When Great Things Happen to Mediocre Museums

In 2016 I wrote about a visit to the Andy Griffith Museum in Mount Airy, NC.  At the time I thought the museum was a fairly average small town attempt to acknowledge a local guy who did good in the big world beyond Mount Airy. You can read my post about it, but the truth is the museum left a lot to be desired with clothing on hangers and improperly mounted, a jumbled up narrative, and redundancies galore. At the time we were told that an update was in the works so that made me feel somewhat better about the experience.

If you aren’t familiar with Andy Griffith and his TV show from the 1960s, it was based on a small town sheriff in the town of Mayberry, which was based on Griffith’s home town of Mount Airy. Today there is an entire industry built around the TV show, with local businesses taking on the persona of the TV equivalent.  It’s a bit of an Andy Griffith theme park, but it is working for Mount Airy. All the shop fronts are filled with local businesses, and there are plenty of visitors, looking for the Mayberry experience.

I am happy to say that the museum has been completely renovated and reimagined. It’s no longer a haphazard bunch of stuff, but today tells a coherent story of the man and the TV show that put his hometown on the map.

Above you can see one of the shirts Andy wore as the sheriff of Mayberry. previously this shirt was on a clothes hanger in a space so small that the bottom of the shirt wadded up on the bottom of the case.The only good thing was that the label could be seen. It’s now hidden, but the exhibit notes tell the visitor that the shirt was made by the famous Nudie Cohn of Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in North Hollywood.

The first part of the museum tells about Andy’s childhood in Mount Airy. The setting for this area consist of reproductions of some of the local landmarks. The Snappy lunch is located on Main Street and was mentioned in episodes of the TV show.

You can still eat lunch there today.

One of the best things about the renovation is the excellent exhibit notes. Artifacts are clearly explained along with photos from the show. The two tweed suits above were made for actor Don Knotts in his role of Deputy Barney Fife. The one on the left is from the original series and first appeared on screen in 1960. The one on the right was made for a Mayberry reunion movie.

This pinstriped brown suit was based on one first worn by Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle. After he left the show in 1964 the suit was altered to fit his replacement, George Lindsey as Cousin Goober Pyle. Goober wore the suit so much that it became quite worn, and so the Western Costume Company took apart the original to make this replacement.

Even in 1960 the suit was terribly out of style, but Goober kept wearing it until Mayberry RFD, the successor to The Andy Griffith Show, ceased production in 1971.

Goober was usually dressed for his job as an auto mechanic. I have often wondered how he kept his pants waist so high above his waist. The outfit is actually one piece, with the pants sewn to the shirt.

The Mary Maxim type sweater on the right was a gift from Andy to childhood friend Emmett Forrest. It was Forrest’s collection that forms the foundation of the museum’s collection.

Hal Smith played the town drunk, Otis Campbell. He was usually seen in the town jail, and so his costume is surrounded by bars.

This mockup of Andy’s office in the Mayberry Courthouse contains many of the original items from the set. There were screens set up around the museum showing scenes from the show and interviews with the actors.

One of my favorite displays is this one that features two dresses from actress Maggie Peterson. Maggie was Charlene Darling on the show, but these dresses were worn in a 1967 variety show in which some of the show’s actors reunited with Griffith.  Maggie’s dresses were designed by Bob Mackie, and she donated them to the museum along with the original Mackie illustrations.

The museum continues in the basement of an adjoining building. There is a nice display devoted to actress Betty Lynn who portrayed Thelma Lou, Barney’s girl friend, in the show. At the age of seventeen, Betty Lynn joined the USO and was sent to the Pacific theater. That’s her gun that was given to her, just in case.

This is a hand mirror that was a gift from Don Knotts. Betty Lynn is now in her nineties, and she actually lives in Mount Airy. She relocated there in 2006 after a public appearance there.

Outside the museum they have an old motorcycle sidecar for kids visiting to climb into for a photo. I couldn’t resist.

 

Mount Airy Regional History Museum

I am a fan of museums, and throw in the word history in the name and I’ve just got to pay a visit.  On a recent trip to a flea market, we made a stop in Mount Airy, North Carolina. I’ve written about Mount Airy in the past. It is a thriving little town in the northern North Carolina foothills; thriving because of its association with the 1960s television series, The Andy Griffith Show.  But there’s more to Mount Airy than Andy, and the Mount Airy Regional History Museum was there to educate us.

One never knows what to expect when visiting a small regional history museum. There’s the very good, and unfortunately, the very, very bad. I suppose a lot of the difference is due to the amount of money available to each museum. I suspect that history museums are not terribly high on the county budget priority list.

Local museums are also often a victim of donations. Several years ago I had a long and insightful discussion with the director of a small history museum in another NC town. That museum had, in the past, had such a liberal policy concerning donations that almost anything was accepted into the collection. As a result, the museum had  six large spinning wheels, a dozen treadle sewing machines and nineteen vintage typewriters.

So many small museums end up being old stuff warehouses. Over the years I’ve been in many museums that are pretty much the same, with the usual assortment of old tools, spinning wheels, and taxidermied wildlife. But this was not (thankfully) what we found in Mount Airy.

Instead, the museum truly tells the story of the town and the surrounding area, All the exhibits are place specific. Of couse I was mainly interested in the textiles and clothing, but I also enjoyed learning about the Native inhabitants of the region and the very important granite industry.

There were actually two exhibits on textile manufacture, one of home manufacture of the early settlement, and the other on the cotton knit manufacturing that was formed in the region in the early twentieth century. Part of the home manufacture exhibit is above, and it uses period photographs and artifacts to explain how people made their textiles and clothing at home.

And, yes, there was a spinning wheel in the exhibit, but it was used within the proper context. They also had this giant loom set up in the middle of the room. These are sometimes referred to as “barn looms” as they certainly did not fit into the small pioneer homes. I’m betting there are still dozens of these in barns scattered across the eastern US.

At one time Mount Airy had several factories that made socks, underwear, and other cotton knit items. That green machine made socks, and actually, some small makers across the South still use similar machines.

The long underwear in the background had a label that sort of rang a bell. It was not until we left the museum that I remembered where I’d just seen the name.

In the next block down the street was the old Spencer’s factory.  In business for over 100 years, Spencers closed in 2007, and it looks like the buildings are being converted to condos.

There were also quite a bit of clothing on display as well. Another celebrity from Mount Airy is country singer Donna Fargo. This fringed mini dress was worn by her for performances at Disneyland in 1973.

This dress was described as an “… an antique lace top and skirt worn by Donna Fargo, was featured on her 1981 album, Brotherly Love.” To be honest, it looks more like an assemblage of old lace pieces made into an ensemble, a practice not unknown at the time.

There were some actual antique clothes, all worn by residents of the town. The 1890s suit above was a wedding dress worn by a member of a prominent Mount Airy family.

This dress was made by an unidentified bride, who also made the lace.

The wearer of this (1905ish?) dress was not identified either, but I thought the presentation was quite nice.

Another resident of Mount Airy who went on to fortune (if not actual fame) was Katherine Smith Reynolds. I’ve written about her before, as she was the owner of Reynolda House, and her husband was the founder and owner of RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company.

But if I had to pick a favorite, it would be this girl’s basketball uniform from JJ Jones High, which was a segregated Black high school. The museum has a great display of artifacts from the school, along with an explanation of how Jim Crow laws affected the educational system.

Outside the museum is a tribute wall of sorts, that honors people who were important in making Mount Airy what it is today. It warmed my heart to see the textile mill factory worker included in the tribute.

And here’s a close up view just to make sure you could see that the statue is made from bricks.