My 95 year old aunt

[ChildOfTheFort]

30. I keep telling people who want to know....

but nobody believes me. I grew up in Mayberry with Andy and Opie. No, not the one in the tv show but my own Mayberry in my own childhood that was so similar to Opies that I can still hear the criclets and the frogs and smell the livestock over the fence. There was a tiny general store smaller than the one in the Waltons about 45 feet away from our home and it had a potbelly stove in the back for winter days where farmers and friends gathered to talk after dark. There was a big candy counter in the front and almost every family, about 20 or so, had accounts they paid once a month. I don't remember ever locking a door or not knowing everybodys name. There was a church and a school with all 12 grades in one building and the basketball team and baseball team and track team all had local championship trophies that are still there in a beautiful hand built display where the ball diamond used to be before it was all torn down. It was heaven but nobody knew it. It still is only now I do know it and I drive by there often and shut the car off and listen for the cheer squads and the the crickets and the silence over
head. I visit it in my mind everyday of my life no matter where I am or what I am doing. I wish the property I grew up in was for sale but it isn't. I would go to the back yard and toss an old blanket on the yard in the dark and look up at the Milky Way with my dad the way we used to do until