Sheriff Taylor has gone fishing

 Andy Griffith passed away this week and I am in mourning. My real father was in prison until I was five years old so Andy Griffith or, more accurately his character, Andy Taylor, was my first father figure. Imagine my disappointment when reality set in.

Like most people in my generation, I grew up with Sherriff Taylor, Deputy Barney Fife (my personal role model) and all of the good people of Mayberry and, thanks to syndication they have stayed with us and I don’t remember life without them.

I grew up in small rural towns so I could identify with life in Mayberry in so many ways. Every one of those small towns had their own version of Floyd’s barber shop and, as I recall, all of the barbers seemed to be comic busybodies who seemed to always know if a storm was coming and which pennant contenders lacked the relief pitching to win the Series.

There was a unique smell and feel to all of those barbershops and, although we moved frequently, the barbershops, like Floyd’s, offered a consistency and stability that was so rare in my childhood. 

Barbershops are largely a thing of the past. These days we get quaffed at the local “Family Hair Care Facility” and I think that’s why we so rarely know when storms are coming anymore. I miss Floyd.

Andy Griffith gave us Barney Fife, a true man’s man, who has kept me laughing since before I started school. Barney managed to find trouble and “nip it” in the bud and relentlessly pursue the lovely Thelma Lou, armed only with his wit, cat-like reflexes and a six-shooter whose only bullet was in his shirt pocket. What a guy!

I don’t know it for a fact but I have often speculated that Chuck Norris modeled “Walker, Texas Ranger” after Deputy Barney Fife. If he didn’t, he should have.

True fans know that before Gomer Pyle joined the Marine Corps, he pumped gas in Mayberry and his cousin Goober got the job after Gomer enlisted. Many Mayberry purists insist that nobody could pump gas quite like Gomer, I am a Goober fan myself. I like him partially because he wore a really cool hat, but mostly because his name was Goober; you can’t help being funny when you’re name is Goober.

Even the most absolute Mayberry purists probably don’t know that Andy and Barney were cousins! Admit it, you didn’t know that. In the very first show Barney refers to Sherriff Taylor as “Cousin Andy” and the Sherriff calls him “Cousin Barney”.

They didn’t talk much about it on the show but I think we have to assume that the common branch on the family tree was Aunt Bea, since they both called her, “Aunt Bea”. I don’t think their family tree had many branches because most folks in Mayberry called her Aunt Bea.

Believe it or not I actually had an Aunt Bea who was a sweet lady who was very patient with me when I giggled and called her “Ain”t Bea”. I don’t know if that makes me kin to Andy and Barney but my wife will tell you that I often display my “inner Fife.”

Like the small towns of my youth, Mayberry was full of strange and funny characters who occasionally excited Barney with some mischief that Andy would handle with his classic wit and wisdom; his own special blend of King Solomon and Will Rogers.

A favorite of mine was a fun loving rascal named Ernest T. Bass, a practical joker who showed up in Mayberry pulled a few pranks and then escaped in his backfiring old truck shouting, “You ain’t heard the last of Ernest T Bass!!” Thanks to syndication, we still haven’t.

Andy Griffith created a portrait of small town life as American as any Norman Rockwell painting.  For those who complain that it was an unrealistic portrayal that didn’t include the hardships and trouble of the time I say you’re absolutely right and we’re all the better for it.

The Andy Griffith Show was not about the political strife and painful urbanization of the 1960’s; it was comic portrayal of life in Mayberry, USA; a composite of small town America where so many of us grew up and live still today.

Mayberry does not exist on a map of the USA, but rather, in the collective character and hearts of rural small town Americans.

Andy Griffith was a comic genius who has brought laughter to several generations of Americans and probably will for a few more to come. It’s fitting that he passed as we celebrate the Fourth of July because he was a great American.

For those of us who grew up watching him, Mr. Griffith will live on in Mayberry. In my mind he hasn’t left us, he’s just gone fishing.