actually happened during the years the program first played – the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War, marches by African Americans for the right to vote – those events never intruded inside Mayberry's imaginary town limits. Koppel asked the Fosters, "You watch 'The Andy Griffith Show' four hours a day?" It is no exaggeration to say that this re-creation verges, for the Fosters, on being a national monument. But now with streaming television, Andy will be forever with us, and we hope a younger generation will pick it up."Īs if on cue, the Foster family, from Pomeroy, Ohio, showed up. Take a ride in a vintage Ford Galaxy squad car, the kind Barney Fife would use to drive malefactors to the Mayberry Jail in "The Andy Griffith Show."Ĭollins said, "We are constantly looking at other ways that we can promote the community, 'cause we know the Mayberry generation won't be here forever. These days there's a whole fleet of them carting tourists around town. Stop by at Wally's filling station, and you can get a ride around town in a vintage Ford Galaxy squad car. They believe it's real."Īnd, let it be said, the town isn't doing a whole lot to undermine the illusion. "Most everyone knows that! Except maybe some of the rabid fans of the show. "True Mayberry is fictitious," Collins said.
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