I grew up in Mayberry

I didn’t really grow up in Mayberry; I grew up in Cedar Falls in the 1960s and 1970s. For those of you who are not Baby Boomers like me, I should probably explain. Mayberry was the setting of the iconic Andy Griffith show and its spinoff, Mayberry R.F.D. The show was about a sleepy North Carolina town where the sheriff didn’t even need to carry a gun. Over the years, Mayberry has become a metaphor for a simpler, more idyllic time.

I am self-aware enough to know that we live in a different world. Even here in Iowa, we had the tragic school shooting in Perry, the Iowa legislature is considering arming teachers, and here in Cedar Rapids, Jefferson High School was locked down due to a ‘swatting’ incident.

Many people blame our current violence crisis on the availability of guns, but the fact is that guns are less available today than they were in the halcyon days of my youth. When I was growing up, you could (until 1968) look at an ad in the back of a magazine, send a check in the mail, and get a gun delivered by the US Post Office! My family never had guns, but I remember going to friends’ houses and seeing guns stored in gun cabinets. The gun cabinets of those days were not like modern gun safes. They were more like china cabinets displaying guns behind glass doors. Many didn’t even have locks! You could buy guns at the local Sinclair gas station, any hardware store, or in the Sears catalog. Back then, no one was alarmed to see a gun rack with a couple of rifles or shotguns in the back window of a pickup truck.

We even had guns in school, but they weren’t a problem until the day Andy shot the clock.

It all started my freshman year. We were doing a filmmaking project, and I was teamed up with a couple of classmates. We were making a film called “A Hillbilly Cleans Up.” Bryan played the part of the Hillbilly. He dressed in overalls with a straw hat and a corncob pipe. He carried a real double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun as a prop over his shoulder. As I recall, he brought the shotgun to school in the morning, and later on, our teacher allowed us to go off-campus to film. We walked from school with the shotgun and took footage in multiple businesses in the nearby College Hill district. Nobody was alarmed, and shopkeepers were happy to let us film in their establishments. For the closing scene, we filmed Bryan walking into the laundromat, leaning his shotgun against a dryer and stripping down to his red union suit while throwing his clothes in a washer. We even won some awards for the film.

I can remember multiple occasions where guns were brought in for ‘show and tell’ type assignments or as props for speeches or projects. They were always brought into school and directly into classrooms by students. In those days, it really didn’t seem that unusual. In my senior year, our P.E. class was going to spend a day at the local trapshooting range. I was excited at the prospect of shooting a shotgun for the first time. Our teacher said we could bring our own shotguns and ammunition. I didn’t have one, but my friend Doug said he'd bring his 16 gauge and a box of shells. P.E. class was later in the day, so Doug came and put the gun in my locker. I had locker 61 near the doors by the main hallway. It was common for my friends to leave stuff in my locker since it was centrally located. Of course, in those days, none of us locked our lockers. Putting a shotgun and ammunition in it and leaving it until after lunch didn’t seem unusual to us at the time. I am sure there were other guns in school lockers that day. We had a great time at the range and I found out that I am a pretty good shot with a shotgun!

As I wrote before, we had guns in school, and there really were no problems until Andy shot the clock. It was senior year, and we were putting on the play “Dark of the Moon.” Looking back, the content was a bit dark and adult for high school, but that’s another story. I was in charge of the fly loft, so my crew raised and lowered the curtains and sets used in the production. We were up on a walkway accessible only by a ladder. We had a bird’s eye view of the stage. My friend Andy was in charge of the sound crew and was responsible for providing the gunshot sound. I know this seems hard to believe, but remember it was Mayberry! The gunshot sound was made by Andy firing a shotgun down the long hallway by my locker. Except instead of a shotgun shell loaded with pellets, it would be a blank. But it was still a real shotgun, provided by my classmate Jeff with blank shotgun shells that he had hand-loaded at home!

During rehearsals, everything worked perfectly. Andy followed his cues and fired the shotgun down the hallway at the right time. On opening night, the show started well. Everything seemed to come together until the gunshot. Andy received his cue, and we heard the shot, but this time, it was accompanied by the sound of glass breaking! I practically flew down the ladder from the fly loft, and the student stage manager and I ran out into the hallway to see what had happened. Once in the hallway, we found Andy sheepishly holding the shotgun. It turns out that instead of aiming down the hallway, he had aimed the shotgun at the wall clock mounted near the ceiling. Even though the shell was a blank, there was still plastic wadding and the muzzle blast. This was enough to shatter the clock only a few feet away!

It seems inconceivable today that a student was allowed without direct supervision to fire a shotgun brought by another student with blank shells loaded by a student in a school hallway. Fortunately, no one was injured, but that clock met an untimely end.

I am not so naïve to believe that the world I have described still exists. The world in which my children and now grandchildren are growing up is different. We have a problem with violence in our society and in our schools. Back in Mayberry, we had guns, but we didn’t have the same problems. It’s not about the guns!

David Chung is a Gazette editorial fellow. david.chung@thegazette.com