30Th ANNUAL MAYBERRY DAYS®

30th ANNUAL MAYBERRY DAYS® Celebrating the 59th Anniversary of TAGS Once Upon 30 Times, ® WELCOME to MAYBERRY DAYS® There Is Mayberry Days ! Guests from the cast and production team of TAGS include By Jim Clark Betty Lynn, Calvin Peeler, Rodney Dillard, Maggie Peterson- It’s the 30th Annual Mayberry Days®. Mancuso, LeRoy McNees, Margaret Kerry, Clint Howard, Shazam! Ronnie Schell, Keith Thibodeaux, Joy Ellison, Dennis Rush, For some of us attending this year’s Bruce Bilson, Gary Nelson, and Karen Knotts. Additional festival, this milestone event marks special guests include Bettina Linke, Dick Atkins, Dreama roughly half a lifetime. For younger Denver, Gregory Schell, Stark Howell, and Cort Howell. attendees, the 30th annual of anything probably seems impossibly ancient—as long ago as life without the internet’s SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS World Wide Web, which, incidentally, MOUNT AIRY CHRYSLER DODGE JEEP RAM FIAT wasn’t made available for public use 508 N. Andy Griffith Parkway until the year after the first Mayberry Days. Even for older attendees, 30 Mayberry Days festivals represent more than just a waystation along life’s journey. The festival has been a deep commitment by the Surry Arts Council, the City of Mount Many of the trucks and cars in the Mayberry Days® Parade are Airy, the cast and crew of The Andy Griffith Show (and their families), and other performers, as provided by our sponsor. Check out their vehicles at the golf well as by fans themselves. tournament, the Blackmon Amphitheatre, and at the Andy Griffith We all gather the last week of September to toast a TV show that we love and the people Playhouse and Museum. Buy your cars and trucks in Mayberry! who created it for generations to enjoy. But more than that, we celebrate the idea of Mayberry, a gentle place that embraces life’s simple pleasures and basic human values—a place AND where folks not only care about each other, but also know how to deal with everything from “kerosene cucumbers” (“Learn to love ’em.”) to billy goats that eat dynamite (“Blooey!”). The Andy Griffith Show tells us stories about how best to “act like somebody,” which is the unofficial theme of this year’s Mayberry Days. The actors who worked on Mayberry shows were, in their own way, also experts at acting like somebody. (And there can be perhaps no greater homage to a performer than having one of the popular Mayberry tribute artists choose We continue to be grateful to TAGSRWC, Weaver’s to literally act like the somebody in Mayberry that that original performer made iconic.) Department Store, those who advertise, and our donors This Mayberry Days expects to see the 35th and 36th members of the cast and crew of The for supporting Mayberry Days® and for all their support Andy Griffith Show (and its two sister series and reunion movie) attending the festival. In this year-round. Please support them while you are in town! year alone, 14 participants from those original productions are among the special guests for Mayberry Days! MAYBERRY DAYS® VENDORS Beginning in 1990 with Doug Dillard, who attended every Mayberry Days until his passing Cutzie Doll Fashions (Dogs too!) in 2012, the festival has been blessed with having many of Mayberry’s original stars attend Duck Doughnuts, Jocko Games multiple years. Betty Lynn even liked Mount Airy so much during her annual visits that she Leaf Filter North of North Carolina, LLC moved from Los Angeles to make Mount Airy her permanent home in 2007. Mayberry Days® Bake Sale (Friday only) And what would Mayberry Days be without folks like Michael Hoover, the consummate NC Cooperative Extension, Surry County 4-H Elvis impersonator? Talk about knowing how to “act like somebody.” And sing, too! Michael and other Mayberry Days performers who technically aren’t directly from the Andy Griffith Our State Magazine Show family tree offer a joyfully expansive interpretation of what it really means to be part of Sami’s Snacks Mayberry. Steak Boys Inc., U.S. Cellular What Mayberry means for today’s world continues to grow and evolve. Rather than being OFFICIAL 2019 MAYBERRY DAYS® T- SHIRTS mere monuments to a nostalgic place and time, The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry are T-shirts will be on sale in the Andy Griffith Museum until Friday, more like seeds and bulbs planted into our cultural landscape. And there has been no better September 27th. At that time, they will also be on sale at the Mayberry garden for their growth than Mount Airy and Mayberry Days. Information Station. Cash/check is preferred at Information Station. Some of the Mayberry seeds sprout and quickly blossom into beautiful friendships for life. Others grow deep roots and slowly become magnificent nut-bearing trees. (There’s never a MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2019 shortage of Mayberry nuts on the ground surrounding the mighty Mayberry oak!) 8:30 am-5:00 pm MAYBERRY DAYS® INFORMATION AND Some parts of Mayberry have lawns of Ernest T. grass or rows of Goober peas. And clearly, TICKETS, Lower Level Andy Griffith Playhouse, 218 Rockford there’s a bumper crop of corn in some corners of Mayberry! Street, 336-786-7998 Who can say today how the Mayberry garden will grow over the course of the next 30 years 8:30 am-5:00 pm VISITORS CENTER, 200 North Main Street, of Mayberry Days? It’s hard for even the most attentive gardener to predict. My hope is that, as 336-786-6116 long as folks still know how to act like somebody, there will always be generations of thriving 9:00 am-5:00 pm ANDY GRIFFITH MUSEUM, $8* includes Mayberry oaks. There will always be a place for the treetop magic of “Mr. McBeevee” (“I believe admission to Betty Lynn Exhibit, Siamese Twins Exhibit, Mayberry you.”) and for Opie’s orphaned baby birds (“Don’t the trees seem nice and full?”). Mural, and Old-Time Music Heritage Hall at the Historic Earle And maybe, at the heart of it all, Michael Hoover will someday even be able to sit back at Theatre Mayberry Days and enjoy a show-stopping rendition of “American Trilogy” by a Michael Hoover 11:00 am-3:00 pm OLD-TIME MUSIC HERITAGE HALL at the tribute artist. The possibilities are endless and beautiful in the Garden of Mayberry. So, let’s keep on planting. And keep on watching Mayberry grow! Historic Earle Theatre, $8* includes admission to Andy Griffith Museum www.surryarts.org Page 23.

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