A mortician who doubles as the town's TV repairman. Or is it the other way around? Could this be anywhere other than Mayberry, NC?
Reminds me of Pete Riegert's character in "Local Hero" (1983), where he plays an oil exec from Houston who goes to a small coastal town in Scotland. Wherever he goes, he sees someone he's seen before, but they're doing something different--the bartender fixing fishing nets down on the jetty, for example. He comments on this fact and one of the characters replies, "So, you've only got the one job, eh?"
So many great story lines and one liners for Andy on "The Andy Griffith Show" as well. One episode this morning found the town in a frenzy when a real Hollywood producer comes to scout the town as a possible location for his next movie. At first, the town council is against it. Why? "What if they make fun of us?" Andy says, "Now, what would they see that would make them make fun of us?" The mortician replies, "The way we talk; the way we dress; our tiny, fat mayor." The mayor is sitting right there, but he's too busy enjoying the power of his position to notice. But they give the producer the go ahead because Andy (of course) convinces them. Barney joins in the hysteria by wearing a spanking new uniform that looks like something Dudley Do-Right would wear. He tells Andy there's another one just like it for him to wear, courtesy of the mayor. Andy declines and gives Barney a dressing down, concluding with an order to "get out of that ridiculous uniform...Smokey Bear."
I woke up late this morning and came into the living room to an episode where a moonshiner and his whole family were in a jail cell on CHRISTMAS EVE! An elderly merchant hears festivities coming from the jail and is outraged to see Andy, Barney and Andy's "gal" decorating the jail for the holidays and treating the criminal family as if they were visiting relatives. The merchant, who wears a black suit and a black hat, then goes on a crime spree, hoping to get himself locked up for Christmas. Now, why on earth would he do THAT? Each time he commits a "crime", the townsfolk (except for Barney, of course) come to his rescue.Eventually, Andy (of course) figures it out and hauls the old man in, but only after the fills a suitcase with toys and gifts for incarcerated family at the jail.
I tell this last story because it reminded me of a Frontline episode I showed in class yesterday about the growing number of mentally ill people who are ending up in prison. One mentally ill convict in particular said that he needed to be in prison, and he wasn't looking forward to being paroled. Sure enough, a couple of weeks after his release, he stole a car and told the arresting officers that he was trying to go back to prison. (Of course) this documentary reminded me of what I see every day out at the prison: juveniles who have adopted the institutional mindset--the idea that being incarcerated is their best and only option. Just a couple of days earlier, a juvenile who scoffed at all the advice that the teachers (myself included), therapists, and security officers were giving him because A) he was eighteen, and B) he had it all planned out, was arrested on murder charges. He had been released from the juvenile prison just a few months earlier. I still cannot fathom this institutional mindset--where one feels freest, safest, and most secure in a place that controls almost every aspect of one's life. But then I realized that incarcerated folks are not choosing THE institutional mindset, they are choosing ONE of many institutional mindsets.
If we step back and take an objective look, we might just discover that the "successful life in America" is just another institutional mindset, where we don't have to think about where to live, or what to eat, or what to wear, because advertisers take care of those decisions for us. How many people take a serious look at their lives and say, "Isn't it remarkable that all my desires for my life just happen to have occurred in the minds of the folks on Madison Avenue?"
When we were little, we wanted to overpopulate the planet with ballerinas, astronauts, and cowboys, only because someone dared us to dream. Have we let other people do the dreaming for us? Is a dream job (like mine!) just an easy hoop we jump through so that we can further define ourselves by whatever everybody else is doing? Thoreau said from the moment of birth we are busy digging our own graves. I'm guessing he didn't get invited to very many parties.
Is your life authentic, or on auto-pilot? What does an authentic life look like, anyway? As David Byrne sang, "You may say to yourself, 'My God, what have I done'?" Well. That said, I'm gonna grab another cup of Starbucks coffee while I plan the best time to cut my front lawn, while waving to approving neighbors...
Reminds me of Pete Riegert's character in "Local Hero" (1983), where he plays an oil exec from Houston who goes to a small coastal town in Scotland. Wherever he goes, he sees someone he's seen before, but they're doing something different--the bartender fixing fishing nets down on the jetty, for example. He comments on this fact and one of the characters replies, "So, you've only got the one job, eh?"
So many great story lines and one liners for Andy on "The Andy Griffith Show" as well. One episode this morning found the town in a frenzy when a real Hollywood producer comes to scout the town as a possible location for his next movie. At first, the town council is against it. Why? "What if they make fun of us?" Andy says, "Now, what would they see that would make them make fun of us?" The mortician replies, "The way we talk; the way we dress; our tiny, fat mayor." The mayor is sitting right there, but he's too busy enjoying the power of his position to notice. But they give the producer the go ahead because Andy (of course) convinces them. Barney joins in the hysteria by wearing a spanking new uniform that looks like something Dudley Do-Right would wear. He tells Andy there's another one just like it for him to wear, courtesy of the mayor. Andy declines and gives Barney a dressing down, concluding with an order to "get out of that ridiculous uniform...Smokey Bear."
I woke up late this morning and came into the living room to an episode where a moonshiner and his whole family were in a jail cell on CHRISTMAS EVE! An elderly merchant hears festivities coming from the jail and is outraged to see Andy, Barney and Andy's "gal" decorating the jail for the holidays and treating the criminal family as if they were visiting relatives. The merchant, who wears a black suit and a black hat, then goes on a crime spree, hoping to get himself locked up for Christmas. Now, why on earth would he do THAT? Each time he commits a "crime", the townsfolk (except for Barney, of course) come to his rescue.Eventually, Andy (of course) figures it out and hauls the old man in, but only after the fills a suitcase with toys and gifts for incarcerated family at the jail.
I tell this last story because it reminded me of a Frontline episode I showed in class yesterday about the growing number of mentally ill people who are ending up in prison. One mentally ill convict in particular said that he needed to be in prison, and he wasn't looking forward to being paroled. Sure enough, a couple of weeks after his release, he stole a car and told the arresting officers that he was trying to go back to prison. (Of course) this documentary reminded me of what I see every day out at the prison: juveniles who have adopted the institutional mindset--the idea that being incarcerated is their best and only option. Just a couple of days earlier, a juvenile who scoffed at all the advice that the teachers (myself included), therapists, and security officers were giving him because A) he was eighteen, and B) he had it all planned out, was arrested on murder charges. He had been released from the juvenile prison just a few months earlier. I still cannot fathom this institutional mindset--where one feels freest, safest, and most secure in a place that controls almost every aspect of one's life. But then I realized that incarcerated folks are not choosing THE institutional mindset, they are choosing ONE of many institutional mindsets.
If we step back and take an objective look, we might just discover that the "successful life in America" is just another institutional mindset, where we don't have to think about where to live, or what to eat, or what to wear, because advertisers take care of those decisions for us. How many people take a serious look at their lives and say, "Isn't it remarkable that all my desires for my life just happen to have occurred in the minds of the folks on Madison Avenue?"
When we were little, we wanted to overpopulate the planet with ballerinas, astronauts, and cowboys, only because someone dared us to dream. Have we let other people do the dreaming for us? Is a dream job (like mine!) just an easy hoop we jump through so that we can further define ourselves by whatever everybody else is doing? Thoreau said from the moment of birth we are busy digging our own graves. I'm guessing he didn't get invited to very many parties.
Is your life authentic, or on auto-pilot? What does an authentic life look like, anyway? As David Byrne sang, "You may say to yourself, 'My God, what have I done'?" Well. That said, I'm gonna grab another cup of Starbucks coffee while I plan the best time to cut my front lawn, while waving to approving neighbors...
