Bowling Green goes ‘Mayberry’

BY JIM MASON

FOR THE FREE LANCE–STAR

Mayberry Days in Bowling Green comes to Caroline County on Saturday, April 21, and everybody is welcome to come and enjoy the spring festival. 

Over the years, a number of people have viewed Bowling Green’s small-town way of life as reminiscent of Mayberry, the fictional  North Carolina town in the 1960s TV series “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Saturday’s festival is set to run from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Among the featured events will be an Aunt Bee’s Pie-Baking Contest.  A pie auction and sliced pie sale will be held just after the 1 p.m. judging and cash prizes will be awarded. 

 All along Main Street, there will be sidewalk sales, food vendors, a farmers market  and a bounce house for children.  Local artists’ paintings will be on display. Southern Explosion will perform rock ’n’ roll and country music.

Lisa Pigg and Cheryl English are the co-organizers of what will be the town’s first spring festival. The Harvest Festival in the fall, now in its 23rd year, draws hundreds of people. 

Bowling Green Art Commission members and others began planning for the Mayberry Days   in February.  It was at the Stone Creek antique shop on Main Street where talk of the festival name came about.

 “Spring Fling maybe,” somebody said.  No.

“Well, let’s just call it Mayberry Days,” Pigg said.  “It’s ‘Days’ because every day is Mayberry Day in Bowling  Green.’’ 

Later, at a Town Hall meeting with Mayor David Storke and several town merchants, Storke liked the suggested festival name.  “We may as well play up who we are—and that’s Mayberry,” he said.

It’s not just town residents who see a touch of TV’s Mayberry in Bowling Green.  Visitors like Joy Ferguson of Henrico County do, too.

 A certified promotional consultant, she sees the town as “quaint, delightfully quiet, neat, clean and retro.  I thoroughly enjoyed my two short sojourns into the 1950s.  Bowling Green would be a really nice place to retire—kind of reminds me of Mayberry USA.’’

What: Mayberry Days

Where:  Bowling Green

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 21

Cost: Free

Info: townofbowlinggreen.com.

Jim Mason of Caroline County is a freelance writer.

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