YEARNING NOSTALGIA vs REAL LIFE

Yearning nostalgia poured out of the TV screen during CBS Sunday Morning.

It happened when they ran a story on the town of Mayberry where Andy Griffith kept order.

People in North Carolina love Mayberry, except it’s pronounced Mount Airy.

Watching people enjoy Mount Airy from a safe distance, like the other side of the continent in Oregon, was a comfort.

Mayberry is where more than 30 million Americans a week went to escape reality, which is why it’s strange to find so many people half a century later searching for what made America great in a copy of a town that never was.

Would doesn’t like The Andy Griffith Show. It was a hit when it first came on, and still a hit today.

Real life that includes Andy is a better life? When Ted Koppel is on the job, you know you’ll get answers.

As if on cue, the Foster family, from Pomeroy, Ohio, showed up. It is no exaggeration to say that this re-creation verges, for the Fosters, on being a national monument.  

Koppel asked the Fosters, “You watch ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ four hours a day?”

“More than that,” said Bobby Foster. 

“What do you mean, ‘more than that’?”

“It’s on sometimes early in the morning,” Sarah Foster explained. 

“Aren’t you afraid that after a month or two of watching four hours or more a day, that you’re gonna turn his little brain to mush?”

“No!” young Isaiah replied. 

“Oh, no!” said Sarah. “Not when it comes to good, wholesome shows.”

Competition For Yearning Nostalgia

Gunsmoke:

How many times was Matt Dillon shot on the Gunsmoke series?

A: According to several Gunsmoke references online, Matt Dillon — the marshal that James Arness played — was shot more than 50 times during the series’ 20-year episodic run and its reunion movies.

Wagon Train:

Wagon Train debuted on September 18, 1957, and became number one in the Nielsen ratings. It is the fictional adventure story of a large westbound wagon train through the American old West, from Missouri to California.

Have Gun – Will Travel:

Beginning in season four, filming locations were often given in the closing credits. Locations included Bishop and Lone Pine, California; an area now known as Paladin Estates between Bend and Sisters, Oregon; and the Abbott Ranch near Prineville, Oregon.

The choices were watching a lawman and saloon girl, the hardships of wagon travel, a bounty hunter, or Andy Griffith.

Those were the shows baby boomers stayed up to watch as kids, along with Rawhide, Gallant Men, and Combat.

Real Life vs Yearning Nostalgia

My recent Real Life moment came with a walk around the neighborhood with the dog.

Two men stood in the driveway of a house. I recognized one of them and said hello.

The other man was chatty. Since my wife says I need to meet more people to be a better blogger, I listened.

He said his daughter was a communist who lived her life under Marxist ideals.

Me: Sounds like she’s going through a stage.

Him: She’s got a Master’s degree in history.

Me: Well, that explains it. All history students are commies. I’m a history major, so what do you know? Marxist ideals? What the heck is that?

Him: It’s unconstitutional.

Me: Who reads the Constitution?

Him: I do.

Me: Do you have one of those full sized copies?

Him: I have a small one I keep in the truck.

There I was working on neighbor relations like I was on the Andy Griffith show. I was feeling that yearning nostalgia, but it didn’t last.

It didn’t last on CBS Sunday Morning either when Ted Koppel asked a few pointed questions of the folks on the trolley in the top image.

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Koppel asked the trolley’s riders, “I know you came here to have a good time and not to talk politics. But let me just ask you, as a matter of curiosity, how many of you think we had a fair election?”

“No way!” said one man wearing an American flag T-shirt with the word “Patriotism.”

Koppel asked, “One question, it’s a serious question and I know you all will take it seriously: Tell me what you think happened on January 6 at Congress?”

The first man said, “They showed truckloads of people that they were bringing in for this. It was all staged. And that’s how that started. They even showed pictures of it on the news, about these vehicles coming in with all these BLM people.”

A woman said, “I think it was staged. We’ve been to a lot of the Trump rallies, and I don’t understand why they’re focusing so much on that one issue when there’s so many cities that are being burned down every day by protesters. 

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Another woman said, “We don’t even watch news on TV anymore. We don’t feel like we’re being told the truth. And we find our truth in other ways. And I won’t say what those other ways are, but I feel like we’re not being told the truth, because we’re trying to be swayed in a direction that we know is not the right direction.”

“I won’t be offended,” Koppel said. “I’ve been a journalist all my life. When President Trump talked about the press being the enemy of the people …”

“They are!” the woman replied. “And I love President Trump. And I love that man. I do.”

A third woman said, “I just hope when this airs, it won’t show Southerners as a bunch of dumb idiots. Like so many parts of the country do, you know? We have a lot of love in our hearts. We love our country. We love our fellow man. And if the rest of the country felt like that, it would be a better place.”

About That Better Place

The two men I spoke to in the driveway showed more dumb idiot shit than I expected.

They went off on the homeless, used casual racial slurs, and I felt like I needed some separation.

I was just walking my dog around the block and stumbled across two old white men doing what some old white men find comfort doing.

Just a couple of good ol’ boys living on that yearning nostalgia.

Like a little bitch, I went along my way without confronting and correcting their wayward attitude.

I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men when I hear it.

And I heard it on CBS Sunday Morning in Mount Airy, North Carolina.

Maybe they were just lonely people?