We lost an icon this week with the passing of Andy Griffith. As a figure of Small Town, USA, he represented a time when things were simple, life was sweet, and everybody knew your name when you sat on your front porch with a guitar.
Now, fifty years after Mayberry, that place seems a thing of the past.
If you're from Ohio, you'll remember the "hurricane" that blew through several years ago. For eight or ten hours, the wind blew at 80+ mph, taking down trees, knocking out electricity for days, and damaging houses. My siblings and I walked around our neighborhood in the middle of it to see who had lost the most trees. People checking their yards would wander over next-door to talk with their neighbors. Our city was only out of power for a few hours, but friends living on the outskirts went for four or five days without air conditioning or refridgeration. So we sent out an invitation for them to come to our house for showers, laundry, and dinner. Since their freezers were out, all of them brought food, and for several days we constantly had people in and out of our house, bringing clothes, Stouffers lasagnas, and frozen meat. My sister commented that every day found us asking, "Who's coming over tonight?" At one point we had close to twenty-five people.
It was strangely fun, and I was a little sad when their power came back on.
Why does it take a "natural disaster" to make people neighbors? "Neighbor" has come to mean "the person you live next to whose name you may or may not know." When did it stop being "the person you interact with, help, talk to, invite over for barbecues"? It seems we get so focused on our agendas and our priorities that we forget to look at the people around us and say, "I wonder how they're doing today." So often we live in a community without being a community, in the same way that Christians are part of the church whether or not they go to church. When did we lose the ability to embody "neighbor" and "community" and extend ourselves to others?
Are we ever going to bring it back? Will we ever again live in a Mayberry state-of-mind?
Rest in peace, Andy. You were more to us than just a sheriff. You were a symbol, one that we don't want to let go just yet.
