"Andy Griffith Show" questions

[Revtim]

I was looking at the US.IMDB.COM listings for the “Andy Griffith Show” (yes, I was THAT bored) and a few questions come to mind.

The original show ran from '60 to '68. Don Knotts was only on until 1965. What happened to the Barney Fife character, did he move from Mayberry?

In 1968, the show was changed to “Mayberry RFD”. What does RFD stand for?

Ron Howard wasn’t in Mayberry RFD. The Opie character wasn’t old enough to go to college, was he? How did they explain Opie not being around?

[Ursa_Major]

1. Don Knotts moved on to make movies. I think Barney moved to Mt. Pilot.

2. Rural Farm District

3. Andy and Bee were rarely if ever shown either (I don’t think). RFD just focused on a different group of town folk (with a few of the originals to remind everybody they were still in Mayberry). Just because some characters were never shown doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t still live in Mayberry.

[aseymayo]

I think RFD means “rural free delivery.” Other than that, the Major is correct.

[Triskadecamus]

Long ago, shortly after the invention of the horse, I think, small rural area were served by the post office under a system called “Rural Free Delivery.” The letter carrier was a contract employee, who delivered a route for a set contract price. That route was called RFD 3, or somesuch. If you had a good letter carrier, all you needed for your address was the nearest town, state, and if the area was sparsely settled enough to have only one RFD route just the letters RFD. (or Box 35, RFD 1 for your bigger boondock metropolises.) The implication here is Mayberry was indeed a wide spot on the highway.
<P ALIGN=“CENTER”>Tris</P>

By the street of By-and-By, one arrives at the house of Never.
– ** Cervantes **

[AuntiePam]

I must have lived in a more narrow spot in the road – until just a few years ago, folks who lived “in the country” had Rural Route addresses, with a number, R.R. 1, etc.

Now we have 911 addresses. All the gravel roads and blacktops have been given names, and the houses are numbered, so the aid cars can find them more easily.

These look like “big city” type addresses – the numbers get huge – well, if four digits can be considered huge.

Back to Andy Griffith – any Dopers see him in “Face in the Crowd”. Excellent movie, about celebrity. He was quite a hottie in it too. Andy as a sex symbol.

[Clark_K]

Originally posted by Ursa Major:

1. Don Knotts moved on to make movies. I think Barney moved to Mt. Pilot.

FWIW, I was under the impression he joined the police force in Raleigh, the state capital and nearest big ciy.

Up, up and away!

[RealityChuck]

Mayberry RFD was a spinoff of The Andy Griffith Show. Griffith had wanted out of the series aand only appeared in the first episode and then left town. Ken Berry was the actual star. It was set in Mayberry, with some of the Andy Griffith Show cast (Aunt Bee, Goober Pyle, Howard).

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“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx

Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

[PUNdit]

Barney moved to Raliegh, there was one show where Andy visited him to see how he was doing in the big city. Of course Barney was basically a file clerk, and about to lose his job. Andy solved some case in a way that gave Barney the credit, so Barney got to keep his job.

When Andy Griffith wanted to leave the show, it was written that Andy Taylor married Helen Crump and the two of them with Opie moved to a bigger city (unspecified). Ken Berry moved to Mayberry to be the town manager or some such. He was Andy’s cousin and took over Andy’s house and Aunt Bee.

“You can be smart or pleasant. For years I was smart.
I recommend pleasant.”
Elwood P. Dowd

[Sweet_Basil]

We use(d) “RR” in my neck of the woods too. I thought that “RFD” stood for “Rural Fire District”. Any validity to that?

Sweet Basil

[aha]

RFD I vote for rural free delivery.

I live kinda in the woods and my addy is HC…stands for highway carrier I think.

[AWB]

I grew up in western Colorado. The addresses out of the city limits had RR # (rural route number, like RFD elsewhere) on the line after the person’s name. We still had the street address after that, but with only 1 ZIP code for the city and its suburbs, they needed help sorting which side of the city the mail went to. Finally, the USPS decided not to be stingy with ZIP codes and created 5 more to basically take the place of the RR #.

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Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.

[Spoke]

Speaking as a former farm boy, I can confirm that it is indeed “Rural Free Delivery”.

[Mojo]

I had always thought it stood for Rescue & Fire Department. Looks like its time for some research…

[BobT]

From the USPS website:
Today it is difficult to envision the isolation that was the lot of farm families in early
America. In the days before telephones, radios, or televisions were common, the farmer’s
main links to the outside world were the mail and the newspapers that came by mail to the
nearest post office. Since the mail had to be picked up, this meant a trip to the post office,
often involving a day’s travel, round-trip. The farmer might delay picking up mail for days,
weeks, or even months until the trip could be coupled with one for supplies, food, or
equipment.

John Wanamaker of Pennsylvania was the first Postmaster General to advocate rural free
delivery (RFD). Although funds were appropriated a month before he left office in 1893,
subsequent Postmasters General dragged their feet on inaugurating the new service so that
it was 1896 before the first experimental rural delivery routes began in West Virginia, with
carriers working out of post offices in Charlestown, Halltown, and Uvilla.

Many transportation events in postal history were marked by great demonstrations: the
Pony Express, for example, and scheduled airmail service in 1918. The West Virginia
experiment with rural free delivery, however, was launched in relative obscurity and in an
atmosphere of hostility. Critics of the plan claimed it was impractical and too expensive to
have a postal carrier trudge over rutted roads and through forests trying to deliver mail in
all kinds of weather.

However, the farmers, without exception, were delighted with the new service and the new
world open to them. After receiving free delivery for a few months, one observed that it
would take away part of life to give it up. A Missouri farmer looked back on his life and
calculated that, in 15 years, he had traveled 12,000 miles going to and from his post office
to get the mail.

A byproduct of rural free delivery was the stimulation it provided to the development of
the great American system of roads and highways. A prerequisite for rural delivery was
good roads. After hundreds of petitions for rural delivery were turned down by the Post
Office because of unserviceable and inaccessible roads, responsible local governments
began to extend and improve existing highways. Between 1897 and 1908, these local
governments spent an estimated $72 million on bridges, culverts, and other improvements.
In one county in Indiana, farmers themselves paid over $2,600 to grade and gravel a road
in order to qualify for RFD.

The impact of RFD as a cultural and social agent for millions of Americans was even more
striking, and, in this respect, rural delivery still is a vital link between industrial and rural
America.

I believe RFD is still used in some parts of the country.