Thank the Lord for Basic Cable

By Patrick Best

[Note: I wrote this piece the day after Andy Griffith died. I came across it while going through some writing folders and thought it was worth sharing.]

I had just finished leading a sales meeting when I received this short text from my wife: “Andy Griffith died.” I was alone in the conference room, gathering up my computer, shutting down the projector. When I read those five syllables, I took a deep breath and didn’t exhale for quite a while. When the air did finally rush out of my lungs and into the room, it came like a howling windstorm. I sounded like the Big Bad Wolf on his fourth or fifth unsuccessful attempt to blow down the brick house of Little Pig Number 3. I locked the door, sat in a chair at the end of the long conference room table and wept. I don’t usually cry when I hear about the death of person I’ve never met, but Andy Griffith was special to me. In a strange, yet very real way, Sheriff Andy Taylor (the role he played from 1960-1968) helped raise me.

I didn’t have an unhappy childhood. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I never went hungry. I had lots of friends, and I’ve always had a glass-half-full outlook on things. Like a lot of folks, I’ve had my fair share of disappointments and hardships. I first started watching re-runs of “The Andy Griffith Show” soon after my mother re-married and we moved from my hometown of Ft. Gaines, GA to Ozark, AL. Momma was doing her best to drink every bottle of bourbon on God’s green earth, my step-father and I had a strained relationship, and I desperately missed my real dad (who, ironically, was living in North Carolina at the time). My parents divorced before I was two years old, and I only saw my father for a month or so a year until I was almost 17. I was lucky to have strong bonds with my grandfather, grandmother, aunts and uncles, but they were all at least an hour’s drive away from my new home in southeast Alabama.

I watched Andy and the gang after school in the living room of our green and white metal home on the little hill in Hidden Valley Trailer Park just off U.S. Route 231. Everyone in Mayberry seemed so familiar to me – Andy, Barney, Opie, Aunt Bee, Otis Campbell, Goober and Gomer, Floyd… I felt like I knew them all. I thought Andy hung the moon. Heck, I even started trying to talk like him for most of the 8th grade. I’m sure it was strange to hear a 13-year-old boy with long, scraggly hair in a Motley Crue t-shirt saying “dandy,” “sho’ is” and sentences like “I do declare that’s the best watermelon I ever did put in my mouth.” Even in Ozark, Alabama!

I’m not much for the psycho-babble of the talk shows, but I’m sure that goofy Dr. Phil would say I was in “desperate search for a positive male role model”. He'd probably be right. I remember times when I prayed that I would go to sleep and wake up in Opie’s bedroom instead of my own. That may seem odd now, but, when you're a kid facing tough situations, crazy dreams and wild ideas are the only things that keep you moving forward on some days.

As I grew older and watched Andy Griffith in other roles or being interviewed, I could never stop thinking of him as the Sheriff of a small town in North Carolina. He was type cast by me (and a lot of Hollywood directors, I'm sure) as Sheriff Taylor for life. No hat, no gun… just a lawman armed with a good sense of humor, a good mind and a good heart. I’m thankful that my nutty I-want-be-the-son-of-a-black-and-white-TV-sheriff dream never came true. I grew up to have a wonderful family of my own and a strong and loving relationship with my mother and father. I’m also glad that I was lucky enough to have basic cable even when we didn’t have enough money to pay the phone bill.

When I close my eyes I can see Andy on the front porch of his house in Mayberry. He’s pickin’ the strings of his acoustic guitar and singing "Church in the Wildwood" for everyone to hear. Barney’s grinning and leaning up against the wall, wearing that suit and hat he always wore for church, dates with Thelma Lou and trips to Mount Pilot. Aunt Bee’s in the rocking chair right there next to them with her hands on her apron-covered lap and a faraway look in her eyes. I can hear Andy singing that song and it sounds mighty fine. Mighty fine, indeed.