Beyond Mayberry

Mount Airy North Carolina was the birthplace of the late actor Andy Griffith and Historian Tom Perry. In this memoir of their hometown, Perry tells the story of the real Mayberry and his thoughts of the most famous son of the piedmont North Carolina town. This book is part memoir, part biography and part tour guide about Andy Griffith and Mount Airy, North Carolina. Beginning on the day Andy Griffith died, July 3, 2012, Perry tells about the town that day and goes back in time to bring Griffith and his own family to Mount Airy to work in the factories in the twentieth century. Sharing his connections with Griffith, Perry tells about the youth both shared in Mount Airy. The book then follows Andy Griffith to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Goldsboro to teach school and then Broadway, television and movies in a career that lasted decades. The book also details the effect of Andy Griffith on Mount Airy with the decades long tourism boom that began in the 1980s with the town taking on the persona of the fictional Mayberry that Griffith obviously used to in his highly successful Andy Griffith Show that ran on CBS for eight years ending its run as the number one show on television.