Snappy Lunch, The Earle Theatre, And Andy Griffith Museum

                                   Thursday 5/1/2014

After a couple days of rain and a thunderstorm one night, we were fortunate to avoid any severe weather, unlike so many people in the country. One of our daughters in Gulf Shores, AL got 8 inches of water in her home due to the 16 inches of rain in about 8 hours. Luckily her husband drove 4 hours at night from his out of state job to help with the enormous clean up that had to be done. I feel sorry for her, as I remember when I had flooding in one of my homes basement years ago. Not able to help her out, we decided to go to lunch at Snappy Lunch.

We got the famous Pork Chop Sandwich for $4.20, which is the most expensive item on the menu. Talk about very reasonable food!

It was really good and would recommend anyone comimg to town should stop for lunch. Ask for mayo and lettuce in addition to the rest of the available toppings.

Breakfast and lunch are the only meals served, so don't show up for dinner!

A picture I found in the restaurant of Pilot Mountain. I guess if you want a picture of Pilot Mountain with flowers, you best come in the summer, because there were no flowers when we went.

Snappy Lunch use to be only a small cafe. This picture is of the original part of the restaurant. We ate in a room that the restaurant had expanded to on the other side of this room.

The original pricing sign still hangs in the Snappy Lunch restaurant. These are not dollars, its cents.

After lunch we headed across the street to the Earle Theatre. It cost $3 a person, which also included entrance into the Andy Griffith Museum.

We watched a documentary that highlights the Surry County Old Time Music icon Tommy Jarrell. The Earle Theatre hosts the weekly Merry-Go-Round, second only to the grand Ole Opry, as the longest currently live radio broadcast in the nation. Every Saturday from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM you can come to the Jam, that is followed by the Merry-Go-Round from 11:00AM to 1:30PM.  Radio station WPAQ, 740 AM,  produces this weekly live broadcast of local, regional and national performers. Admission is $5 a person. Movies are also shown during the week at the theatre.

Inside the theatre the walls exhibit local icons who made the Surry county "Round Peak" Music sound famous.

Tommy Jarrell started playing his fiddle at age 14. The fiddle he played was over 150 years old.

We left the theatre and drove to the Andy Griffith Museum. No photo's are allowed in the museum. Joe and I learned Andy Griffith was in many movies that we didn't know about.

The $3 ticket that got us into the theatre, and the Andy Griffith Museum, also got us into the Siamese Twin Exhibit, which was located below the museum.

We watched a film about the World Renowned Siamese Twins.

Joe and I found the exhibit on the Siamese Twins was the most interesting of all the things we saw that day.

This tells more about the twins and how they ended up in this area. When their contract was finished, Chang and Eng were attracted to Wilkes County, NC while visiting the area. They purchased 110 acres of farm land near Traphill, becoming the 1st Asian naturalized United States citizens. They married two sisters and slept in a bed made for 4. The family grew,  with Chang having 10 children,  and Eng 11 children. The two families moves to just west of Mount Airy and built two separates homes. The twins spent 3 days in one home, then went to the others home. Today there are over 1500 decendants of Chang and Eng Bunker.

The last thing we saw on our tour of the museum, was a room that had murals of Mayberry. Joe stands in front of Wally's Service.

While I stand next to Aunt B's home.

Joe spotted Andy and Opie out in front of the museum and asked if he could go fishing with them.

We got back home where we presently lived at 10 Andy Taylor St. to take Mallery for a walk. Other streets in our neighborhood were Opie Taylor Ave., and Barney Fife Blvd.

Another street in our neighbor was Chang and Eng. I had asked Joe what Chang and Eng was. Neither of us knew, so our day at the museum finally answer this question.

We had also noticed on the Mayberry Campground brochure that on weekends there were tours of the Bunker house that sits in the middle of the campground. When we saw that the Siamese twins had adopted the last name of Bunker, that made us wonder about this house. The Mayberry Campground's address is on Bunker Street.

When we went to the office to check to see if we had mail, we asked if the house had any connection to the twins. Indeed it did. Eng's first son built and live in it, and it was pasted done through the generations. The son's name must have been Byron, as the street into the park is Byron Bunker Ln. The family that owns the park are descendants of Chang and Eng, specifically Eng. The owners mother was the last one to live in the house. No one has lived in it for 20 years now. We never would have known any of this if we had not gone to the museum.

On our walk around the park, I took this picture from the other side of the campground. Our Nest is way on the other side, in the back row. There are about a third more sites behind us in this picture. Mayberry Campground has 106 sites. About 1/2 of them are pull through sites.

Can you see our Nest peaking between two other RV's. We left Mayberry Campground today, and drove only about 50 miles to Max Meadows, Virginia ( just east of Wytheville), for 2 nights.