One of the wonderful things about growing up in a small town like Mayberry in the 50's and 60's was that one had such a simplistic trust of everyone one met. There was not the fear that children have today where they are taught from a very early age not to talk to strangers and not to open the door, and never tell anyone on the phone that you were home alone. Those fears simply did not exist. I think of all the interesting characters that Opie met as a child. I often wonder why he had such difficulty thinking of "The Most Interesting Character I Know" that he had to write about for Miss Crump. He met an array of interesting people in Mayberry. Malcolm Meriwether was a very interesting person who came from the old country and who could do magic tricks and make paper ladders out of newspapers. Mr. McBeevey walked around in the trees wearing a shiny silver hat and he jingled when he walked and he could make smoke come out of his ears. Colonel Harvey once lived among the Indians and could make smoke signals and speak their language. Weiry Willy lived in an old shack out in Crouch's Woods and he once saved a baby from being run over by a train and in the process he got a fracture of the patubla oblagonda. And who could top Gentleman Dan Caldwell, a notorious confidence man who knew John Dillinger and just about every other famous gangster. Where else but in a small town fifty years ago could a little boy meet such fascinating people without one ounce of fear.
We had some very interesting people in my small town too and I came across them without any fear even though some of them were very strange. Old Charlie Gumz lived in a huge derelict old house all by himself. He rarely took a bath and he wore tattered clothes and walked around town collecting thrown away food so he could feed his chickens and pigs with it. At least twice a day old Hot Rod Haulfie would speed past our house going at least forty miles over the speed limit. We lived on a dusty dirt road so we always had plenty of warning of his approach as we could see a huge cloud of dust in the distance and we could hear the roar of his engine. Cy Geiger was a very strange guy who quit school when he was in the eighth grade because he was already sixteen years old. He could not hold a job because he could not read nor write so he spent most of his time wandering around town; yet we were all his friends, and no one ever told us to avoid him. There was Jessie Copeland who lived with her husband and 18 children in a huge old house on the other side of the tracks. She was large and not very clean and whenever we would meet her on the street we would call out to her, "Jessie, can you name all your kids?" and with a laugh she would begin to name them oldest to the youngest without one bit of hesitation. There were many more rather odd people living in our little town, as well as in our beloved Mayberry, yet we had no fear of them. In today's world I am sure we would have been told to stay away from almost all of those really most unforgettable people. They must have been unforgettable because why else would I remember them all so vividly after more than fifty years. Kenneth G. Anderson 2906 May Street Eau Claire, WI 54701 715-839-8470 www.mayberryreflections.com kanderson8...@charter.net _______________________________________________ WBMUTBB mailing list WBMUTBB@wbmutbb.com http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/
