You can tour Mount Airy in a replica of a squad car featured on “The Andy Griffith Show.” (Photo courtesy Surry County Tourism)
Small towns and cities are rarely connected to what Christopher Kimball — former editor of Cook’s Illustrated magazine — called “the march of history” in a 2015 issue: “What does one know about life,” he asked, “if one hasn’t seen Kevin Spacey on Broadway or ordered steak frites and a chap bottle of Côtes du Rhône at a small cafe on Rue du Bac in Paris?”
In the case of a small city in North Carolina — Mount Airy, with a population of 10,000-plus residents in Surry County — the defense isn’t difficult because of the fame it’s achieved as the fictional Mayberry on “The Andy Griffith Show,” the eight-season long 1960s CBS sitcom. Though the show was filmed in Hollywood, not North Carolina, Griffith based Mayberry on his hometown of Mount Airy. The city celebrates that link with its 30th annual Mayberry Days festival, Sept. 23-29.
“Hollywood built its sets to look like Mayberry; we haven’t built anything to look like Hollywood,” says Allen Burton, our driver during a squad-car tour of Mount Airy. A squad-car tour ($20, reservations recommended) — complete with blazing sirens while it picks up riders at the original 1937 Wally’s Service Station — is equally good at capturing an overview of the town as enjoying a serving of sonker (a luscious fruit dessert like a cobbler) is for sampling local food.
The fruit dessert known as a sonker (Photo by Sam Dean)
Rock Steady Landscape
One of the most engaging aspects of the tour is the short ride to the world’s largest open-face granite quarry, some of which are 7 miles long and 5 miles wide. The N.C. Granite Corporation still mines there, with layers taken off the top as in strip mining.
Burton notes the differences between the city’s older buildings, such as the company’s headquarters dating to 1928, and later structures. The newer buildings, like the library, police department and war memorial, are made of granite blocks that were machine-cut into regular shapes, while in the past builders employed a cut-as-you-go approach by hand. As a result, the pieces were often irregular.
All About Andy
Visitors who missed spotting the quarry in the popular episode “The Loaded Goat” (now the name of a local restaurant) are able to view it, along with many other television clips, that play on a monitor at The Andy Griffith Museum.
While navigating around town, my husband, Tom, and I sensed everything was pretty much the same as filmdom portrayed it in TV shows and the movie. Griffith’s small, shotgun-style house — purchased by his dad for $600 in 1935 — had recently opened as a B&B. Local shops that at one point had other names are in tune with the Andy Griffith theme, like Opie’s Candy Store, named for Opie (played by a young Ron Howard), the son of Griffith’s character, Andy Taylor, the widowed, non-gun-carrying, Mayberry County sheriff. Walker’s Soda Fountain pours hand-mixed sodas in many flavors ($1.50, phosphate or egg cream, $2).
Music City and Twin Attractions
Grammy-winning country/pop singer-songwriter Donna Fargo is another Mount Airy native whose name pops up around town. While walking around town, you can usually find, as we did, live bluegrass jam sessions on Thursday and Friday evenings around the Pine and Main streets area.
Tanya Jones, executive director of the Surry Arts Council, introduced us to a tremendously informative exhibit inside the Arts Council Building about her great-great-grandfather and -uncle — Eng and Chang Bunker — conjoined twins who settled in Mount Airy in 1839 after touring widely as “curiosities,” sometimes labeled “freaks.” There is fundraising underway to open a museum dedicated to the two men who made the term “Siamese twins” synonymous with themselves.
The people and experiences like those in Griffith’s midst while he was growing up turned his Mayberry stories into tales of human dignity, where “the march of history” stemmed from treating everyone with respect. Life wasn’t digital; it was personal. We noted very few patrons of The Snappy Lunch, the lunch spot referenced in Mayberry, checking cell phones or using any other portable electronic device. They were simply in the moment.
Photo courtesy Surry County Tourism
Save the Dates
Through Sept. 29: Mayberry Days, Mount Airy, North Carolina. Festivities include celebrities and celebrity lookalikes, a parade, and music.
