Ah, May.  The time when flowers are fairly bursting into bloom.  When gentle breezes and sudden showers make the world green and glorious.  I came across this little book a good while back.   These books came in the mail back in the sixties and one would be sent to you every so often as long as you subscribed.  I didn’t get very many of them, but this one was a favorite and had some favorite poetry called Marjorie’s Almanac.

There was a poem for every season.  This one was my favorite and I memorized it and can say it even now.

I do think Maytime is pleasanter than March although I do like March too.   One of the poems for Autumn is very politically incorrect in this day and age of speech control, but at the time it was innocent and did not demean anyone, but it would certainly be looked at differently today.  I will not show it here, but I have it memorized also.

Green things are growing everywhere you pass.  Even Molly Marshmallow likes it so much she does this……

Picks one of my biggest and brightest irises and brings it up to the back deck for me.  Such a thoughtful puppy!

Glad I got a picture of them before they became Molly munchies.

See how proud she is of herself for picking my flowers?

I’m thinking she belongs in jail.  She looks good behind bars.  Don’t you think?

She has brought up dead birds, moles, broken toys, pieces of board and other things to share with me.  She will soon be one year old and I am hoping that this chewing and destroying will come to an end sometime.

This past Sunday after church, we headed to Danville, Indiana where they were celebrating Mayberry Days.  If you don’t know what that is, I will explain.   Back in the sixties there was a television show called The Andy Griffith Show.  It starred Andy Griffith, of course, and was a bout a sheriff in a small southern town called Mayberry.  The town had a lot of quirky, funny people.  People like Gomer, Goober, Earnest T. Bass, Aunt Bee, who was Andy’s aunt in the show, Opie, Andy’s red headed son, Floyd the barber,  Howard Sprake,  Barney Fife, Andy’s deputy sheriff and Ellie May,(correction. Thelma Lou was Barney’s girl friend. Ellie May was a Clampett.) There were lots of others, but these were the main characters.  Anyway, Danville has a Mayberry café in town and every year they have a Mayberry day.  The only reason I knew about it was that this year our grandson was entered in the Opie Taylor look alike contest.

Several boys and I guess a man or two entered the contest and they had to go and be in a parade on Saturday and be judged.  Sunday they announced the winner.

This man played Barney Fife, and if you ever watched the show, you would not believe how much he looked like and acted like Barney.  He was kind of the master of ceremonies at the event.  Here he is getting ready to announce the Opie look alike winner.  We all sat there on pins and needles. (We adults already knew who had won because the parents had been called the night before to be sure the winner would be here.)   Barney took forever to announce the name.  My grandson sat there in suspense.  Then, suddenly Barney said, “And the winner of the Opie Taylor look alike contest is…….. Adler Grey Craig!”  Well, we all screamed as Adler went up on stage to get his prizes.

Here he is talking to Barney Fife.  It was almost surreal to see those two together.

Adler received a really nice gold trophy, one hundred dollars and free meals at the Mayberry café for one whole year.  That was pretty nice, I’d say, for a boy.

He became kind of a celebrity as he had his picture taken with several people.  Here he is with Aunt Bee.

This little boy was also in the running and they got a picture together.

Here are the actors who played Gomer Pyle and the mayor of Mayberry.

Gomer and Goober did an act.

Floyd the barber and Barney.

There was a Mayberry band and they played a couple of original songs.  One was about a rooster which got me laughing so hard tears were running down my cheeks and my stomach hurt and one of the guys on stage said I was shaking like a bowl of Jello and another guy offered me his red handkerchief, but I was laughing so hard I just wanted them to ignore me.  You had to hear the song.

Danville has a really nice museum and we got to look through it a bit although we really went there to see Aunt Bee.

There she is in her kitchen.

Her famous pickles were on the counter. If you were a fan of the Andy Griffith show, you will remember when Aunt Bee was making pickles for the county fair and how many Barney and Andy had to eat.  One of the more memorable shows.

Barney was handing out tickets and David got this one for walking too fast on the sidewalk.

We learned that all the characters who were there that day came from all over the United States.  Only two were local people.

 

Nostalgia was everywhere.  I even saw an old Farmall  tractor like my daddy use to drive on the farm.  All in all it was a fun day and I am so glad we went.  If you are near Danville Indiana this time next year, you really ought to stop on by and visit the Mayberry festival.  There is a Mayberry café that serves really good food and all the televisions around the café show the Andy Griffith show continuously.  It is open year round.

Here’s to good times and good memories. Bye.