TV Quote of the Day (‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ As Andy Tells What Led to ‘The Shot Heard Round the World’)

Sheriff Andy Taylor [played by Andy Griffith]: [explaining the founding of America to Opie and three other schoolboys] “Well, one time a long time ago, this country was a part o' England, and we wasn't gettin' along with 'em too good. Fact, we was thinkin' about breakin' away and startin' our own country, but the king over there in England, he says, ‘You do that and I'm gonna send my redcoats.’ They was British soldiers and he's a gonna send 'em here to whup us.”

Deputy Barney Fife [played by Don Knotts]: “Of all the nerve!” —The Andy Griffith Show, Season 3, Episode 23, “Andy Discovers America,” original air date Mar. 4, 1963, teleplay by John Whedon, directed by Bob Sweeney

On this day in 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place—the commencement of continual hostilities between royal forces and their rebellious American colonists, what we know as the American Revolution.

The ideal way to learn about the day when, as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “the embattled farmer stood/And fired the shot heard ‘round the world,” is to visit the bridge itself where the volleys were exchanged, which I was lucky enough to visit, as I recounted in this post from a dozen years ago. 

Not quite as involving is to explore in detail the poems the poems that made these fateful encounters part of American legend: Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” and, for the events preceding this, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride.” A couple of bestselling novels from yesterday—Howard Fast’s April Morning and John Jakes’ The Bastard—might, if you’re lucky, still be found in public libraries or book/remainder sales.

But for as long as I remember, most people learn about this and other major points in American history from a school textbook—or, as one of my college professors once termed it, “a cultural menace to our society.” These are often committee-reviewed, leeched of personality and drama, but filled with what kids hate the most: dates.

That’s why Andy Taylor has come to the rescue.

As I discussed in a prior post, The Andy Griffith Show has become for me in the last few years a gentle cleansing agent for all the toxins in American news and souls. And the episode where today’s quote comes from is a special favorite of mine, for the following reasons:

*Griffith plays a brilliant straight man to Don Knotts, as the sheriff, to test whether history really was Barney’s favorite subject, asks his deputy what the Emancipation Proclamation was (not a bad question to ask at the time of its centennial, amid rising civil-rights activism—or in our own time, come to think of it);

*It kicks off the relationship between between the Sheriff of Mayberry and Opie’s teacher, Miss Crump, as Andy, with his sunbeam smile, changes her from antagonistic to—well, more friendly; and

*It piques interest in American history in an unusual way, as Andy has Opie and his pals—previously uninterested in history, much to Miss Crump's dismay—hanging on his every word as he relates what happened at the outbreak of the American Revolution. He does it without any dates (the closest thing: “a long time ago,” which, in his Southern twang, is the equivalent of “once upon a time” for boys), but with a good deal more content than Jeff Spicoli expressed about the Declaration of Independence in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (i.e., Jefferson called for “some cool rules ourselves, pronto”)

This, folks, is why Southerners are such excellent storytellers.