Perspectives
by ED CHERRYHOLMES
The world is sadder today as we mark the passing of Andy Griffith at age 86. He had an acting career spanning the 1950s to the new millennium of the 2000s. It would be easy to call our attention to the man, Andy, and forget the symbol he represents. Andy was greater than the various roles he played over the years. Perhaps he is best remembered in his role as Andy Taylor, Sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina.
There will not be another role like it for a long time. Time has changed the way of life that Mayberry represented. We recognize that we can never go back to the “good ole days.” Life was easier in Mayberry, and we all accepted it, as the way life should be. I recall one episode, which represented the impact of our modern world as the only way to exist. A businessman’s car breaks down in Mayberry. With all his bluster, he cannot get anyone to fix his car so he can attend an important meeting the next morning. He cannot even get a long distance phone call through because two elderly ladies are using the phone to call friends in the nearby town of Mount Pilot. The businessman is just forced to wait. In the final scene the businessman learns the lesson that sometimes life needs to slow down and there are some things more important than rushing off to another meeting.
It would be nice if we could go back to Mayberry, but we cannot. Instead, we learn to live in our modern world of rush, rush, rush. There are too many demands on us to take life as it comes. Perhaps Thomas Wolfe expressed it best when he said, “You can’t go home again!” We can’t go back to the way of life as Andy Griffith represented it. The way of life we all knew then is gone for good, and I am not certain that our present lives have benefited from that change.
