DOWN HOME: Andy, Mayberry & a slice of heaven

When our older daughter, Lindsay, toddled, I always loved when The Andy Griffith Show came on our television. Like most children her age, Lindsay seemed stuck in perpetual motion. As long as she was awake, she never stopped moving. Except when she heard the whistled theme song from Andy. No matter where she was or what she was doing, she stopped and silently stared at the TV until the song finished.

The Andy Griffith Show always felt like a love letter to small-town America.

On one level, I love that memory because it's an iconic image of our darling daughter's childhood. Her mother, Joanna, and I never could figure out what it was about that song that halted Lindsay in her tracks. She couldn't explain it then and doesn't remember it now. So, it will remain a sweet, funny mystery.

On another level, I love that memory because it's a metaphor for my response to one of my four all-time favorite TV shows. When Andy comes on the tube, life stops for 30 minutes. I'm always transported to a gentler, sweeter time and place.

So, I joined millions of people worldwide when we learned Andy Griffith died at age 86 on Independence Day Eve.

Griffith differed from Andy Taylor, the character he played in his program. Several of his movie roles, including Larry Rhodes in 1957's A Face in the Crowd and Grandpa Joe in 2007's Waitress, reflected nuance and complexity that, for the most part, Griffith painted over in his TV icon.

Still, The Andy Griffith Show always felt like a love letter to small-town America, a paean to the joy of basic values, such as kindness, decency, humility and respect. Although never overt, Andy also reflected Griffith's abiding Christian faith that shaped his character.

I never visited North Carolina, the setting for Andy, until I was an adult. But Mayberry always reminded me of the small northwestern Oklahoma village where my mother's parents lived during that era. I felt as if I knew Barney Fife, Aunt Bea, Floyd and Gomer. And since Ron Howard and I are about the same age, I always wanted to be friends with Opie.

Even now, the occasional Andy rerun carries me back to my childhood, when values seemed as black and white as the early episodes of the program and life tasted as sweet as Aunt Bea's pies.

Of course, life never tracked that simply. And even then, many Americans could not enjoy its sweetness. In 1960, when Andy premiered, North Carolina college students challenged segregation with the first sit-in. In 1968, the show's final season, assassins killed Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

But through the 1960s and beyond, The Andy Griffith Show provided an aspirational template for a kind-hearted, gracious, jovial community. The show's namesake embodied those venues, and heaven is sweeter place since Andy arrived.

My top-four favorite shows: (1) M*A*S*H, (2) Andy, (3) Lost and (4) The Wonder Years.