Nostalgia can be a tricky pastime. Longing for life in the 21st century to be like an idealized 1960s television show is an exercise of wishful thinking, but I still wish we could return to Mayberry.
The Andy Griffith Show always comes to mind when I visit once vibrant downtowns in North Carolina such as Plymouth, Windsor and Lewiston-Woodville. I can imagine the time when these small towns were a lot like Mayberry. But now they have many abandoned storefronts as so many small towns lose population.
It is a tale of two states in North Carolina. The urban centers of Raleigh and Charlotte see exponential population growth, while the rural counties in northeastern North Carolina farm country face population decline…