Looking for Andy Griffith

A Father's Journey

Evan Dalton Smith

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469678993
• Print ISBN:
  9781469678986
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

Andy Griffith (1926-2012) is one of North Carolina’s most beloved exports, capturing America’s heart as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Evan Dalton Smith was born in the North Carolina Piedmont over four decades after Andy, just an hour south of Griffith’s hometown of Mount Airy. Both were small-town boys who grew up in similar places, where the counties were dry and the churches plentiful. But for both, there was darkness, crushed hopes, and tragedy, hidden just below the surface.

For Smith and many generations in North Carolina, Andy Griffith was like the air—everywhere, all the time, a part of daily life. Even after he left the state, Smith always felt the pull of home and the lingering ghost of Andy alongside it. This is an exploration on celebrity and the self, on home and what that means when you leave it, and why we love and admire the people we do—even if we’ve never met them—all told through the entwined lives of iconic actor Andy Griffith and writer Evan Dalton Smith. It is through Smith’s telling of Griffith’s life that he finds his own story, one that is both informed by and freed from the legacy of one of North Carolina’s most famous sons.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• INT. CONVERTED BARN, MOUNT AIRY, NC—DAY
• EXT. SANDY BEACH—DAY
• INT. ALVIN THEATER, NYC—NIGHT
• EXT. SWIMMING POOL—DAY
• 1. Ravaged by Alzheimer’s
• 2. In the early 1930s, Roanoke Island
• 3. In late August of 1970
• 4. Andy was a skinny teenager
• 5. Floating in the pool
• 6. Andy wondered sometimes
• 7. By Andy Griffith’s senior year
• 8. My mom’s dad, Wallace Simmons
• 9. In 2015, I lived in Beacon, New York
• 10. The ambulance driver raced along Highway 64
• 11. It was early morning; we were heading home to Asheboro
• 12. All day in kindergarten class at the Fayetteville Street Christian School
• 13. Walking along the broken sidewalk
• 14. In 2013, about fifteen years into my marriage
• 15. In the sleepy, sylvan community of Taylor, Georgia
• 16. I started a book proposal
• 17. In 2004, in Hollywood, four kids with fishing poles
• 18. Eight dollars garners admission to the Andy Griffith Museum
• 19. On the morning of July 3, 2012
• 20. In a 1972 interview, Frances Bavier credited Andy Griffith
• 21. Mount Airy had its Graceland moment
• 22. When I first moved to New York City from North Carolina
• 23. This is the Michael Jordan’s number of chapters
• 24. Several years have passed
• 25. Andy leaned against the black wrought-iron railing
• 26. I’ve never been fishing
• 27. Danville, Indiana, is an attractive small town
• 28. My life was in shambles
• 29. In my old home in Massachusetts
• 30. Alternate
• 31. In our earliest stories, fathers are unknowable
• 32. I’ve only vague memories of my dad
• 33. Here are the memories I have of my dad
• 34. In June of 2013, my wife of fifteen years
• 35. In 1998, the same year I was married
• 36. In 1970, on TV screens around the world
• 37. There are two things I love about Andy Griffith
• 38. I imagine Andy Griffith didn’t consider many of his failures
• 39. On my way to Mount Airy, North Carolina
• 40. On a warm September evening
• 41. My kids and I devoured our Shake Shack burgers
• 42. When Andy Griffith died
• 43. In a small but growing community in Effingham County, Georgia
• 44. The sky was severe blue
• 45. In Mount Airy, North Carolina, at the Mayberry Days festival
• 46. In the spring of 1968, when he was a freshman at New York University
• 47. At a Mayberry Days event in 2015
• 48. Late one hot evening
• 49. I have three fathers
• 50. I spoke with the comedy writer Emily Spivey
• 51. In the summer of 2002, I was crouched on the grooved metal floor
• 52. The recent and endless political struggles
• 53. One of the many things I did during the pandemic
• 54. Throughout the 1980s, the coastal North Carolina town of Wilmington
• 55. Before Sam Griffith died in the shower at a friend’s house
• 56. It was total war
• 57. In an article for the Saturday Evening Post
• 58. In 1918, during the height of the global Spanish flu pandemic
• 59. Meanwhile, two decades earlier
• 60. Judging by the number of plaques and badges
• 61. In all possible universes
• 62. The idea was simple and elegant
• 63. Up until this moment in my life
• 64. Not long into the interview, the young journalist asked
• 65. Once the cab crossed Houston Street, Andy looked
• 66. On April 14, 2014, I left New York City
• 67. Originally, Andy planned on attending a small Moravian college
• 68. Angel in My Pocket was supposed to appeal to his base
• 69. I took the train from Penn Station in Manhattan to Raleigh
• 70. I was feeding my kids dinner at Two Boots Pizza
• 71. So much time has passed
• 72. The strangest things have happened during this pandemic year
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY