Ghost Dancing on the Cracker Circuit: The Culture of Festivals in the American South

Chapter Seven: Aunt Bee's Death Certificate: Mayberry Days at Mount Airy, North Carolina

C H A P T E R S E V E N AUNT BEE'S DEATH CERTIFICATE Mayberry Days at Mount Airy, North Carolina tall, whiskered cab driver stands in front of a cinderblock shed. A sign above his head reads "Wally's Service Station—Cold Cokes and Cab Rides." The bill of his cap curls upward in a flip that is the universal symbol for doofus. He twists the cap sideways on his head, stubs out his cigarette, rolls his eyes and slobbers his line for the gathered crowd. "Goober says, Hey!" The flash from a small camera blinks weakly under a gray, rain-heavy sky that sits over the town like the pillowy lining on the underside of a coffin lid. Up Main Street from Wally's, awild-eyed man in a torn vest, dirty cap and unlaced boots drags a sack of rocks up the sidewalk. His shrieking laugh pierces the cool fall air and ricochets off the granite and brick turn-of-the-century storefronts. "It's me! It's me! It's Ernest T.!" Cameras click. A Barney Fife look-alike runs out of Floyd's Barber Shop. He hollers at Ernest T., the backwoods vandal who is notorious for smashing the windows of Mayberry businesses for the sake of love. "Ernest T. Bass, you put down that rock!" The crowd on Main Street waiting for their pork chop sandwiches at Snappy Lunch goes nuts. A woman in line grins, says to her friend: This is soo Mayberry\ 179 A MAYBERRY DAYS Three generations of Barney After meeting the Andy and Barney look-alikes at Mule Day and thinking about the web of meaning behind their names andperformances , I knew I had to visitMayberry Days in Mount Airy, North Carolina. Here I would see the purest form of postmodern ghost dancing—the public performance by pop culture simulacra of a simulated golden age. In Mount Airy I would find a town attempting to revive its flagging economy by assuming the identity of an idealized media representation. I would also discover that the negotiation of the dimensions of time and space is a key aspect of the postmodern ghost dance movement. The birthing ofAmerica wasgreased with the fat ofwhales and lighted by their burning oils. When the whales began to run out, a Norwegian invented the grenade-launched harpoon, and hunters were able to kill even the fastest whales. Wheelslubricated with fat were good;wheels on rails and lubricated with fat were better; but wheels on rails lubricated with petroleum were the best when it came to lacing up the country according to a new logic of space and time. When the rail line from Paris to Rouen and Orleans opened in 1843, the German poet Heinrich Heine wrote: What changes must now occur, in our way of looking at things, in our notions! Even the elementary concepts of time and space have begun to vacillate. Space is killed by the railways, and we are left with time alone. . . . Now you can travel to Orleans in four and a half hours, and it takes no longer to get to Rouen. Just imagine what will happen when the lines to Belgium and Germany are completed and connected up with their railways! I feel as if the mountains and forest of all countries were advancing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea's breakers are rolling against my door. (Shivelbusch 1986: 37) When the B&O opened arailline from Baltimore to Charleston, West Virginia, in 185 8,journalists, artists and politicians were taken for a ride. 180 MAYBERRY DAYS Harper^s Magazine declared: "The ages of gold, and of silver, of brass, and iron, as described by the poets, are past. The present is the age of steam. . . . The real and the ideal have smoked pipes together. The iron horses and Pegasus have trotted side by side in double harness, puffing in unison, like a well-trained pair. What will be the result of this conjunction Heaven knows" (Eller 1982). We now know the result. There was a pulling at the eyeballs by the passing countryside, a shaking of the bones by the metal wheels, and the passengers on trains felt a profound fatigue. Since the early locomotives were, basically,hurtling fireballs, explosive and unstable, and the railroad cars were vibrating, teeth-cracking boxes, people were stunned by their rides. But...