Looking down Main Street today is like a visit to Mayberry RFD except for the cars !

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You can still see Barney Fife's squad car driving around town except today if you ride in it, you get a guided tour of the town including Andy Griffith's birthplace which was just a small cottage like house.

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Snappy Lunch has been in this exact location since 1923 and is actually where Andy Griffith, as a child, would eat lunch with his friends since the school did not yet have a cafeteria. Snappy Lunch is famous for it's pork chop sandwich so of course we stopped in and became a part of history as we ate our sandwich.

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Walking down Main Street the boys couldn't resist going into the music store where there was a jam session going on.

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There were many beautiful Victorian houses here. The historic Gertrude Smith House was built by merchant and landowner Jefferson Davis Smith around the turn of the century and is today listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This Victorian-style home contains period furnishings which all belonged to the family. After Jefferson died in 1930, his oldest daughter Gertrude, an interior decorator who was educated at Parson's School of Design in New York City, returned to carry on her fathers businesses.

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A tour of the home left me with the feeling that the Smith family just walked out the back door moments earlier. Furnishings, accessories, and artwork are displayed just as they were when they lived there. Even the dining room table was set with Miss Gertrude's china and crystal. Gertrudes passion for preservation caused her to set up a foundation to maintain perpetual care of the home. When she died in 1981 she willed the home to be a museum with a clause that there could be no admission charge.

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