Andy Is Dandy Griffith’s Hometown Welcomes Visitors To Mayberry Days

In this town, Andy Griffith’s boyhood slingshot is kept under glass, along with a suit he wore on television, several of his old comedy records and a wrapper from an authentic Andy Griffith Whole Hog Sausage.

This Southern speck of a city is the actor’s birthplace - and the inspiration for his enduring creation, the friendly TV town of Mayberry, home to Aunt Bee, Barney, and Floyd the barber.

But if you want to linger over the mementos at the Andy Griffith Museum, pick some time other than September. Because that’s when several thousand Andyphiles will be here for the annual Mayberry Days celebration.

“They’re here to see if Mount Airy is really like the mythical Mayberry,” said Ann Vaughn, director of the local visitor center.

In reality, Mount Airy is as much like Mayberry as the people here can make it. Mayberry is good for business.

Tourism has nearly doubled here in the last two years, driven by a legion of Mayberry aficionados searching for the real people and places that populated their favorite television town - which has been out of production for nearly 30 years.

Visitors travel from as far as Germany to get a trim at Floyd’s City Barber Shop - “Two chairs, no waiting” - and hear 73-year-old Russell Hiatt chat about the days when he cut Griffith’s hair. Then it’s on to grab a pork-chop sandwich at the Snappy Lunch, revered as one of the first businesses mentioned on the 1960s sitcom, and across Main Street to see the Mayberry Jail.

The town, population 8,100, is at once energetic and eccentric, its downtown compact and movie-set clean. Parking is free. Signs advertise spare rooms at the Mayberry Motor Inn and spare cash at Mayberry Pawn.

Here, Griffith is no mere television actor - he’s an auteur, a star who influenced a nation. Suggestions that Griffith, now 71, was more cornpone humorist than visionary are met with awkward silence.

Memorabilia from the actor’s life and career are lovingly displayed at the museum here. Besides Griffith’s slingshot, there’s a rocking chair made by his father, scripts from some of his other TV shows, Mayberry comic books, autographs and bubblegum cards.

Griffith, who now lives in Manteo, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, hasn’t visited Mount Airy in years. Emmett Forrest, a childhood friend who collected most of the items in the museum, said he couldn’t remember Griffith ever expressing an opinion on the town’s efforts to promote its link to Mayberry.

“The Andy Griffith Show” ran on network television from 1960 to 1968, a ratings leader that spanned 249 episodes and has been showing in reruns ever since. The infectious, whistled melody of its theme song, “The Fishing Hole,” ranks among America’s best-known tunes.

Griffith played Andy Taylor, a small-town sheriff who kept order with the help of his comically inept deputy, Barney Fife. Taylor was a widower raising a young son, Opie, with the aid of Aunt Bee, who served as housekeeper and foster mother. Schoolteacher Helen Crump provided a romantic interest.

Mayberry had little crime, except for the occasional ruckus caused by the lovable town drunk, Otis, a relic from an era when making fun of alcoholics was more socially acceptable. The peace and quiet gave Andy plenty of time to dispense his philosophical advice on the value of friendship and honesty.

People haven’t tired of it. At least one tour bus pulls up here every day, dispersing visitors who buy shopping bags full of hats, T-shirts and collector’s prints.

Of course, tourism directors said, Mount Airy, set in the Blue Ridge Mountains near the Virginia border, offers more than just its connection to Mayberry.

Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, are buried here, having married local women after retiring from P.T. Barnum’s circus. Mount Airy is the hometown of country singer Donna Fargo (“The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA”), who occasionally performs for her elderly aunts at the nursing home. It boasts the largest open-face granite quarry in the world and the biggest linden tree in North Carolina.

But it’s Griffith, maybe better known to viewers today as the silvermaned lawyer of “Matlock,” who brings in the tourists.

“Oddly as it might seem, people didn’t really pay that much attention to it until a few years ago,” said owner Charles Dowell, who has been grilling eggs and breaded hamburgers at the Snappy Lunch since 1943. “Now it’s just going straight up.”

Dowell attributes the boost to the continuing appeal of the show - “one of the most decent, entertaining programs that’s ever been on TV” - and to better marketing.

These days the town is preparing for the Mayberry Days festival from Sept. 15 to 20. It draws about 4,000 people for pie-eating contests, bingo, checkers games, and talks by actors who appeared on the sitcom. The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club holds its annual meeting then, giving devotees a chance to swap trivia, like the number of miles on Aunt Bee’s car (145,000) and the number of stoplights in Mayberry (one).

The Andy Griffith Museum can be reached at (800) 576-0231.