Prime's Worm Hole : I Lost My Dad Again Today

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

I Lost My Dad Again Today

The Dad I lost today wasn't a real person, not a real father like most would be familiar with, but rather a real character that I have known all of my life, even though he only existed in the realm of fantasy. He was a living legend, a person who over the course of a lifetime became famous and someone who every baby boomer came to know simply as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Andy Taylor of Mayberry. Andy Griffith, the beloved man who breathed life into that character and made Sheriff Andy Taylor flesh and blood has passed from our midst today and I truly feel l as if I have lost a father.

For me it's more than the passing of a celebrity. It's as if I have lost someone that has always existed in my life in one form or another. Sheriff Andy Taylor has always been there for me when I had needed him, he has always been there as a part of my life's experiences and now he is gone. As far back as I can remember there was always a Mayberry and an Andy Taylor and a man who had the answers to life's most compelling questions. He existed in that simple black and white fantasy world where he lived in a perfect little town with a perfect family and perfect friends. Mayberry was our town, or at least most of us wished it were. Simple times and simple problems and Sheriff Taylor's always knew the right way of making everything right in the end. .

In October 1960 when the Andy Griffith show first aired, I was eight years old. Over the next few years I remember watching the show and thinking to myself how lucky Opie was and what a great dad Sheriff Taylor was and would be. Opie was an only child of a single father being raised by his dad and his Aunt Bea, while I was an only child of a single father being raised by my dad and my grandmother. The only difference between Opie and me was the difference between the world of make believe and the world of reality. Opie had a great life I was sure. I got to watch it every week and marvel at how great it was.

I can sit now and watch those episodes forever and I have watch many of them countless times. Any time I wanted to escape from my life and my problems, I could always find comfort in Mayberry with Andy and Barney and Aunt Bea and the host of others who I knew like family. All of the characters that passed across the eight seasons of the show are etched in my mind as if they were my real friends or family members. From Otis the Drunk, to the Darling family, to Ernest T. Bass "the one what threw rocks," I remember them all and I still love to visit with them and return to that time in my youth when their world seemed to be the perfect world.

We all grow old and one day we each must pass on from this life. I lost my real father over thirty years ago and now I have lost someone who filled in as a father for my real father many times when my real dad was on the road and away from home.There was always something comforting about Andy Taylor and the man who played him on the screen.

Andy Griffith and Andy Taylor taught a lot of those of my generation life lessons that stuck and stayed true all of our lives. About twenty odd years ago, a Christian ministry was established based upon the life's lessons taught each week on the Andy Griffith show and brought into our living rooms by Sheriff Andy and the residents of Mayberry. In Mayberry, even the bad guys saw the error of their ways in the end and they were forced to bend to and admire the folksy reasoning of a man who was a lot more than some simple country lawman.

I will miss Andy Griffith, along with more than a few million others who grew up with him and grew to love him over the years. But my fondest memories will always be of Andy Taylor. Either in my mind's eye or on my screen, (compliments of DVD), Andy and Barney and Opie will always be there with me. That is the beauty of film, people never grow old and they never go away. Whenever I need an escape from my present world I can return to a time of my youth when I thought the perfect dad (if I was ever to have to choose another one,) would be Opie's dad.

I know Ron Howard's heart must also be breaking over this loss today and I can't help but think that there were those rejoicing as ol' Andy crossed over into the Mayberry of Heaven a little after 7 AM this morning. They were all there today to greet him. Barney, Aunt Bea, Otis and Ernest T. Bass, Floyd the barber, Briscoe Darling and Helen Crump. Lordy how they must all be rejoicing as they sit back and listen to their old friend pick a few strings on his guitar for hi friends and the heavens.

I will miss you Andy.

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Prime's Worm hole

This is a place for me to muse about the issues that affect our world. My world and my country and my life in particular. I can say what I want to here and those who may stumble across my musings, are welcome to comment,or not. America is under siege. Everything this nation has ever represented, is now being torn asunder and crushed by the onslaught of egalitarian socialism. All morals and social values have been devolved into the belief that systemic racism, is the only underlying cause or reason for any societal ills in America. And that representation, is nothing but a Trojan Horse argument. A means of getting the egalitarian camel's nose into the tent. And now that it has been inserted? There is mayhem and anarchy and burning and looting all across America. And the only questions that remains to be asked and answered? Are these. When is enough enough and when will the American people call full stop and take the law into their own hands, to repel this socialist based attack on the Constitution and our personal freedoms.

Thinking

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- just to loosen up and be a part of the crowd.
Inevitably, though, one thought led to another and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

I began to think alone -- "to relax", I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true.
Thinking became more and more important to me and finally I was thinking all the time.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't help myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau, Muir, Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."

"Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver.

"You think as much as college professors and college professors don't make that much money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"
She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.

"I'm going to the library," I snarled
I headed for the library, in the mood for some John Locke. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors.

They didn't open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.

Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Emerson, a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked.

This is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.

I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

Today I took the final step...I joined the Democratic Party

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If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.

Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam

Captain Michael O'Donnell was lost in Cambodia on March 24 1970, while flying a UH1 rescue helicopter, trying to rescue an eight man LRRP team under attack in Cambodia. He was listed as MIA along with the eight he had attempted to rescue after his UH1 Huey was shot down by enemy fire. The official military report listed the eight as shot down 'non survivable' and 'non recoverable.'

Michael O'Donnell was submitted for the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions that day. He was awarded the Distinguished flying cross, the Bronze Star, The Air Medal and The Purple Heart and he was promoted to the rank of Major (posthumously).

In 1978 he was officially listed as KIA by the Department of Defense.

A little about the philosophy of the author

The Borg Conspiracy is one man's purely pedestrian thoughts, independent musings and frequently cheeky commentaries...Mixed with an abundance of patriotism, love of God, and love of country.

My thoughts?

In my opinion........in another generation, all that will remain of our once great republic, may be little more than what is left to weather the passage of time in the form of a few obscure and forgotten monuments to the great American experiment.

If America should fail....let it be written as her epitaph.....died by her own hand. The greatest experiment in freedom ever undertaken, lost in the end to the pursuit of the illusion that egalitarian tolerance was more valuable than individual freedom.

Let us be warned.
Franklin, Payne, Jefferson. They all knew the consequences of the lack of vigilance and they tried to warn us. They gave us a document as our guide post. We were to guard it and revere it and use it to guide and govern our future and our posterity.

No one listened.