[MUSIC] [old police siren wailing] - Well, you know old Barney like to do that and I do too.

[old police siren wailing] - I'll start off by telling you that Andy was born here in 1926 on June 1st.

Andy's mother was born about 30 miles northeast of here.

Guess what that little community's name was?

Mayberry.

[MUSIC] ♪ - All right, we got to watch for jaywalkers.

- There is 155 references of Mount Airy and the surrounding area in that show up here of eight years.

- I was watching one of the shows last week and I heard Andy say to somebody, "We're going to the Grand Theater tonight to see a movie."

Right here it is, right there where the green lights around that glass.

That was the Grand Theater in his day.

He worked in there and sold tickets to popcorn for people to see the movie.

- That's where Andy really got inspired to get in the show business.

He saw a lot of free movies with his job.

He said once in an interview that his mother would give him a quarter on Saturday morning to get him out of the house so she could clean house.

Andy said, "I could take that quarter and go to the theater and see a movie for a dime."

Then a lot of times I'd come back to Snappy Lunch, get two hot dogs and a drink with the 15 cents I had left.

[MUSIC] - Anytime they mention a street on the show, and I think they mention 40-some streets, they're all streets here in town.

- He referenced this intersection right here five or six times.

Main Street and Pine, Main Street and Pine.

- Now Andy loved hot dogs.

That's the reason Matlock eats hot dogs on TV.

- But anyway, we'll get back to Andy in just a little bit.

♪ - You know, I didn't come home from work that day planning on going to it.

I was just going to ride through and see how many people was there.

In 2002, Andy was here for the Highway 52 dedication that runs through town.

They named it the Andy Griffith Parkway.

Well, you know, Mount Airy is Andy Griffith's hometown.

We've been called Mayberry ever since I can remember.

Most of the people there around me were all from out of town.

They would come to Mount Airy just to see Andy.

So people started asking me questions when they found out I was from here.

You know, when I left that day, I said, "I need to come up with something, give people something to do when they come searching for Mayberry."

♪ So I decided I was going to fix up a squad car and show them the town.

Well, you had to have an old Ford Galaxy to make a squad car out of, so it looked like the squad car that they used on the Andy Griffith Show.

Ford was a corporate sponsorship of the Andy Griffith Show, and every year of the show, Ford would give them a new current model year Galaxy to use on the show.

So I saw this car.

It was a '62.

It was all black with a red interior.

I told the guy that if he would paint the roof white and paint the doors white, then I would buy it, and so he did.

And coming home, a lot of people would pass me, blowing horns and giving me a thumbs up because they could see, you know, what was going to happen, you know, I guess.

So I fixed the car up.

Put the red light on it, put my siren on it, got some emblems to go on the door.

Hey, I got a squad car.

♪ So I was going through town, and I'd see tourists on Main Street, and I would just say, "Hey, you all want to ride around in the squad car?"

People would jump in, and we'd ride around for a few minutes, and I'd tell them a little bit about Mount Airy.

'You need to see Snappy Lunch.

'You need to see Floyd's Barbershop.

'You need to go to Andy's Homeplace.'

When I'd pick people up, you know, I would stop at Wally's, you know, to give them a bottle of pop, and that's kind of how I got connected with Wally's.

It's just taken off since then.

You never can tell from one hour to the next who's going to pull in the parking lot.

I need another car, and I need some more help driving.

My concept was to use older guys, retired guys, somebody that, you know, can talk and carry on a conversation and grew up around here for the most part.

- 2002, I came up from Raleigh for a day trip, walked out of a restaurant on Main Street, and he was sitting at the stoplight.

I about had a meltdown.

I was one of his first customers.

- He was.

- And I said, "One day, I'm going to move up here and drive your car."

And I started adding cars.

My idea was I want one from every year.

'61 through the '67 were the Galaxies they used.

- Ford gave them the cars for free advertising.

- Yeah, every season had the latest model Ford Galaxy.

- Some drivers open it like it's a limousine.

I want you to figure out where your thumb goes on that button, because cars haven't opened like that for what, since 1970s?

- You want me to sit in the center?

[door shutting] - A lot of them get in that car and look around for a few seconds, and it's like they've opened a Christmas present.

- The roll-down windows, I've never done that before in my life.

- Some of the older folks, you may hear stories like, "Mama and Daddy had a car like this."

You know, "One of my first dates had a car like this."

It just brings back memories.

- And they all come looking for Mayberry.

- Where are you ladies from?

- Toledo, Ohio.

- Illinois.

Quincy, Illinois.

- Rochester, New York.

- We're from Chicago.

- Here we go.

[old siren wails] - Ah!

They're looking for the days we'd like to go back to.

- Which is what the TV show did.

It got you out of whatever troubles you had for 30 minutes, and they get that here, too.

- I find that at times when we leave from down here, we've got the siren going.

And a lot of people, especially women, will just scream.

They're that happy.

- Probably afraid of your driving.

[laughter] [siren] ♪ - We were known for this for over 100 years before Mayberry was ever talked about.

What you're going to see over here on the right is the largest granite quarry on earth.

That area was called the Granite City for a lot of years before Mayberry.

All solid granite.

Been in operation since 1879.

- One time in the early 1900s, it was one of the biggest employers in the area.

There was a couple thousand men that used to work out on the quarry in the early 1900s.

They tell us if they get it all out of the original 90 acres to the bottom, it would take another 500 years.

So it's a lot of stone there yet.

- All this granite all over town, most of the churches are made out of it.

Our municipal buildings, several homes, practically all the stores along Main Street.

It's what put Mount Airy on the map.

♪ - Have y'all seen this?

- The quality is excellent.

It looks like it was machine printed.

But this boy never picked up a paintbrush.

This was all painted with spray paint.

If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it.

- We call this the Five Faces of Andy.

It started out as a very young man on the left right here.

Ended up as Matlock on the right there.

- Three in the middle are kind of during the period of the show, 249 episodes over seven and a half years.

If you look closely, you can see a shadow come up right across it from left to right.

That is the mountain.

That's Pilot Mountain.

That's what Andy called Mount Pilot.

♪ - Right there's the statue of Andy and Opie going fishing right there.

- I had a lady there, when I was explaining to her, I could tell what year the show was filmed based on what year the car was.

But the lady told me she didn't need to know that since she watched Opie grow up.

She knew what year the show was based on Opie's age.

♪ - This was dirt street when Andy was a kid living here.

- And right there's Andy's home place right there.

They did not have a bathroom.

They had a privy in the backyard.

He lived like that for about nine years.

He left here and went down to Carolina, Manteo, New York, and California.

♪ - The beauty of it to me is the people that come in from all over the country, and really all over the world, just to see how much they love it, and how much they love Andy.

It's just a real sense of pride.

- Yeah, it was great.

- It was awesome.

- They were great.

- Yeah?

- I didn't get to speak hardly.

[laughter] - I had a couple from Houston, and we got done with the tour, and the lady in front just broke out in tears.

- Brought her to tears.

- That happens.

- A lot of people get out of the car in tears.

- The whole Mayberry thing has got such an influence on people.

Who knew that this was on people's bucket list?

- It's a special day.

- My birthday!

- It's Larry's birthday.

- We're going to let him blow the siren, because all birthday boys get to blow the siren.

Yep, push it down.

[siren] Happy birthday to Larry!

- Happy birthday to you!

- All right, put your hands up and get arrested.

Y'all been bathing in a public fountain in the presence of a mule.

- I mean, the rest of your life, you're going to remember riding a squad car through Mayberry.

You're not going to forget it.

♪ [whistling Andy Griffith theme] [laughter]