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This world has turned topsy-turvy.

And, I’m dizzy headed from it all.

I grew up in Mayberry, USA.

I grew up at a time when children rode bicycles, chased lightning bugs, made mud pies and jumped rope. I went to the picture show on Saturday afternoons, cut paper dolls from the Sears Roebuck catalog and floated in the river on an inner tube. I picked up pecans for my spending money and licked the bowl when Mama baked a cake.

I slept with the windows open and played outside after dark.

I got a good switching when I needed one or when Mama just wanted to limber up her wrist.

I went to Sunday school every Sunday morning and Daddy read me the funny papers after Sunday dinner.

I could yoyo, spin a top, lasso a calf and drive a tractor. I was excited when the circus came to town and scared to death when the Gypsies came through.

I knew the value of a quarter. I had to pick a whole bucket of blackberries to get one.

I knew “heck” was a cuss word and to always say ‘thank you’ and ‘please.’

When I went to bed at night, I said my prayers and thanked God for my family and all the good things He had given me.

I did not need to watch Andy Griffith. I lived the show.

Now, that I have reached the Aunt Bee stage and shape of life, I have the time and the inclination to sit down at 7 o’clock each night and watch The Andy Griffith Show.

I’ve seen every one of the 249 episodes and some of them a dozen times or more.

But most every one of them has a moral lesson to be learned. And Andy is the teacher. Whether it’s a hard life’s lesson he’s teaching Opie or his kind indulgence of Barney, there is something to be learned from the show. As my granny would say, it would be a “dose of good that every young’un ought to take.”

The Mayberry way of life may be a thing of the past but it’s a legacy that Andy Griffith leaves behind. What a way to go.

–A tag to that is my desire to go back to Mount Airy, N.C. and sleep in Andy Griffin’s old home place. Once we were within spittin’ distance of the front door but I was told…. “Nip it in the bud!” But, these days, I just don’t nip as readily as I once did.