NOT MAYBERRY ...... WELL, MAYBE
I thought I was being clever in calling a site about Wilkesboro "Not Mayberry," thinking this would lead to all sorts of interesting exposes of the darker side of life in a small town (what's really going on with the town/hospital fight, etc). Then this morning I was told by a local amateur historian that he had been told by a professional historian that Wilkesboro actually was the model for Mayberry!
If you stop and think about it it makes sense. Mayberry had no hint of a working class mill town, which is what Mt Airy is. It was close enough to the mountains so that real mountaineers sometimes wandered into the plot yet it didn't seem to be in the mountains itself. In general the whole atmosphere of Mayberry may have been closer to Wilkesboro, and probably not North Wilkesboro which was a bigger town with a great deal going on, at least in the 50's and 60's.
I thought I was being clever in calling a site about Wilkesboro "Not Mayberry," thinking this would lead to all sorts of interesting exposes of the darker side of life in a small town (what's really going on with the town/hospital fight, etc). Then this morning I was told by a local amateur historian that he had been told by a professional historian that Wilkesboro actually was the model for Mayberry!
If you stop and think about it it makes sense. Mayberry had no hint of a working class mill town, which is what Mt Airy is. It was close enough to the mountains so that real mountaineers sometimes wandered into the plot yet it didn't seem to be in the mountains itself. In general the whole atmosphere of Mayberry may have been closer to Wilkesboro, and probably not North Wilkesboro which was a bigger town with a great deal going on, at least in the 50's and 60's.
posted by Clemens | 1:32 PM
2 Comments:
If you were looking for the real Mayberry and concluded that it was not Mount Airy, why not Wilkesboro? It fits the model more comfortably. And, indeed, North Wilkesboro would never have been mistaken for Mayberry, not even in the early days. Especially not in the early boomtown years. I have a question. Wilkesboro’s old courthouse is being converted into a local museum — history, industry, social life, culture, crime, folklore, racing, and probably a few stretches of the truth. Will having a museum devoted to all this change Wilkesboro? Can a casual community remain the same when it begins to examine itself under a magnifying glass? (Elwood)
Hi Elwood:
You are the first comment! Not sure that Wilkesboro will change because of the museum - there is no word yet on how honest the magnifying glass is going to be. I look forward to working up a thrist touring the museum and then slaking the thirst at Dooley's Tavern which is right at the corner. It's a nice place, and the old hotel it is in is an historical landmark in its own right. Or so I'm told by my local historian friend.
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