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The Nation's Pulse
Mayberry 2012
Revisiting America’s hometown a half-century later.
Much has been written about Mayberry, North Carolina, since the death last week of Andy Griffith — about his show’s “false cornpone nostalgia,” about the star’s indifference toward his Blue Ridge Mountain hometown of Mount Airy. But no writer to my knowledge has tried to imagine a contemporary Mayberry, a Mayberry that would have endured the calamitous “progress” of the past forty years. If America’s favorite fictional hamlet had — Pinocchio-like — suddenly become a real town, it would have undergone many changes since the show’s 1968 finale. And few of those changes would have been for the better.
Mayberry’s downtown most likely would resemble a ghost town where even the ghosts had departed in search of better opportunities. Sadly, most rural North Carolina manufacturing and tobacco towns are steadily losing both jobs and population as — in a paradox worthy of a Joseph Heller story — high school graduates move away, while would-be employers seek a vibrant, well-trained workforce.
A wistful stroll downtown would yield little in the way of nostalgia and much in the way of melancholia. The visitor stopping at Floyd’s Barber Shop would find an empty storefront with a flyspecked “for rent” sign in the window. Mayberry residents who need a trim now drive out to the Great Clips in the Blue Ridge Shopping Center, a strip mall that is home to a Dollar General store, a Rent-A-Center, and a generic Mexican restaurant. Wally’s Filling Station, unable to compete with the corporate-owned Quik-Pik Food Mart out on the new Interstate, would be the site of a used car lot, or quite possibly a Harley Davidson Super Center. Main Street’s other longtime businesses — the hardware store, Walker’s Pharmacy, the grocery, Emmett’s Fix-It Shop, the Blue Bird Café — would likewise sit empty, done in by the Walmart, Walgreens and fast food chains that roared into town in the 1980s, and set up shop along what is now called Hamburger Row. Likewise, the Mayberry Hotel, which stands catty-corner from the courthouse, would have lost out to the new Holiday Inn Express. One may come across a few antiquey shops on the square, like the ubiquitous Civil War surplus store or the obligatory tattoo parlor, but the business district would have relocated long ago from downtown to some former farmer’s erstwhile tobacco fields.
Mayberry’s iconic courthouse would have been knocked down decades ago, replaced by a Brutalist lump of “creative concrete.” Why would a struggling city need a new courthouse, you ask? Like many other hard-hit rural towns, Mayberry would have seen incarceration rates skyrocket since the 1960s, and two jail cells would not be nearly enough to house all its wantons. Back in the 1960s, you may recall, the only detainees were rock-throwing Ernest T. Bass and Otis Campbell, the loveable town drunk. However, by the early 90s, Mayberry’s cells would have been crowded with meth cookers, trailer park wife-beaters, pot-smugglers, drunk-drivers, and shoplifters. (Needless to say, the sheriff and his deputies would now carry firearms and pack more than one bullet.) No doubt, the new courthouse and jail would have been sold to the taxpayers as a sign of progress.
Meanwhile, Mayberry Union High would sit idle and shuttered, a victim of the school consolidation fever that ravaged the state back in the '70s. Mayberry’s children, who once walked to and from school, would be bused thirty miles away to TriCo High School, located in the next county over. This was considered progress too.
SEVERAL FACTORS WOULD have contributed to Mayberry’s decline. The loss of manufacturing jobs, the waning of the tobacco industry, the spread of higher education through federal government programs for the poor, the encouragement of the best and brightest to decamp for better opportunities in the cities, and the completion of the four-lane Interstates that stretch (seemingly one way) to Raleigh or Charlotte. Those young Mayberryites who did not run off to college would have joined the military. Some returned in body bags, others did not return at all, finding life more hospitable elsewhere. The Federal Government would have had a hand in all these factors, from the building of Interstates to changes in U.S. trade policies.
TVLand’s Mayberry was in reality a set on the old RKO Path back lot in Culver City, Calif., where many 1940s, '50s, and '60s movies and television shows, from Star Trek to Superman, were filmed. In 1976, the fictional Mayberry was razed for re-development. The spot is known today as the Hayden Industrial Tract. Perhaps a quick end by bulldozer was better than the slow sad death a real Mayberry would have endured.
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (46) | Leave a comment
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btims86| 7.12.12 @ 6:50AM
What we all realize but have been "conditioned" not to say in politte company is the fact that why we like the Griffith show, American Pickers, Swamp People, Pawn Stars and similar shows is that the are basically about White Americans, for White Americans and they all harken back to a time when the USA was roughly 90% White American. We all had shared experiences, tastes, likes, dislikes, etc.
That just isn't possible with a highly diverse society that we have today, which has been imposed on us by the DC political class, via never-ending mass immigration.
You can not have the same sense of community if your neighbors are Hindu who just came from India last year or Muslim from Yemen or dirt poor peasants from southern Mexico, etc. Just ain't possible.
Bob K| 7.12.12 @ 9:00AM
The DC political class (which includes all the members of the Anointed and Appointed Elite in the Washington DC, NYC and Boston governmental/ educational axis) need this diverse society to rule over. They need these low income people to be servants for their individual needs.
Some of those people who left the Mayberry like Rust Belt cities and towns of North East and North Central America have moved to that Axis to get their share of the Governmental Largesse that goes first to the Annointed and Appointed Bureaucrats who think they run the rest of the country.
More proof that we need these immigrants to do the jobs that whites won't do.
Especially since American Whites have known since the end of WWII that they played the major role in saving Western Civilization from itself!
Bob K| 7.12.12 @ 9:23AM
Our elected elite has allowed an uncontrolled immigration of peoples from historically kleptocratic countries, from countries that still have feudalistic economies.
These people have no historical memory of what made America great. What made it that "shining city upon a hill" in Reagan's words.
And we have elected an "elite" group of leaders who have chosen to try to remove that historical memory from the entire country.
Petronius| 7.12.12 @ 12:03PM
The "white Liberal Elite" want all Real White Americans DEAD. If they get their wish and they become the only pale complected people left in the continental U.S. all the invaders will turn on them. The Liberals ruined society in pursuit of power and pleasure at the expense of our blood, and now, even our substance as they impoverish us. To see their client minorities butcher the lot of them would bring delight, would that any of us survive the mayhem to come with a credit collapse and the abolition of welfare.
Jade12| 7.15.12 @ 3:14PM
AMEN!!!
Appleby| 7.12.12 @ 7:03AM
My Mama grew up in a small town in Alabama that is following the same pattern you lay out for Mayberry. Most of the inhabitants that are White are elderly people whose children and grandchildren have moved far away; as the beautiful old houses lose their tenants to Heaven, they stay empty. Downtown is pretty much abandoned and everyone goes to Greenville to the Walmart Superstore, where Mama worked happily until she was 80. Her church has about 22 members now and when the weather is bad, they don't even meet. The outskirts are grown up in softwood lumber and if you were to walk through the forests, you'd find a lot of remains of properties that had just been abandoned and overgrown.
Life goes on, and it rarely goes on exactly as it went on when you were young.
LindaF | 7.12.12 @ 7:16AM
Don't confuse the many "1-light towns" - which also exist in the rural north - with the Mayberries. Mayberry, which held the county fair, was a county seat. I lived in a similar town in SC, with a vibrant population. The schools were local - not walking distance, except for the townies - and football games were well-attended. I did know my neighbors, local businesses, and government officials, on a first-name basis, although at the time, I was relatively new in town.
Much has, indeed, changed. The population is not that much poorer, but they have more expectations - they compare their standard of living, not to their neighbors, but to the media they consume. Yes, crime has risen some, but many never lock their doors. Kids still said, "Yes, ma'm" and "No, ma'm" to adults, and generally behaved themselves reasonably well. Church still closes down the town on Sunday, although the local chain grocery stores will be open. All other commerce stops for 24 hours.
TLP| 7.12.12 @ 9:10AM
The Immigration Act of 1965.
That was the Death Knell of Small Town America.
Forced Busing of our Kids, was another.
Now, it's an America Hating Administration that won't be satisfied, until everybody in Mexico, is in America.
Liberals, and Liberalism.
It's a Mental Disorder, whereby, the people inflicted with it, can't wait to Piss in their own Drinking Water.
btims86| 7.12.12 @ 4:17PM
Exactly right. The Immigration Act of 1965 is what has destroyed the USA of our past. The continuation and expansion of immigration down to the sister of the brother of the cousin, once removed is why mosques are going up all over the USA.
Jade12| 7.15.12 @ 3:15PM
As usual TLP dead on accurate!
Occam's Tool| 7.12.12 @ 10:58AM
I lived in rural Alabama in the 90s. It wasn't Mayberry then, although it was lightyears better than LA.
But meth has been a dagger in the heart to rural America.
DTOM| 7.12.12 @ 8:42AM
Want to experience small town life?
It's actually pretty easy; you just gotta
LEAVE THE BIG CITY!
It's out there, you just hafta go there - it won't come to you...
Derek Leaberry| 7.12.12 @ 8:58AM
One group that doesn't mourn the decline of small town America are the "Creative Destruction Conservatives" who actually don't want to conservative anything at all but their bank accounts. Some of the CDCs are radical libertarians, some are neo-conservatives, some are worshippers of absolute free trade and absolute free markets. They are not conservatives but have attached themselves like fleas to conservatism.
The Big E| 7.12.12 @ 9:29AM
I was born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, a little over an hour from the real Mount Airey, and only minutes from real life "Mayberrys" like West Jefferson, Wilkesboro, Lenoir, and Boone. The changes I have seen in these and other communities over my life have been staggering, and often unpredictable, though not always for the worse. The description you provided of a modern Mayberry is true in part for all, but probably not entirely true for any. The worst change, though, has not been the plant closures, or the influx of immigrants, or the ever growing drug problems. The worst changes are the way people have abandoned the company of their friends and family for the company of pop-culture. Young people always have ear buds in their ears, adults are always on cell phones - not talking on them - but "facebooking" and the like, and nobody seems to have time to visit their neighbors - at least, not if they're going to keep abreast of the latest development on Dancing With the Stars. People no longer converse, they no longer connect, not even with their neighbors, sometimes not even with their family.
The Big E| 7.12.12 @ 9:34AM
Ihe irony that I just wrote the above while commenting online is not lost on me. I'm certainly not claiming that I'm immune to the disease I described above. But when I think back over the years, and about what has really changed, and about why people seem so distant from each other now, why they seem unwilling or unable to simply sit around and laugh with each other, or cry with each other, or just talk and while away the time as our ancestors have done for thousands of generations before us, I can't help but wonder how many of our modern social ills - from the crime to the drugs to the teen pregnancies and so on - are the product of our modern obsession with a techno-culture which strives to isolate us, to separate us from each other, from our history, and even from ourselves.
Derek Leaberry| 7.12.12 @ 9:51AM
Excellent post. That's sort of the insight of Wendell Berry or Walker Percy.
The Big E| 7.12.12 @ 10:07AM
Being that I am unfamiliar with either, I have no idea whether that was serious or sarcasm. The irony that I just wrote the above while commenting online is not lost on me. I'm certainly not claiming that I'm immune to the disease I described above. But when I think back over the years, and about what has really changed in the small towns I knew growing up, and about why people seem so distant from each other now, why they seem unwilling or unable to simply sit around and laugh with each other, or cry with each other, or just while away the time the way our ancestors have done for thousands generations before us, I can't help but wonder how many of our modern social ills - from crime, to drugs, to teen pregnancy and broken homes - are the product of our modern obsession with a techno-culture which seems determined to isolate us from each other, from our communities, our churches, and even ourselves.
Technology is a wonderful thing when properly used. Are we using it properly?
Occam's Tool| 7.12.12 @ 11:00AM
@The Big E: It's a compliment, and you NEED to make yourself an acquaintance with Mr. Percy, a great Southern writer.
Of course, you deserve compliments frequently.
Occam's Tool| 7.12.12 @ 11:00AM
@The Big E: It's a compliment, and you NEED to make yourself an acquaintance with Mr. Percy, a great Southern writer.
Of course, you deserve compliments frequently.
CJW| 7.12.12 @ 1:10PM
E
Walker Percy is a terrific novelist from the South, I think Louisiana. It is a compliment.
What you describe also describes the city where I live and suburbs. Seems we have a national culture thanks to the movies, tv, and music.
Appleby| 7.12.12 @ 7:50PM
I live in a big city where people's attention is fixated on (1) the two inch screen between their thumbs and (2) people whose grandparents have grown up with their grandparents. It's very difficult to get anybody's attention in person, and I have had no (repeat NO) visitors from Canada and only one invitation to visit a Canadian home in the 14 years I have lived here. My Canadian on-line friends who live in the USA marvel at the fact that people invite them to their homes after a two-week workplace acquaintance, simply because they think "He might be feeling lonely at this holiday time" or "We have room for another one around our table." You don't get that in Toronto, for sure. I have friends to whom I write letters by hand, long, somewhat rambling letters about what's really going on around me and answering their thoughtful and intesting queries and comments. I have written to some of these friends for 30 years. It's not like sitting on the porch and shooting the breeze with folks, but it does keep me connected to the world as it used to be.
Quartermaster| 7.12.12 @ 6:36PM
Boone hasn't been Mayberry in many years. I hate going through the place on the way to visit friends in West Jefferson.
West Jefferson is Mayberry, however.
Mount Airy is not in the Blue Ridge and it hasn't been Mayberry in a very long time either.
83champ| 7.12.12 @ 11:48PM
Television, with its ability to put moving pictures with dialogue in your living room, and air conditioners, with their ability to create a refuge from the Summer heat, are also culprits that should not be overlooked.
83champ| 7.12.12 @ 11:48PM
Television, with its ability to put moving pictures with dialogue in your living room, and air conditioners, with their ability to create a refuge from the Summer heat, are also culprits that should not be overlooked.
AhiaBoy| 7.12.12 @ 9:44AM
I'm wondering why the author didn't just go to Mt. Airy and tell us what it looks like vs. what Mayberry was?
I'll gladly go there & write an article if AmSpec will cut me a check.
ncatty| 7.12.12 @ 10:00AM
Mt. Airy is doing very well indeed. It is the opposite of the decline described in the author's article on the fictional Mayberry.
Ridge Runner| 7.12.12 @ 2:13PM
Floyd's City Barbershop is still doing fine.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/29145
And so is the rest of the town, despite the hard times occasioned by the decline of the 'three pillars' - tobacco, apparel, and furniture. It was always more ethnically diverse than allowable in the Hollywood that turned Andy Griffith into an icon. See the wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....h_Carolina
for some illuminating details.
Oldefarte| 7.12.12 @ 10:49AM
Liberalism destroyed many Mayberrys [including the one I grew up in] by eliminating morality, religion and family values. Hollywood not only created the set of Mayberry but its value system eventually destoyed it also. A Mayberry atmosphere is recapturable, but only if the individual citizens are willing to do the dirty/hard work or restoring its existence. A good place to begin would occur on 11/6/12!!!!!!!
Oldefarte| 7.12.12 @ 10:53AM
PS: In one of his comedy records, Andy said that THE OBJECT OF THIS GAME [FOOTBALL] WAS TO RUN FROM ONE END OF THE COW PASTURE [FOOTBALL FIELD] TO THE OTHER WITHOUT EITHER GETTING KNOCKED DOWN OR STEPPING IN SOMETHING. We can begin to get up off of the ground and wiping off the manure from our shoes on 11/6/12 if we so choose to!!!!!!!
Crassus| 7.12.12 @ 11:07AM
I have a theory that if God wants to destroy a small town the first thing He does is destroy its high school football team. Since the Mt. Airy Granite Bears have won a few state championships on the gridiron in recent years it doesn't appear that (according to my theory) the real life inspiration for Mayberry is doing too bad.
KyMouse| 7.12.12 @ 11:58AM
When my city lost most of its electrical power in a massive storm about 12 years ago, utility trucks from all over came to our rescue. The one that restored the lines on our street was from Mt. Airy, 308 miles away.
I thanked the guys in the truck for coming such a long distance, and they said that they were happy to help. I've had a warm feeling toward Mt. Airy ever since.
gene| 7.12.12 @ 12:03PM
Between the military and federal employment, I have lived all over the country. There is an UP-scale version of Mayberry in Northern Illinois. Illinois is famouse for it horrible politics and politicians. However, Libertyville, Illinois is definitely an up-scale version of Mayberry. This is the highest compliment that I can give to a town.
Petronius| 7.12.12 @ 12:21PM
My favorite small town is now a memory. The last resident of what was Useful, Mo. (which was on the map), has a sign out front of the large house on Highway 50. It says, Antiques.
ONTIME| 7.12.12 @ 12:26PM
Economic conditions are ebb and low of conditions that change due to necessity, I am not real sure what Mayberry would look like today but planning, good handling of available funds and practicality for improvement all would play a part to keep this fictional paradise of yore in the loop.
As for Andy and the caste of character protrayed in Maberry RFD, they too would be long gone new fads would change identity and who knows what would be the sustaining force of a town that never was......dismal article but probable.
lost| 7.12.12 @ 1:05PM
You forgot a big killer of small towns - air conditioning. Think about it during Mayberry times most did not have air-conditioning so the would be outside sitting on the porch or going for walks. Now most sit in their cool homes watching tv or facebooking(ugh). I even would bet that the fatting of America has direct correlation to air-conditioning.
KyMouse| 7.12.12 @ 3:39PM
Over the past few decades, the trend in house construction was to put the porch on the back of the house, or to build a deck out back. The family could enjoy their outdoor relaxin' and recreatin' in comparative privacy.
Sitting on the front porch was replaced by sitting on the deck or patio.
Some house designs today include front porches, but they usually seem decorative to me -- a place to put potted plants and a rocking chair from Cracker Barrel. Not, however, to sit in and wait for a neighbor to stroll over.
A lot of folks don't know their neighbors -- or don't want to. Or are afraid to.
lost| 7.12.12 @ 4:15PM
True that most homes are constructed with decks/patios they are still rarely used. Just about every house in my neighborhood(and my friends) has one yet most of them are never used and the rest rarely.
Appleby| 7.12.12 @ 7:56PM
In our neighourhood those who have patios or balconies sit on the blasting horrible music that is mainly loud screaming and a repetitive thudding "beat", until someone calls security and they are forced to turn the volume down.
In Atlanta a member of our choir had a next door neighbour who worked on his truck in the driveway with aforesaid thudding screaming accompaniment. Nothing would turn him from his "Igottaright" mentality...until my friend remembered that he could play the bagpipes.
At 3:00 a.m. he stood under his neighbour's bedroom window and played everything from "Scots what hae" to "Flowers of the Forest".
They called it a draw and silence reigned.
Alej| 7.12.12 @ 3:50PM
You are so right ! When I was a kid in Shreveport, the adults would gather on one porch or another and talk, and drink things that tasted terrible to me. We caught fireflies or played "swing the statue," or "Simon says," or other outdoor games until it was too dark to see. We all knew each other, for a couple of blocks in any direction.
The moms would start calling kids in for supper. If, by about the third summons, the kid didn't answer, the mom would call a little louder, and include the kid's middle name. Bad news... the kid hauled it for home!
83champ| 7.12.12 @ 11:52PM
I didn't see yours before I commented on something earlier about air-conditioning. Good point you made about obesity
soldiermom11| 7.12.12 @ 1:21PM
So true. The court house would now be the unemployment office/DMV. The local ice cream store would have been put out of business by Michelles diet advisory board. The farm down the street would have closed because the EPA decided their milk wasn't pasteurized enough. Their history teachers have long since been fired for not focusing on gays and lesbian lifestyles. ...gotta stop...too depressing.
Harry the Horrible| 7.12.12 @ 2:16PM
Stayed with my wife at a B&B in lovely old antebellum manor in Irwinville, GA. Enjoyed it immensely.
But we went for a walk around the area, and there lots of nice empty houses around the neighborhood. I would have loved to live in any one of them, if I could just find a job to support us in that town. But no such luck; it was pretty obvious the town was dying.
Same is true of my mother's home town of Winnsboro, SC.
Very sad.
Norm | 7.12.12 @ 4:04PM
Your words certainly tell the story of the loss of "Mayberry".
Our county's war heroes sat at the lunch counter for Ida's pot roast or swiss steak. They filled their cars up for 21 cents a gallon at two-pump service stations.
Our ball teams played in a small town league and townspeople would drive up to 50 miles in the snow to watch our boys play. Basketball and track were our only sports.
Carry-in meals were the natural result of a death of a friend. The Bank and most of the businesses on Main Street would close for the service.
The City Council members might argue to midnight over an important issue. Voices might be raised and lines might be drawn. But the next day it was not unusual to see one helping the other pushing a wounded Studebaker to the town mechanic.
The manners, the social skills, the work ethic, the belief in ourselves, our country and our God can never be taken from me. I personally know dozens of other people who feel and live the same way. There must be millions of us throughout the nation.
Our environment may be changed, but we remain a sub-culture to generations who know little about the manners, social skills, work ethic or a belief in one's self, one's country or a Heavenly Father.
I think back to grandparents, parents and aunts and uncles who will forever be remembered for their lifestyle, their teaching and their example of what makes life genuine and purposeful; all of them a part of many "Mayberrys".
83champ| 7.12.12 @ 11:59PM
I live in a rural area, and in the past you could drive down any country road and before to long, you'd look over into a pasture and see the imprint of a softball diamond, were locals would meet to play softball. Long gone now.
Robert Spencer | 7.13.12 @ 6:16AM
Interesting, sobering article. I'd like to point out two things:
First, the "real" Mayberry, Mt. Airy, was my maternal grandmother's birthplace, so when we were in North Carolina about a decade ago, we visited. Based upon outward appearances, many of the social pathologies you catalogue herein have not changed Mt. Airy much. In fact, the main street still looks uncannily like Mayberry's, with the exception that the buildings are mostly two or three stories tall. The Snappy Diner was still there! There was virtually no evidence of touristiness--that was out near the Interstate. The only thing was that, as it was Sunday, the place was closed up tighter than a floozy's skirt.
The other thing: the studio's name was "RKO-Pathé", not "RKO Path." It was originally the Selznick International studio, and is still in heavy use today; the name has changed several times in the past 40 years, but it was called something like "Culver City Studios" last time I saw it.