The World That Could Have Been According To Andy Taylor
I used to live in Mayberry. For the dozen years we were there our Virginia hometown epitomized the feel of that fictional TV hamlet, a place where people stopped to talk, treated each other right and everything always just seemed to be okay. It was actually Reston, but we joked about the similarities. Like lots of kids in the 1960s, I also grew up in Mayberry, at the knee of a quiet hero. Andy Griffith 's sleepy southern town was an island in the storm. There was little strife or crime. There was a mayor (his boss) and successful businessmen who controlled commerce. But Griffith's Sheriff Andy Taylor was the glue which held it all together, the one person everyone relied upon and turned to. And they were correct to defer to him: Taylor invariably prevented idiocy and excess while promoting common sense, all the while speaking softly and carrying no stick. Taylor was a lawman who never carried a gun or raised his voice. He was a single father whose son's upbringing mea...