Travis: 22 years
Drew: 18 years
Dad: 52 years
My father died when I was seven. The only way I ever learned anything about being a father was by watching The Andy Griffith Show and by watching my friend Mark parent his three girls. Here’s one of my favorite Andy Griffith shows.
Little Opie (about age 9 – the show was still black-and-white) shows his dad his new sling-shot, down at the sheriff’s station. Ever-wise Andy tells him to be careful with it. Walking home, Opie is shooting kinda indiscriminately, imagining wondrous hunting adventures — pow, pow. Reaching his house, he spies a bird up in a tree and, in his rhythm, he shoots at it. He has no real intent – just shooting from the hip. Defying all odds he hits her. On his knees, the tearful Opie pleads with the bird to fly away, tossing the limp bird a few inches in the air, for it to thud dishearteningly to the ground.
Andy, in his gotta-finish-in-30-minutes wisdom, pieces together the dead bird he found on the front walk and Opie’s reticence at dinner. He confronts the contrite boy up in Opie’s bedroom, and Opie’s (appropriate and awful) punishment is to have his window open all night, to hear the plaintive tweets of the baby birds awaiting their mother who will never deliver a worm or warmth. The next morning, now in problem-solving mode, Opie and Andy retrieve the fledglings from the nest and put them in a cage. And Opie raises them, maternally.
There’s a funny scene built around Deputy Barney Fife. At one point, when Opie is feeding the chirping baby birds, Barney tells him and Andy that birds are actually talking when they chirp. For instance, Barney says, “When you hear ‘Twee twee twuh-tweeeee,’ they’re saying ‘I am happeeeee.’ But when you hear [a descending] ‘Twee Tweeeeee’ it means ‘I’m saaaad.’”
About this time Opie asks Andy when they will know that the birds (named after nursery rhyme characters) are ready to fly off. And Andy, with a sly grin and a sideways glance towards Barney, says, “Well, Winken will tell Blinken, Blinken will tell Nod, Nod will tell Barney, and Barney will tell us.”
And of course Barney huffs off.
Comes the predictable time when the birds have to be released. Opie is resistant for a few seconds, but then, mature beyond his years, he hopes aloud that they will be able to fly off. And, one by one, they do. Standing in the front yard, of that bluebird morning, Opie’s eyes well up with tears of sadness and relief and joy, ultimately glad that he has successfully gotten the birds to the point of launch. The show ends with Opie looking back at the birds’ home for the last few weeks. Opie says, “The cage sure looks empty, Pa.” And the still wise Andy says, with a backdrop of bird sounds, “Yes, but don’t the trees look full”?
The Bias household is unimaginably empty and quiet, but don’t Texas, and the world, look full o’ them Bias boys?
I know.
But still . . . .
It gets better with each passing week, predictably. But there is some very real sense that whatever I do from here on out can only possibly be the second most important job I ever do.
This will be short. I while back I listened to an episode of the Slate magazine podcast called the Cutural Gabfest. Stephen Metcalfe (astute culture critic) and co-hosts discussed tv parental role models and they pointed to Obie’s Empty Nest episode as the epitome of how to impart effective and humane parental discipline. ‘Ole Andy got it right!
Thanks, Paul. I guess it was a good thing (at least for my boys) that I spent more time watching _The Andy Griffith Show_ than _All in the family_ or _Married with children_! There’s another one that tears me up. Opie reveals that he has a quarter, given to him by Mr. McBeevie, who “walks through the trees, jingle jangles when he walks, and can blow smoke outta he eyes.” The adults get convinced that Opie is lying, and Barney encourages Andy to “Nip it — nip it in the bud.” Andy goes up to Opie’s room to confront the child, and make him tell the truth or he’s gonna get a whuppin’. Opie, aware of how easy it would be to say he was making this up, sticks with his story. Andy comes downstairs and lights a cigarette, and tells the disappointed Barney and Aunt Bea that he couldn’t do it. He didn’t know what the right answer was, but he had faith in Opie. At the end of the show Andy is walking through the woods, pensive, wonderin’ what a good parent is supposed to do at this point. He’s down on his haunches, tossing pine cones or sumthin’, and repeating aloud, sadly, “Mr. McBeevie.” Unimaginably, from above he hears “At your service.” So the lineman Mr. McBeevie climbs down. And Andy admires him, agape, and says, “Why, why, you walk through the trees, and you jingle jangle when you walk, and I’ll bet you can blow smoke outcher eyes. I’m Sheriff Taylor, Opie’s dad.” “Ah, Opie, Fine lad!” And Andy about shakes the man’s arm off, so happy is he. Sometimes I had more faith in my boys than I thought they deserved. And it — every time — turned out to be the right answer. (At least in the long run.)