Remembering Aunt Bee: A fictional character in a TV series became as real and beloved as she was unforgettable in Daydreaming on the Porch
- April 11, 2024, 5:32 p.m.
- |
- Public
AUNT BEE: Remember, first you eat the sandwiches, and then you eat the apple pie. Not the apple pie and then the sandwiches. Do you understand?
OPIE: Yeah, I understand, even if it doesn’t seem right.
AUNT BEE: Why doesn’t it seem right?
OPIE: Well, if you get full before you finish, I’d sure rather leave over the pie than the sandwiches.
AUNT BEE: I know. And that’s exactly why I want you to do it the other way. And don’t you forget it.
OPIE: Okay, Aunt Bee. Can I have a nickel for milk?
AUNT BEE: Uh-huh. Now remember, this is for milk, not another piece of apple pie. You need that milk to make your bones hard.
And another thing:
AUNT BEE: (To Andy) That boy. I declare, he’s got the sweetest tooth I ever saw…
ANDY: Now that’s not surprising Aunt Bee, considering the green thumb you’ve got for apple pies.
AUNT BEE: Nonsense. He’s just apple pie crazy.
(From the Andy Griffith Show)
The older I get the more I appreciate the Andy Griffith Show. I grew up with it in the early 60s, but as an adult I have come to love the show with a depth that only the passage of time can bring. I know the situations and dialog may seem dated and corny to a new generation watching it today, but it was life — it was real enough for a TV series, it was warm and it was funny. There was a humaneness and sense of values that are seemingly lost or ignored today.
I know the show was filmed in a studio in Hollywood, and that the lake where Andy and Opie went fishing is in the mountains north of Los Angeles, but Mayberry always seemed like a real place, and it was, for it was based on the town where Griffith grew up, Mt. Airy, North Carolina.
I visited that town up near the Blue Ridge Mountains years ago, and walked down Main Street on a quiet Sunday afternoon when, unfortunately, Floyd’s Barber Shop was closed as well as the cafe Andy used to regularly frequent, “The Snappy Lunch,” with its world-famous fried pork chop sandwiches. It was an incredible little town. What a panorama of Americana. The old houses. The leafy, shaded streets and neighborhoods. I couldn’t believe it.
Griffth tranferred a lot of his experiences growing up in Mt. Airy to the TV show that became famous and ran for years.
I have a book on the history of Mt. Airy that I bought in the town on that trip in 1996, and also a book full of photos and dialog from the shows, an excerpt of which is included at the beginning of this entry. I really enjoy looking through that book, which also contains recipes for food that Aunt Bee mentions on the show. Not that I am a cook or buy cookbooks, but it is fun seeing those mouth-watering recipes and thinking about that Southern cooking.
Aunt Bee, played by the actress Frances Bavier, was everybody’s wonderful aunt, — the doting, mothering, fussy, kind, and compassionate relative you remember from long-ago vacations and visits to loved ones. Her last years were spent in Siler City, N.C. where she died in 1990. I was editor of a weekly newspaper at the time, and remember reading the story in the news. I wrote this column for the newspaper as my tribute to Aunt Bee and the Andy Griffith Show:
Who could ever forget that voice — slightly high-pitched, but tender and caring, as she fussed over what Andy and Opie were wearing when it was cold, whether they’d had enough to eat or wanted another piece of pie. Aunt Bee, from the Audy Griffith Show, was everyone’s favorite aunt — amiable, lovable, an institution in the “fictional” small Southern town of Mayberry.
Aunt Bee, who in real life was Frances Bavier, died last December at 86. After leaving from the show as matriarch of the Taylor household, and being a part of our lives during those turbulent years from 1960-68, Bavier retired to Siler City, N.C. and lived there in relative obscurity. In her later years, although she was rather reclusive, she began to fall back into her Aunt Bee personna, even wearing her hair the same way it was on the show.
What scenes and memories she must have revisited over the years. Images of that wonderful cast of characters are engraved forever in television’s hall of fame: Sheriff Taylor and little Opie (Ron Howard), who later became a movie actor and director; the inimitable Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts; Floyd the barber; Gomer Pyle; Cousin Goober; Helen Crump and Thelma Lou, Andy and Barney’s girlfriends; Otis Campbell and Howard Sprague.
Mayberry was the kind of town in which we imagined good people lived ordinary lives and wise Sheriff Taylor, with the help of the ever-bumbling Barney, outwitted crooks and maintained order. The townspeople of Mayberry had never heard of crack cocaine. Otis, the town drunk, was not such a comical character in retrospect, but we laughed at his antics, particulary when outmaneuvering Barney, even in his inebriated condition. We never saw or heard about the kind of crime and disruption so common in society today. Of course it was a bit unreal, but it was just a TV show after all. In its time it filled a niche. The characters were a bit eccentric, the gossip was a trifle dull, and Floyd always seemed to know everything that was going on, often getting his stories pretty badly mixed up.
I hadn’t heard much about Aunt Bee over the years. She’s the kind of television character who has lived on in reruns, a perpetually 60ish, matronly woman with gray hair tied in a bun who is otherwise ageless in our eyes. Who could imagine Aunt Bee not bustling about in the kitchen or rushing out the door to have lunch with some of her friends.
Aunt Bee and Mayberry were symbols of another era that seemed to be more innocent and stable. We like to live comfortable illusions, however, and most of the time they serve us pretty well, except when some thing or person or horrible event upends our comfortable sense of security. When that happens we can turn on the TV and watch an episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Aunt Bee wipes away Opie’s tears and makes the world right again.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Bee
Last updated April 11, 2024
Anaiss ⋅ April 11, 2024
Thank you for this lovely memory.
Oswego Anaiss ⋅ April 12, 2024
Thank you for the nice words!
music & dogs & wine ⋅ April 12, 2024
I remember seeing those reruns when I was very young! I can still hear that whistling intro!
Oswego music & dogs & wine ⋅ April 12, 2024
That was probably the best intro ever!! Wasn’t this series quite a bit before your time??😳
music & dogs & wine Oswego ⋅ April 12, 2024
Haha yeah, I was born in 83! But they always showed reruns of older shows when I was little! I remember that talking horse one, Lassie, Bewitched, etc...
Oswego music & dogs & wine ⋅ April 12, 2024
All Old Classics I watched when they first came out! Haha!
👴
music & dogs & wine Oswego ⋅ April 12, 2024
I think it was Nick at Nite that showed everything. Lots of I Love Lucy too! I do still like that show.
Jinn ⋅ April 12, 2024 (edited April 12, 2024)
Edited
Clinton when I was growing up was very Mayberry. Until the 1970’s when Baldwin came in and built a nuclear power plant just outside of town and made a huge lake , the population was small. Everyone knew everyone and many were related by blood or marriage . The houses were well kept, the streets were wide and clean. People sat out on their porches in good weather ,planted their gardens, played badminton and horseshoes. They also gossiped . However if anyone got sick or died ; there were crowds of people bringing flowers and food or whatever they saw you needed.
The heart of the town was “ The Square “ which had a huge stone courthouse in the center of it , where Lincoln frequently tried cases and Douglas “ stumped “. All the biggest stores were on the square . You could park there and run in. Traffic went clockwise . My Mom came from a family of ten. Three of my aunts worked in stores on the square and they saw everything. Generations of kids flocked to the square in the afternoons and evenings to “ hang out” and see who was driving around. When I visited there as an adolescent and was out roaming on my own , the first thing people would ask me is “ So , who are your people ?” They could place you by knowing who you were related to and I had a lot of relatives in that town and on farms surrounding town. My Grandma Johnson was a veritable Aunt Bee ( but thin and tiny ). She raised her huge family then started in on grandkids . She cooked, cleaned, gardened and to make extra money did ironings and sewed for people . She made gorgeous crocheted coverlets for beds that sold for $100.00 even back then . I wish I had one of hers. My Grandpa worked on the railroad and made good money but he was a gambler and a drinker. He pretty much wasted his money and depended on her to provision the kids and provide for the household. She did it too Bought their house all by herself and treated him well. I would have kicked his sorry butt out but she was always kind to him and him to her , that I saw. She had resisted marrying him at the start but that is another story. He was a good grandfather to us ; always laughing and joking. He loved to squeeze our cheeks or tug on your hair. If you were bad he would half hearted threaten you with a “ socko board” . Remember those paddles with the red ball attached ? It was one of them. I never saw him ever use it . 😂. He would send you to the kitchen to get him cookies and sweet tea. He never drank at home . He liked to go to the tavern. When he got his paycheck he would be gone for hours :-(
I have a multitude of stories about Clinton . I loved it and I hated it both. I thought I was glad to leave it then in later years I have yearned to go back although so much of it has changed, it’s still a small town with a Mayberry vibe . People still know me when I go downtown ( or they are cousins). One cousin is the mayor. One was the police chief for years . Another was the sheriff. My ex- brother in law was president of the bank . I worked at the hospital there from 10 th grade until I graduated from nurses training. So much happened there .
Oswego Jinn ⋅ April 14, 2024 (edited April 14, 2024)
Edited
What an amazing and detailed account of growing up in a small town. I so enjoyed reading this.
As you know, I grew up in a big city (New Orleans) and have had a lifelong tendency to romanticize the “virtues” and, to my mind, advantages of living in a small town. That was once upon a time. I lived and worked as editor of the paper in a small SC town in 1990-91 that was one of those good old boy politically corrupt places that had lots of nice people who just sighed and lived through it. What an education I got 34 years ago!
And now, in the Age of Trump and his MAGA cultist followers, who are overwhelmingly white and live in small towns and cities and rural areas, I have a very different, non-idealized view of small towns.
I think back now to my earlier reading if novels such as “Babbitt” and “Main Street” by Sinclair Lewis, whose works from more than 100 years ago depicted the real underbelly of small towns in the Midwest. He also wrote “Elmer Gantry,” about a huckster preacher.
I think we’d all probably do well to look into Lewis’’ writing again. He deservedly won the Nobel Prize in literature.
I don’t mean to diminish the good things about small towns that you so accurately wrote about, namely, the sense of community and solidarity with each other, in places where everyone pretty much knows, or knows of, everyone else, and like you, have lots of cousins and friends still living in those relatively tiny places on the map.
But, by the same token, this community spirit exists to a large degree because of an affinity amongst the people of those towns and communities for conservative and often backward politics and resistance to change. There are high proportions of people who are not well-educated; there is persistent drug abuse, poverty and crime, same as in the big cities. And today, there is a meanness and divisiveness in the country between rural and urban areas. There always has been, of course, but now it’s much more negatively charged, racist and exclusionary. Not everywhere, by any means, but considerably more so since Trump was elected in 2016.
I think that was a watershed year and a real eye-opener for millions of people, including myself. All the bad vibes and prejudices have now erupted out into the open, and there are no more telling examples than this of why “Mayberry” never did exist in reality. But it was a nice, fictional TV to watch when we were growing up in those simpler times during the 1950s and early 1960s. After 1966 the lid pretty much blew off everything.
So the point of the entry on Aunt Bee was that once upon a time I entertained those same cherished and nostalgic ideas about small towns, and life in general, that have sadly passed from the scene by 2016, except in our memories, hopes and dreams.
Kristi1971 ⋅ April 14, 2024
We still have the show come on our TV nightly. Sometimes I turn to it. It's such a great show even today.
Oswego Kristi1971 ⋅ April 15, 2024
I haven’t watched it in awhile, but I need to soon! The world is imploding. Nice to know there was once a Mayberry.
Kristi1971 Oswego ⋅ April 15, 2024
I know, right?!
Kristi1971 Oswego ⋅ April 15, 2024
Oh! Remember Grizzly Adams? I found that on DVD, and I've been watching it. It's just as good as I remember.