Editorial/Op
Living In “Mayberry”
By |
I suppose after Tuesday’s big election I should use this column to render my opinion about the direction of the Parish and Nation for the next four years. The last time I counted, we have several newspapers, a dozen radio stations and about 300 television channels that tell us all about the elections, but only one newspaper, Central Speaks, is dedicated to news about Central. The election results are on page one, so let’s talk about Central, a place that I have been accused of seeing as “Mayberry”.
Our goal at Central Speaks is to print all of the news we can get our hands on every week about Central. Many of our articles are submitted by groups and people in the community. That is also what makes Central Speaks a “community newspaper”. Where else can you read about some of our young men becoming Eagle Scouts, a team of eight year old girls winning a softball tournament, a lost dog found and returned to an elderly couple, and the 100th birthday of a life-long resident? Those could certainly be mistaken for stories about Mayberry…but they are indeed real Central stories.
I am challenged each week by a story or two that doesn’t feel like Mayberry, so I try to find the good in the story as well. A wind storm that fells trees and all but destroys several homes in Central is certainly news, but the neighbors that show up an hour later with chainsaws and tarps to help save those homes…that is Good News for the Great City of Mayberry Central.
I am painfully aware that Central is a growing city with very real problems to face in the areas of economic development, education, city growth and politics. We will continue to report on those issues, even when they tarnish my “Mayberry” view of Central. I actually do not want to be the guy calling attention to bad legislation and crimes, but I feel a responsibility to report the bad with the good.
But let’s go back to Mayberry. I grew up swimming in the Comite River and riding my bike down Blackwater Road at the age of nine with my brothers to buy candy at Cothern’s Store. Everyone piled into Grandpaw’s Ford after church and rode into town to go to the Picadilly and we all “helped” bale hay every summer. I know now that I wasn’t really much “help” until I learned to drive a tractor and could actually throw a bale of hay, but Grandpaw and Uncle Wesley had this seven year old convinced he was important just riding on the hay wagon.
Today in Mayberry Central people still head for the Comite River on Saturdays, bike trails are often a part of proposed new developments, and Central families still own the convenience stores where kids can buy a candy bar. Our locally owned restaurants have replaced the trip to Picadilly after church and tractors and hay bales still dot the open fields in Central.
After Mia and I got home from last Friday’s CHS football game she posted this on Facebook and says it better than I ever could:
I am grateful for my little "Mayberry" town, where young men walk up to the high school principal and shake his hand, where young people pick up things older folks have dropped and return it to them with a smile, where someone takes responsibility to kick ice out of the way that someone else dropped so no one slips, where young ladies in ROTC uniforms say "excuse me" as they pass, where folks with handicaps are not just welcomed, but actively encouraged to participate in the life of their community, and most of all, where an entire stadium full of people fall silent and bow their heads as a local pastor prays for a family that has just suffered loss. Welcome to Wildcat Stadium on a Friday night in the heart of Central, Louisiana. God bless my little "Mayberry."
– Mia Freneaux
0 comments