I've written previously about historical memory, but it's a topic at the front of my thoughts this afternoon. We all can talk about where we were or what we were doing when a given event of national or international importance took place. Ask anyone over the age of about 53 and they'll be able to tell you where they were or what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. We all have personal reference points for the day those planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And in early 1991, I came home home after school and turned on one of my favorite old programs to find that a bulletin was scrolling across the base of the screen. "Waves" of planes (I'll never forget the use of that word) were bombing Iraq. War counterposed against a story its star once described as all about love; planes and high-tech weaponry against near-utopian idyll. The program in question?
You guessed it.
Yes, I realize 1950s North Carolina was far more complex--and troubled--than Mayberry. That said, there's value in friendship and community... and a legacy of peaceful resolution, episode after episode (no matter how much Barney might have hankered to use those handcuffs).
Rest in peace, Andy Griffith. We could use a lot more of you and a lot less of those scrolling headlines.
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