Sheriff Taylor and the Mirror of Love

The Andy Griffith Show (CBS 1960 - 1968)
Starring:
Andy Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor
Don Knotts as Deputy Barney Fife
Francis Bavier as Beatrice Taylor (Aunt Bee)
Ron Howard as Opie Taylor

I can remember a time, very briefly, when I claimed I did not want to live in Mayberry, North Carolina. Further, not only didn't I want to, I simply couldn't live in Mayberry. This was during the hustle and bustle of young manhood, spent in the vibrant environs of New York City circa 1980s. Oh, God no! My head would blow up! I would go crazy! This is the kind of dumb ass thing I and like-minded dumb asses would say to each other, shaking our heads and snorting laughter. Certainly, I was just too much of a rogue stud, craving action, to ever be satisfied with the molasses pace and sleepy concerns of the quaint folks of Mayberry.

I don't know. My memory has become a bit untrustworthy. I seem to remember my youthful self really believing that. I was so very full of shit as a young man, it may have been true. But I doubt it. Now, of course, I'd give my left nut to live there.

Sunday Porch: Aunt Bee (Francis Bavier), Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith), Barney Fife (Don Knotts), and Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors)

Watching old episodes, I even cast myself sometimes as a reoccurring character. I see myself as maybe the owner of Mayberry Sporting Goods, right down the street from Floyd's Barber Shop - A lean, pipe smoking fellow sitting behind his counter, tying flies between customers and dispensing gentle wisdom to Helen Crump about her frustrations with boyfriend, Sheriff Andy Taylor (whom I have known since childhood - Andy briefly dated my kid sister, Ginny, when both went to Mayberry Union High, three years behind me).

I'd date the middle-aged widow that runs the projector over at the Grand Theater, a prim woman who seems much younger suddenly when letting her hair down during a Sunday picnic at Myers Lake. She seems to blossom somehow during our outings, tilting her head back to enjoy the sunshine on her face. Her clothes seem looser, her eyes a deeper blue.

Andy and I might even go deer hunting now and then near the end of the season, more interested in the outing than the hunting since the big bucks have all been taken that late in the year. I see the character as a "Winston" or maybe a "Harold."

I could go on, but you get the idea. It would be a good life. Despite my snot-nosed, know-nothing, shit-headed youthful dismissal of the town of Mayberry, I was never so blind I couldn't see the absolute greatness of The Andy Griffith Show, and I pat my young self on the back at least for that. I have been a lifelong fan. As time passes and I re-watch episodes, I see more and more evidence of greatness.

Underpinning the show was a fabulous cast of character actors playing well-written characters. There was the pencil-necked deputy, Barney Fife, (Don Knotts) who probably weighed 130 pounds with his pockets full of wet sand and was so high strung he seemed to fire his service revolver virtually every time he touched it. To keep civilian shootings to a minimum, Barney was only given one bullet which he kept in the shirt pocket of his deputy uniform. In times of stress, Barney seemed to utilize every muscle in his whip-chord frame just to load the single round into the revolver's cylinder, and it would invariably clatter to the floor like a led marble two or three times in the process. When chasing down a jaywalker or working the annual Mayberry Day Parade, Barney became rigid with a taught, quivering voltage, causing him to twitch and yip like an over bred Chihuahua caught in a hail storm. He would even sometimes blow the pea right out of his police whistle.

Floyd Lawson, Barber (Howard McNear) and Sheriff Taylor (Andy Griffith)

There was the obsequious "tonsorial parlor" owner, Floyd Lawson (Howard McNear), whose barber's chair was the gossip rack. Once Floyd leaned a customer back under that white apron, his entire body would writhe with inquires, suggestions, town talk. His hands, nearly feminine, would shape the very words in the air around him; his voice a gentle, nearly lurid singsong. Sideburns were his nemesis. He would blush whenever Andy congratulated him on nearly getting them even.

Gomer (Jim Nabors) worked at Wally's Service Station out on the edge of town. Gomer smelled always of motor oil and hair tonic and listened to conversation as though picking up delayed signals from the mother ship. But put him near a troubled automobile and he was a mystic healing by sound and touch - by a laying on of grease-stained hands.

Andy's paternal aunt, Beatrice Taylor, (Francis Bavier) kept house for Sheriff Taylor and his only son, Opie (Ron Howard) after the early death of Taylor's wife. Bee was everyone's aunt, including the prisoners in the Mayberry jail for whom she daily brought lunch in a picnic basket. The dollies and curtains in the cells were her touch as well. One of the frequent guests of the jail house was the town drunk, Otis Campbell (Hal Smith); who had a key to let himself in and out of his favorite cell on the weekends when imbibed. An interloper in his usual bed would draw a swaying, heavy-lidded indignation.

Holding things at the center was Sheriff Andy Taylor, played by a former gospel singer and storyteller from Mount Airy, North Carolina; Andy Griffith. Prior to playing Sheriff Taylor, Griffith scored first on television as the jug-eared rube, Will Stockdale, in No Time for Sergeants (Ira Levin, 1955)," and then in film as the demonic country boy, Lonesome Rhodes, in Elia Kazan's 1957 A Face in the Crowd. In the latter, Griffith would display an organic power that still frightens. The Andy Griffith Show was, despite small-town trappings, a sophisticated machine designed nearly from inception to deliver nostalgia.1 The show's magic was that it delivered nostalgia not as a manipulation, but rather as a sincere gift. Griffith and legendary producer, Sheldon Leonard, understood that when portraying small town America any hint of condescension would clang a death kneel. It was also very important to Griffith that the series be very clean with a nearly tangible morality. Once so committed, Griffith never strayed. A great number of the shows through the eight seasons had a simple moral - a life lesson learned by one of the characters. The lessons were always straightforward: A boy must stand up and not run from life's challenges ("Opie and the Bully," air date 10/02/61); loneliness is a universal condition shared by all ("Aunt Bee's Brief Encounter," air date 12/04/61); or all life is sacred ("Opie, the Birdman," air date 9/30/63). The lessons were always delivered honestly and with a tremendous sense of reality - or rather, there were through the episodes, powerful moments of reality. These moments often gave an episode the power of fable.

I've been watching a ton of Andy Griffith Lately, trying to understand not only the show's massive, eternal appeal; but also my own lifelong love. Many of the reasons are obvious. The writing was always very good. The dialogue always sounded natural and believable; and the acting throughout was tremendous. Don Knotts, in particular, was not only a comedic genius with God-given timing but also a fine dramatic actor into the bargain. Griffith has said more than once that it became obvious from the beginning the show was only going to work if he played straight man to Knotts. This relationship worked so well, in fact, the friendship between Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife became the fulcrum of the show. The series also benefited tremendously from young Ron Howard, perhaps the greatest child actor that ever lived. Even at so young an age, his acting never, ever looked like acting. The camera didn't scare him a lick - which is the essential gift only the great ones have regardless of age. Many of the show's scenes which feature Opie and his father are ones most dear to fans' hearts.

Yet many television shows have these ingredients: good acting, good writing, etc., and they just don't find a place on the mantle of memory. What is it abut The Andy Griffith Show that gives it such sturdy endurance? The essential answer, I believe, was that the show was never "topical." The stories presented were constructed from bedrock, dealing in truths that would have moved a circle of listeners in the days of Moses. The series had, has, and will always have, a simple and effortless reality.

Andy and his deputy (Andy Griffith & Don Knotts)

This claim of reality may seem strange since even the show's advocates can become a bit touchy when defending the "realism" of the Mayberry universe. Particularly for the modern viewer, the ever-gentle streets of Mayberry seem more like a legendary America that exists only in song - a small town Camelot of the mind that is no more, or perhaps never was. This feeling is understandable. There are no modern headlines in Mayberry. There is no teen suicide or date rape, and there are no pedophiles or wife beaters. There is no car jacking, anorexia, peanut butter allergies, or serial killing. No one is Bipolar and teens never slash the skin of their arms with razors (in fact, there are very few troublesome teens in Mayberry at all). There is none of the raw, sad particulars we think of as part of our modern reality, no awful maggots under the rocks and none of the terrible strain and consequence of "real" life. Along with a lack of overt unpleasantness, Mayberry is also absent the wide range of human conditions that complicate social interaction. There are no transsexuals in Mayberry, for example, and no one is openly gay (Although the barber, Floyd, clearly is an unexplored character in this regard). In short, Mayberry lacks both the exposed dark places and the multi cultural pageantry - the one-from-each-category cast of characters - that modern television must have to be "real."

Yet from this gentle, clearly nostalgic universe, The Andy Griffith Show can bring home moments of reality that can pierce everything and strike suddenly at the heart. With stunning consistency, the elements of the show coalesce into scenes as real as anything every presented on television.

Let's take a look at two episodes, and two specific moments, which illustrate the point:

"Opie the Birdman" - Air date September 30, 1963:
"Opie, the Birdman" opened the fourth season and has become an overwhelming fan favorite. The episode is the favorite of both principal stars, Andy Griffith and Ron Howard. Writer, Harvey Bullock, and director, Richard Crenna 2 both claim it as their best work on the series (in fact Bullock has said in interviews that the dialogue flowed so effortlessly from his typewriter for this episode, Divine intervention is a possibility). Having an influence that spans generations, writer and producer, David X. Cohen, has said that the episode was a source of inspiration for the 1996 Simpson's episode "Bart the Mother." In 1997, TV Guide ranked the episode 24th in TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.3 By 2009 the episode had risen to 18th place.

The plot is pure, simple Mayberry: Opie, excited over his first slingshot, accidentally kills a mother bird with an impulsive shot, dropping the mother from her nest of fledglings. Feeling terribly guilty, Opie raises the bridlings himself until all are strong enough to fly away on their own. The scenes which follow create a string of moments, each one jarring in its reality, each having burned pictures in my lifelong memory like a wood burning pen putting initials in pine:

• Opie, kneeling with the dead bird, holding its small tear-shaped body in the cup of his hands. He begins to cry and holds it close, speaking to it, his voice small and begging. "Fly away. Please fly away." Sobbing now, he tosses the lifeless thing into the air as if to release it back into life. Absent animation, the bird's small body makes a pathetic arc in the air and falls soundless into the grass.
• Opie fleeing the dinner table, unable to eat, pounding up the stairs to his room.
• Sheriff Taylor, still in uniform from his day's work, standing near the open window of his son's upstairs room. He is holding the slingshot in his hand, his face hard. A soft night breeze sways the window curtains and we hear tiny birds calling over one another from a tree nearby - a cacophony of high-pitched pips and cheeps. "Do you hear that?" he asks Opie, who is sitting on his bed. "That's those young birds chirping for their momma that's never coming back. You just listen to that for a while."
• Opie sitting on the front porch, hunched over and working at the contents of a shallow cardboard box. His father comes out through the screen door, heading for work.
  "Whatcha got there?" he asks, walking over slowly, his boots drumming on the wood planks.
  "Just fixing some breakfast," says Opie, not looking up. The sheriff pulls up his pants legs and sits on the porch close to his son, nearly shoulder to shoulder.
  "What kind of breakfast?" he asks. Opie looks up, squinting at the morning sunshine.
  "Bugs and worms and things," he says, and his father nods as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
• Standing next to his father and summoning his resolve on the Taylor lawn, Opie releases the birds finally from their cage. Each one (Winken, Blinken, and Nod) in turn flies away from his cupped hands. He looks at the cage sadly, and then looks up at his father.
  "The cage sure looks awful empty, don't it, Pa?"
  "Yes, son, it sure does," says Taylor. "But don't the trees look nice and full?"

The reason The Andy Griffith Show remains potent 45 years after the last air date is because of moments like these, so universal and well-crafted they seem to touch the deep chords without effort. Like so many episodes, "Opie the Birdman" assumes some basic truths: That every viewer has within them decency, love, and respect for life - and an impulse to protect the young and vulnerable. True then. True now.

”I didn’t know you were a bird.” Opie Taylor (Ron Howard)

Many of the episodes, like "Opie the Birdman," are centered on the relationship between Sheriff Taylor and his son, Opie. It's obvious the two have a strong bond and relationship, thrust closer together than many fathers and sons perhaps because of the early death of Opie's mother. The Sheriff is obviously a warm man, generous with his time and patient, understanding of human foibles. Yet, all is not softness and humor.

"You gonna give me a whipping?" asks Opie in the episode, sitting on the edge of his bed.

Sheriff Taylor is standing over him, offending slingshot in his fist. He thinks a moment, considering it. "No," he says finally. "I'm not going to give you a whipping." He walks over to the window, slides it open, allowing in the frantic calls of the baby birds. "Do you hear that?"

When I first saw this episode as a boy, I felt for Opie throughout. I understood his panic upon killing the mother bird, how it tore at him. I understood also the look of near horror on Opie's face when his father left him alone in his room with the desperate sound of the nest full of orphans. Remember, Opie - like the birds crying in the motherless nest - has lost a mother, too.

Now, in my mid fifties, I associate and admire the fatherly work of Sheriff Taylor. Throughout the show, and certainly in "Opie the Birdman," Taylor never pushes his son from behind but instead is always in front, clearing a path through the confusing brush of life; showing the way.

A whipping would have been painful for Opie but taught him little beyond the consequence of personal, physical pain. Instead of this easy solution for everyone, Taylor has plugged his son directly into the great, suffering ocean of pain that underlies all the sunshine of the world - and forced him to understand and feel the small piece of tragedy he has caused in those vast waters. Television has never been more real or hit harder.

And speaking of real . . .

"The Cow Thief" Air date October 29th, 1962

The episode is essentially a neat, countrified mystery. There has been a string of cow thefts in Mayberry, and Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife have not solved the crime spree promptly enough to satisfy Mayberry's Mayor, Roy Stoner (Parley Baer). 4 The mayor calls in an investigator (Ralph Bell) from the state capital to solve the case, usurping Sheriff Taylor's authority.

The investigator applies all the modern techniques of criminology to the crime scene, which impresses Deputy Fife terribly. Yet despite all the plaster casts of footprints and print analysis, the big city investigator is unable to make progress. Sheriff Taylor, however, cracks the case with simple logic: There have been three sets of prints left at each crime scene. Thus, the investigator from the state capital works on the assumption that three men were involved in the crime (two very heavy men and one smaller, lighter man). After studying the prints a bit, Taylor realizes that there is something wrong with the prints left in the muddy cow field of the most recent crime. The two heavy mean are following one another so closely they are just about walking on top on one another. Most importantly, however, where are the prints left by the cow? Taylor works it out that the crimes are being committed by a local miscreant named Luke Jensen (Malcolm Atterbury), and that Jensen is slipping old boots over the hooves of the stolen cows to confuse the investigation.

Sheriff Taylor summons all participants and explains his theory step by step using the print castings in the living room of Tate Fletcher's (Jon Lormer) farmhouse; and then suggests an all-night stakeout as he is sure Jenson will attempt to steal Fletcher's new cow.

The Mayor openly ridicules Taylor's theory, calling it a "harebrained idea." A cow wearing shoes? Preposterous! The mayor refuses to waste tax payer money on such an outrageous scheme and insists the stake out be abandoned immediately. As the mayor ushers the big city investigator and Deputy Fife out the front door, Barney pauses a moment, looking back at his friend.

"You coming?" he asks his Sheriff.

Taylor stands ram-rod straight, a bit starched by the public chewing out. "No, I'm going to stay here," he says stiffly.

Barney stands holding the screen door open, half-in half-out; his eyes searching after Sheriff Taylor. The mayor blusters back, swinging the screen door open as he barks, "Deputy Fife!" Clearly ashamed, Barney follows after the mayor.

Sheriff is left to stare at the door, still standing straight as a board. In the uncomfortable silence, Tate Fletcher - a raw looking, white-haired, farmer in overalls - says, "Well, Sheriff I . . ." he pauses, pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and works his hands into it self-consciously. "I'll go make us a pot coffee," he says finally. Fletcher hurries from his own living room, eager to exit the atmosphere of humiliation that surrounds Taylor.

Working automatically, Sheriff Taylor bends at the knees and begins to collect the plaster of Paris print castings he has arranged for his demonstration. The front door makes a sound, and Taylor looks up.

Barney stands at the entrance, his hand on the door handle. He looks uneasy, as though waiting to be invited back inside. Not warmly, Taylor says, "well?"

After a moment, Barney enters the room solemnly, closing the door behind him. He begins to speak, but the words come with fits and starts: "I just thought I'd wait with you a spell," he manages uneasily.

Andy, squatting at the knees, looks up at his Deputy. He begins to collect the castings, looking away. "I appreciate that, Barn," he says as he works. He looks back up at Barney, his voice a bit warmer now. "But the mayor could be right. It could be kind of a harebrained idea."

"Well, I'll take my chances," says Barney with absolutely none of the familiar Fife bravado. He gathers himself, clear on what he wants to say. "I was almost out to the car when I got to remembering another time a few years back when another mayor of our town accused you of having a harebrained idea. Remember that?"

Taylor doesn't respond. His eyes watch Barney, waiting.

"That was when you had the idea of making me your deputy," says Barney, looking at the floor.

After a moment, Taylor smiles up at Barney, and then easily looks back down at the work at hand. "Well, we better get these things off the floor," he says. Barney bends at the knees, and the two men work together, gathering the castings.

”I’ll take my chances.” Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts)

Over the years, I have occasionally read and heard that the Mayberry of The Andy Griffith Show is merely an idealized version of a small-town America that never really existed. This is wrong. This America, this place of simple, human values and integrity, did exist in the 1950s and 1960s. And it exists today. It all depends on the way one sees the world.

What must be remembered is that the show, and all the day-to-day happenings of Mayberry, is seen through the eyes of Sheriff Andy Taylor; and his view is not through a dark glass. Reality, after all, is subject to perception, desire, and individual outlook. From beginning to end, the show is the moments of Taylor's perceptions and memories, strung together to make up a life.

And we know so little of the history of the man - what might have shaped the Sheriff and father. What we know is that he was once married, but his wife died when their only son, Opie, was very young - so young that Opie has no memories of his mother. Like his son, Sheriff Taylor lost his own mother at a very young age and was raised by his father (whom he never talks about) and his Aunt Bee. He and Barney Fife are cousins and childhood friends. They went to Mayberry Union High School together, graduating together in 1945.

The Sheriff was overseas in World War II, but never talks about it other than to say he was in Europe during the war and served as a First Sargent in Africa at the end of the war. We know that since he graduated in 1945, his service in both the African and European theaters was most likely too late in the war to see any action. In Mayberry, the sheriff becomes involved with several women over the years; all pretty, strong, and intelligent (a pharmacist and a schoolteacher among others) but in the first series, he will never marry. He is a bit frightened of marriage, and one can't help but speculate, considering his history with his mother and his deceased wife, that he equates marriage with tragedy.

These are the basic, tantalizing pieces we are given over the entire length of the series regarding a Taylor back story. We are left to wonder about the forces which have given him such a kind view of life and of his fellow Mayberrians. Whatever shaped the man and gave him the loving mirror in which he sees life reflected, we know for certain that all men and women are seen therein by their best light.

"Truth" and "reality" or mutable things, subject to our own mirror. Barney could easily be seen as a strutting bully - a blowhard who is overbearing with underlings and a quivering sycophant to those above him. He is often so boastful about himself he comes close to outright lying, saved this judgment only by the power of his own pathetic self-delusion. In moments of stress he is, more often than not, worthless. He can be cowardly, deceitful, and incompetent.

Certainly, many of us sans the benefit of Taylor's loving mirror would see Deputy Fife thusly; and thus we create the "real world" with such assessments. In this reality, Floyd the barber becomes a malicious gossip, eager to find and spread the worst about a person via bits of poison poured into the ear. Otis Campbell becomes a stinking, filthy alcoholic - his blackouts so frequent and deep he seldom remembers exactly why he wakes up in jail with pissed trousers. Aunt Bee's friend, Clara Edwards (Hope Summers)? A cold-hearted prude eager for others to fail and quick with the unkind comment when they do. And, of course there are local rubes like Gomer Pyle and Earnest T. Bass (Howard Morris) - the first so dim he might not register a fly landing in his open mouth; and the other a giggling psychopath. Certainly, these realities are easy to see. It is easy to see the world so shaped because the negative in men and women is so glaring. It bleats loud and ugly. We carry our dark selves on the surface of our lives. One need consider things no further once the vile truth in every human heart is perceived. Much more difficult, and much more courageous, is how Sheriff Taylor perceives the life around him - the deeper, seldom seen spirits that reside within the outer trappings of weakness and fear.

Like never before, American television - particularly "reality TV" - has become obsessed with capturing human beings in moments of degradation. Our sports and media stars are captured in such terrible flashes of weakness and frailty, they have become less than human - our perceptions of them gathered from snapshots and sound bites of the worst their souls have to offer. Perhaps as American life degrades, and our individual lives slump further into the pit of overpopulation, the new and brutal financial universe, and a harsh ocean of savagely reduced possibilities; we crave the humiliation of others. Misery, always, loves company. Heroes, idols, celebrities and politicians- must be smashed simply to make "us" feel more buoyant at least above these. Cynicism, instead of being the sanctuary of those weakened by fear, has become wisdom. We happily gather examples of failure like black lilies to our breasts, clutching them tight, proof that the reflections we see in our damaged mirrors are real and true.

But they aren't. They are just the things we see in the grinding, slow panic of our times while the American Dream becomes ever dreamlike. We retreat into concepts of smaller government, fewer taxes, less social services, less health care, less education - everything weakened and diminished. We embrace stingy philosophies that justify giving less and less and less of ourselves. We retreat into our homes and iPhones, seeking the world through a digital network that is rabid and always like-minded. We are frightened and paralyzed, made simple by the sheer weariness of our days. Things are so much simpler if we accept and revel in our human weaknesses. If one embraces and anticipates the failure of the human spirit, one will be right more than wrong. Humans fail a lot. The living spirit sinks into humiliation and selfishness more often than it rises to sacrifice, bravery, and nobility. Yet, with unpredictable regularity, it will ascend. If we approach life with the self-satisfied smirk of cynicism, we become entirely blind to these our moments of greatest power and possibility. Thus the raw pit of despondency is tunneled ever deeper with self-sharpening tools.

The genius and glory of The Andy Griffith Show is that it is never blind to a multi-faceted reality. In "The Cow Thief," Deputy Barney Fife is throughout most of the show a craven blowhard. If one simply thought this of the jittery, combustible deputy, one would be right almost all the time.

Yet this scrawny, officious man is also capable of great courage, integrity, and loyalty; willing to risk his career in support of his boss and friend in what seems a failed cause. "I'll take my chances," says Barney easily, his finest words in one of the finest moments of his life.

Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith)

This, too, is human reality - these rare moments that rise above fear and self-interest. For Andy Taylor, these are the moments that define reality. These are the moments that give him the strength to tolerate, with compassion and love, the other moments in his deputy's life that are inglorious and trying.

It takes increasingly large measures of strength to see the best in people and to approach life with hope and love. But, as Andy knew, the best in people is as real and eternal as daybreak.

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1. Griffith initially imagined his Sheriff Taylor played as a simple, grinning rube, triumphing in story lines by an angelic simplicity, much like the character, Will Stockdale, from No Time For Sergeants. Before the first episode was done, however, Griffith realized the series would not succeed if the sheriff was a one trick hick pony.

2. Crenna is best remembered as Colonel Trautman from the first three Rambo pictures. He was also spectacular in The Sand Pebbles (Wise, 1966) and Terence Young's 1967 thriller, Wait Until Dark; which every film lover should be forced to see by act of congress.

3. Special Collector's Issue: "100 Greatest Episodes of All Time." TV Guide (June 28-July 4, 1997).

4. Briefly, The Andy Griffith Show floated Mayor Stoner as Taylor's nemesis, but this scenario was abandoned quickly. Griffith never liked the idea from the beginning, as a county sheriff would never have to answer to, or take orders from, a local mayor.

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Now let's watch Deputy Barney Fife in a sterling moment: