I was watching Andy Griffith last night and it made me think back to my own childhood. I grew up in a town that seems like a twin to Mayberry. It was small, predominantly poor and relied heavily on farming to keep it alive. At the time cotton fields were everywhere although human labor had long since gave way to combines, cropdusters and other assorted mchinery. We had a cotton gin which burned down when I was young and I still remember seeing the glow on the horizon as it burned for days.
The town was segregated although not a trace of racism was evident to me as a youngster. My grandfather would deal mostly with the poorer population and he loved them all genuinely. He ran accounts in a small notebook for most of the people in town and they always paid him, always. The women that would come to shop at my granddads produce stand would usually have several children in tow (they would take on the role as daycare for the entire family so they might have several people's children with them at any given time) and more often than not, he would tell me to load extra in their bags while he gave each of the kids an apple or whatever treat was in season.
There was a cafe around the corner where we would go eat breakfast sometimes and there were always the same people sitting at the same tables talking about the same things day in and day out. All of them drinking coffee and all of them listening to all of the conversations that were going on. They would occassionally yell a reply to someone across the room.
Nobody locked their doors back then. There were no gangs. There was very little crime and it was usually nothing more than someone getting drunk and becoming just a bit too loud for their neighbors.
I remember these times fondly and oh how I wish I was back in that little cafe listening to the old timers telling their stories of the one that got away. That town is gone now, replaced by a thriving metropolis with a casino and numerous resturaunts, crime, neoghbors who don't know each other, and traffic jams.
It saddens me to see a little town "grow up". My little town is long gone now, and the experiences I had will be treasured memories forever, but the generation now will never know what it's like to live in a town that is untouched by hatred, where everyone is family regardless of name or race. Sure there were feuds, and there were fights, but usually once the battle was over, people went back to getting along. Regardless of a persons wealth, they were all happy and everyone for the most part was willing to do whatever they could to help out everyone else.
I wish we could go back to those towns when it was so much simpler to live. Life moved at a slower pace and it was easy to get lost in the stories of the old timers. I appologize for the length of this post but I just felt a little nostalgic and felt the need to write it down.
I miss "Mayberry".