Andy Griffith’s TV show in the 1960s was set in a town named Mayberry, which was a wide spot on the highway with a filling station and a small downtown with Floyd’s Barber Shop, Emmett’s Fixit shop and Howard Sprague the city clerk were frequent locations (the entire show was filmed in California, of course)<\/p>\n
Mayberry was loosely based on Mount Airy, a town I remember visiting on the Greyhound bus in the 1960s – at the time, they were just starting to become aware of the potential to build a tourism business.\u00a0 The show had occasional references to other towns in North Carolina – “Mount Pilot” was the closest bigger small town which was actually Pilot Mountain – a city of near the peculiar mountain in the middle of nowhere<\/a><\/p>\n Another town mentioned on the show was Siler City – it’s name was not changed. “Aunt Bee” (Frances Bavier<\/a>) was not from North Carolina at all – she was a New Yorker – and in a curious twist decided to retire in Siler City, which is where she lived until her death in 1989.<\/p>\n Well, Siler City is no longer the quaint small town where Opie Taylor would fit it.\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks to the explosion in chicken processing (filling in part the void in the North Carolina economy left by the destruction of tobacco farming), the town of Siler City now has a population that is close to 50% Hispanic.<\/p>\n http:\/\/whichwaync.com\/2012\/06\/28\/more-than-labor-the-economic-impact-of-latinos-in-siler-city\/<\/p>\n In December 2008, Pilgrim’s Pride filed for bankruptcy<\/a> which was caused by a sudden decrease in demand for its products and debt load it had added to acquire Gold Kist. \u00a0 Pilgrim’s pride was acquired in 2009 by a company from Brazil and much of the processing in the United States was closed, leaving Siler City was empty factories and Mexican workers leaving for elsewhere.<\/p>\n North Carolina over the past 20 or so years has had a significant number of radio stations converted to Spanish Language to appeal to the Mexican migrant worker community – but as is the case in most of the country, Mexicans send most of their income “home” to Mexico and spend little in the local economy, so after a year or two the radio stations appealing to that audience generally fail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andy Griffith’s TV show in the 1960s was set in a town named Mayberry, which was a wide spot on the highway with a filling station and a small downtown with Floyd’s Barber Shop, Emmett’s Fixit shop and Howard Sprague … Continue reading