Mayberry-Mt. Airy

After a good night of sleep and a shower, we drove to a biscuit restaurant to meet Joy and Norman. It was so good to see and to talk with them again. Joy collects Pepsi product items. I brought three Pepsi hats and a duct tape handbook as gifts.

The breakfast was great and the reminiscing was so much better. We sat in a corner booth where we could talk and relax as we ate. We will meet them again later in the week. They were on their way to visit one of their daughters and their grandsons in Lexington, Kentucky.

After a few hugs and good-byes, we were off and driving to Mt. Airy, North Carolina. Mt. Airy was the birthplace of Andy Griffith. It was the model for the town of Mayberry in the Andy Griffith Show. A nearby mountain is named Union Mountain and that was the reason the next door town on the television program was known as Mount Union. At the information center, we met a pair of lovely ladies who directed us to the points of interest in the town.

The first place that we visited was the Andy Griffith museum where we purchased a ticket and toured the building. It was interesting, but small. It had Andy’s uniform, Barney Fife’s suit, and the actual sheriff’s desk from the program. The desk held the telephone, handcuffs, and the gun rack on the wall held the guns. There were T.V. guides with the photos of the stars of the program. Some Andy Griffith titled products, L.P. records he recorded, and the walls sported photos too. My favorite was Aunt Bea. She was a beautiful woman.

We walked the street of the town looking at the shops. The diner, Floyd’s barber shop, and most of the other shops were like a five and dime, but now with junk items. There are some items that relate to the television show, but not that many.

Driving a few streets away, we visit the house that Andy was raised. It is on a quiet side street private property and rented out. We can only take photographs of the outside. It is a small clapboard, frame house; yellow with white trim.

Around the corner and several streets away were several buildings that represented the town of Mayberry; the courthouse, jail, sheriff’s office, and Wally’s garage. Outside of the buildings were several vehicles; the Darlings’ flatbed truck, two tow trucks from Wally’s garage, and the police patrol car. If we had gotten there a bit earlier, we could have purchased a ride through the town in Andy’s patrol car.

There was a man who was dressed in a tan sheriff’s uniform to represent Andy Griffith. He was very polite and genial and would have been the chauffer if we had been able to purchase the ride in the patrol car.

The jail was set up like Andy’s with two cells and the desk, chair, and telephone. There was a wall rack with fake rifles. We took a few photos of each of us in the jail cells.