Category Archives: America’s Past

It’s not where the very popular, 1960s era Andy Griffith TV show was filmed, but Mt. Airy, NC is the city where the star of the show was born, and it’s become for many fans of the show the fictionalized city of Mayberry, NC. Mt. Airy is pretty crowded in mid-summer when thousands of tourist fans of the show come to see what it’s all about. Many shops in the city have the same names as those establishments in the TV show…such as the Snappy Lunch diner. I went “tourist” myself recently and made some photos which I hope you enjoy. By the way, the Andy Griffith TV show remains in syndication and it’s on every night of the week where we live. Thus, new fans still are added.

When I was growing up, a trip to the drive-in movies on a Saturday night was pretty much routine in the summer. Movies shown were usually of a Class “B” variety…and were not that good, but we hardly watched much anyway, since we kids spent most of our time outside the family car, playing around on the slides, swingsets, jungle-gyms, and other items to fall off of. These items were located right below the large screen, so when we did watch the movie we had a very distorted view. Still, it was fun even without the movie. Also fun was eating all the junk food sold in the building where the projector was located; with outside seats adjacent where we often gathered to talk too much, so that we got yelled at by adults trying to enjoy the movie. Most people remained in their cars, watching from afar, however, listening to the movie sound coming through a car window-mounted gray-metal speaker.

In Eden, NC near when we live in adjacent Virginia, there is an old movie drive-in theater that remains operational, and as far as I can tell is making enough money to remain open. But, I read recently where the transfer of all movie theater projection from analog (film) to digital equipment will prove too costly for small theaters… especially drive-ins…to remain open much longer. Such is another sign of so-called progress. Too bad that so many kids in the future will never be able to experience all the fun of going to a drive-in movie on hot summer nights.

Over the next several days I’ll be posting more images I made at the NC Museum of Transportation in Spencer, NC. I had so much fun the day I was there, looking at and photographing some of my most favorite things…old trains. I’d never been inside a train “roundhouse” before, so when I discovered that the museum had an original which was open to the public, and that it was filled with all sorts of old trains…all of the steam variety, I was overjoyed.

A roundhouse is a building used by railroads for servicing locomotives. Roundhouses are large, circular or semicircular structures that were traditionally located surrounding or adjacent to turntables. The defining feature of the traditional roundhouse was the turntable, which facilitates access when the building is used for repair facilities or for storage of steam locomotives. The images which follow will provide you with a sample of what I saw…starting with an outside view of the turntable and tracks headed to the adjacent semi-circular building.

Inside looking out toward the turntable.

A view of several historic steam train engines sitting in the roundhouse, awaiting servicing. I imagine this scene was much different when the facility was in operation. Noisy, dirty, steam filled air, with lots of men doing all their work to keep the trains running.

Earlier this week I had a post about my visit to the North Carolina Museum of Transportation in Spencer, NC. I wrote that I had gone on a “real” train ride during that visit. By that I meant on an actual historic train, running on original train tracks and in an authentic location. The ride was less than 30 minutes long, but I got to experience a bit of what I’d remembered from my childhood when I rode trains a lot with my parents as we moved about the country. Here are some images to record what I saw that day. First, the train engine pulling six passenger cars one of which I rode, followed by the engineer that day (He and all other museum staff were volunteers).

Next…the 1920′s era passenger car in which I rode outside view first followed by the inside.

To close this post…here’s a view of the end of the train pulling away after I got off…with the conductor standing on the rear platform. I have seen numerous historic photos of politicians and famous movie stars standing on similar train passenger car platforms waving to fans or prospective voters. Not today…sadly. By the way, next week I’ll post some more pics I took at the museum…focus on steam engines!

It was not until after I looked at this image on my computer that I thought of the title for this post…”Timeless Beauty.” This old, faded and tarnished concrete garden statue when new clearly reflected beauty…both in the lady and what she was depicted as doing. Contrast how “she” looks today standing next to newly opened tulip blossoms. Old versus new beauty…timeless. Wow, that was all pretty deep stuff, eh? Now, to lighten things up a bit…try this image I got of her a few minutes after I made the first image. I wonder what’s she’s thinking…something like, “Please birdie, not on my head!”