It might be surprising but there are still quite a few Mayberrys around. You know, where the Sheriff locks up pedophiles and rapists.
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Cars, anyone? Thanks.
Yup!
As Socrates said, about 2,500 years ago:
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
If the ancient Greeks had manicured lawns, I suppose that “Old Soc” would also have added…
Get off my lawn, you delinquents!
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Well, the ancients certainly did not have cars, but they did have basic knowledge regarding steam propulsion, so–in theory–I suppose that one of Socrates’ contemporaries could have developed a steam-propelled vehicle.
I love the rifleman. Still watch it on reruns. But have you ever counted the number of people Lucas has killed? Well beyond any mass murderer of today. People didn’t watch the show for the father-son relationship Lucas had with Mark. They watched it for the shooting ( I know I did when I watch it). If that show was new today it probably would be protested off the air.
The Route 66 Corvettes were 1960, 1961, and 1962. The final season Corvette was a 1963 Stingray.
On horse forums there is a recognition that there are appropriate and logical places to use horses, and there are places which are not appropriate and not logical to use them. Why can’t it be the same here?
It makes no sense to use cars in busy downtown areas. Walking, public transit, and delivery trucks should be the only transportation happening in such crowded spaces.
It sometimes takes me 10 minutes to go 3 blocks in Minneapolis, and that’s exceedingly mild. Go to NYC or Chicago and if you live in the suburbs it can take an absurd amount of time just to get out of downtown so that you can sit in traffic for another hour trying to get home.
It makes much more sense to have a bus/train stop every few blocks, and you can walk the distances between them. When I lived in the DC area, I quickly figured out that bringing a car into town was stupid. It didn’t take long before I was parking in Fairfax and hopping the Metro into town. It was fast, cheap, convenient, and I didn’t have to get mad staring out the window at a traffic jam. Sure, there was walking involved, but since when did walking become something we have to engineer ourselves away from?
Quite frankly I’d be in better shape if I still lived there, but now I live where public transit is pathetic, so I end up taking the car everywhere.
OMG!!! There were pedophiles and rapists in the Andy Griffith show? I must have missed those episodes. Which ones were they?
There are no Mayberrys. There never were. There were no small towns with two law enforcement officers where the worst thing to happen is that someone sells you a car with sawdust in the engine.
Mayberry is a fictional town, a utopian paradise that never existed.
The idea that we are less safe than we were when you thought the world was a simple place full of stark fictional contrast is a fiction too. As along as one’s idiot parents don’t leave their child in a hot car, a child’s chances of reaching adulthood safe and healthy are better than they’ve ever been, but you won’t see that if you get your view of the world through a screen filtered by media companies that have a financial interest in keeping you pessimistic and worried.
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+1
Today, the national crime rate is about half of what it was at its height in 1991. Violent crime has fallen by 51 percent since 1991, and property crime by 43 percent. In 2013 the violent crime rate was the lowest since 1970. And this holds true for unreported crimes as well.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, since 1993 the rate of violent crime has declined from 79.8 to 23.2 victimizations per 1,000 people. Americans who lived through the 1960s and 1970s remember the fear associated with a real surge in violent crime. In fact, the violent crime rate increased by 126 percent between 1960 and 1970, and by 64 percent between 1970 and 1980.
In reality, the crime rate in The US has steadily dropped since the '90s.
I actually grew up in such a place. No one locked their doors. All the kids wandered around the neighborhoods, in the woods etc and no one ever had any trouble. It was a big deal when a homeless guy was found living in the woods nearby. The local parents drove him off. No one was ever robbed or killed the entire time I was growing up. It was a sensation when they found a dead body a few towns over when I was a teenager, nothing like that had ever happened before. Was it the norm? Obviously not. But they did exist. Maybe some even still do that are remote enough…
Funny, I don’t recall any dead bodies on the Andy Griffith Show. Maybe you’re thinking of Stephen King’s short story “The Body” or the movie based on it “Stand By Me.”
Man, those were some great old cars in that movie.
We all look back on our childhoods through nostalgic lenses, but none of us grew up in a utopia like Mayberry.
There absolutely was a dead body on Andy Griffith!
You must have forgotten that time Opie murdered the bird.
http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/4072/67/16x9/960.jpg
But in seriousness, the most unrealistic thing that ever happened on that show was probably:
Now how’d Goober get that body through the courthouse door if he couldn’t just drive the thing in? (Hi Carolyn 
)
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Since this is Car Talk and we need to get back to cars and roads, I’d just suggest getting out more. Get in your car or on your bike and spend some time on the road in middle America. When you come to a town with 200 people in it, stop at the local coffee shop and have a cup a coffee with the guys wearing the John Deere caps. These are the ones that wave to you even though they never saw you before. And they didn’t spend their whole lives in that little hamlet, they took some time out for WWII or Korea to see the world.
That little town of 500 where our cabin is used to have one policeman but they decided to contract with the county Sheriff instead to save money. People leave their car keys on the dashboard and if they are having trouble walking, pull up to the grocery store and honk and the clerk will come out to get their grocery order. Yeah not exactly Mayberry but there are places beyond Chicago, LA, and Baltimore that are quite pleasant to be in. I think I can tell the difference between the movies and reality but I’ve been exposed to both the metro areas and the small towns. I just hope they never bring horses back to downtown Minneapolis, there’s too much of that manure to shovel now.
Perhaps you missed the part where I said it was a few towns over. Despite your insinuations, I have no delusional memories of the place I grew up. You may not be able to relate to it but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist in the way I described it. I do feel very lucky for the experience and somewhat sad there are people who cannot envision such an upbringing…
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It didn’t happen “a few towns over” from Mayberry either.
As I grew up in a small town of <10,000 there was no key to any doors on the house and the only locks used for years were the screen door latches to keep me from tracking up a freshly mopped kitchen floor. By age 13 I was delivering groceries and the police knew I had no license and when I got to a house if no one was there I knew how to get in and I was expected to put the milk, etc in the refrigerator and get empty ‘coke’ bottles. Before I began driving I often carried the night deposit to the bank on a bicycle at about 9:30. It was about 3/4 of a mile away and my parents only fear was that I wouldn’t pay attention at the 2 unlighted crossings. No doubt Mayberry was a Pollyanna Utopia but there is also no doubt that 60 years ago there were many towns and neighborhoods where everyone knew who their neighbors were and felt quite safe. These days there are many who wish to find a gated neighborhood in order to enjoy the peace of mind that in many places was just life as usual in the 50s and 60s.
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And re that car in the sheriff’s office. When the Korean War began a local 19 year old was drafted and when he returned home he used his savings to get married and buy a new Studebaker and applied for a mechanics job at the Studebaker dealership but was turned down because he had no experience. Not being easily discouraged he took his new Studebaker home and dismantled the brakes, engine, rear axle, etc and reassembled it then went to the dealership and got a job. That man retired in the late 80s when he sold out his independent shop.
And BTW, my home town of <10,000 had dealerships for Oldsmobile-Buick-GMC, Chevrolet, Pontiac-Cadillac, Ford, Lincol-Mercury and Studebaker-DeSoto. There were also local bottlers of Coka-Cola, 7-Up, Dr Pepper, Royal Crown and Nu-Grape. And I had a savings account that paid 4.5% at a bank where the cashiers new my name.
Sounds exactly like where I grew up. Deaths were old age, illness, and very few accidents which were Motor vehicle and farm equipment as I recall. Virtually zero crime. My <3,000 population town was unincorporated so with no municipal government we had no police officers. We relied on county sheriff deputies. I’m sure there are still some “Mayberrys” left. At least I hope so.
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The irony of gated communities is that the crime rate inside the gate is usually identical to the crime rate outside the gate. They do offer a good placebo effect though, at a price.
I have no reason to doubt your feelings, that’s why I’m arguing facts.
Coincidentally, Amazon prime is offering a service where they leave your packages inside your home.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Another good question is how the show’s producers got Ford to agree to the placement of a Rambler on that program. Based on every other car that ever appeared on that program–from the police cars to the cars of those who were passing-through the town–it was obvious that Ford had a product placement agreement with the show’s producers. Normally, those are exclusive in nature, but in this case, it is clear that someone else’s car crept into the picture.