Insomnia and depression hit me really hard in the winter. Day after day of wet, dreary weather pushes me into a seasonal funk that keeps me from ever feeling fully awake or asleep. I only end up getting a few hours of broken sleep each night and often end up wide awake in the wee hours of the morning pondering some weird question that I can’t get out of my head. So, the other night I spent a few hours wondering “Whatever happened to Opie?” It was about 2:30 in the morning, and I didn’t want to wake Beth by grabbing my phone to Google what I was sure would be a happy, white bread story for Andy’s son. So, I stared into the darkness and made up my own. My story ended up being quite a bit less happy than what the original authors wrote. (Sorry, Opie…).

My sleep-deprived brain decided that Opie graduated from high school and considered going to college, but decided against it. His friends Johnny and Howie both got decent jobs at the mill, and Opie did the same. College was expensive, and the Taylor’s would have a hard time wrangling the money anyway. None of his friends were going to college, and Opie didn’t really want to be away from his traditional social circles. His job at the mill paid well enough, and his future looked bright. The biggest joy in his life was his highschool sweetheart, Mary Alice Carter. She and Opie were nearly inseparable and spent all the time together that they could.

Options for birth control were mostly non-existent in the little town of Mayberry, and Mary inevitably got pregnant. They got married days after Mary broke the news to her parents. Opie and Mary moved into a cabin near the lake where they eagerly awaited their firstborn. Opie Jr. was born in October and Mary was pregnant again by January. They added an extra bedroom onto their cabin, and Suzy was born exactly on time in September. Their lives were perfect.

As the years went on, Johnny and Howie moved away to work in a big factory in Mount Pilot while Opie and his family continued to live happily in the cabin by the lake. On Suzy’s sixth birthday, they found out that the mill was closing. The equipment was old and needed modernizing. The company found that it would less expensive to build a new plant than to retrofit the old one, and they had to make what they claimed was the difficult decision to close the mill. A location closer to Mount Pilot would ensure better access to raw materials, easier shipping, and workers skilled in more modern manufacturing practices. It put a lot of people out of work, but rural communities are resilient. Everyone helpled everyone else out, and they did their best to find work for everyone.

Opie got a job helping Emmett at the fix-it shop, which was rapidly turning into a pawn shop as so many folks were out of work and needed money. Against Opie’s wishes, Mary decided to take a part-time job at the movie theater. She didn’t have much in the way of marketable skills but she could make popcorn and keep the place clean. It prevented her from being able to spend much of time with the kids since she mostly worked afternoons and evenings, but the extra money helped. Opie’s schedule allowed him to take the kids to school in the morning, and home in the afternoon. It was a lot of work, but he loved his kids and enjoyed spending time with them. Andy and Helen helped them out with a small gift now and then.

Just when Opie’s family had settled into their new routine, disaster struck. Suzy fell ill one day, and the doctor determined it was polio. Opie and Mary couldn’t work and take care of Suzy, and they didn’t make enough money to hire a nurse. Mary had to quit her job so she could stay home to care for her daughter, and Opie got a second job working nights cleaning and stocking shelves at the department store.

Mary grew weary of taking care of Suzy as her disease lingered. Opie did little to directly help with Suzy’s care. Working double shifts meant that he was completely exhausted during the brief times he and the rest of his family were both home and awake. Mary and Opie grew increasingly distant from each other. One cold and rainy afternoon in November, Opie finally broke. With the holidays just around the corner, not a penny to his name, and deeper in debt than he could ever hope to repay, he did the only thing he could. He stole enough money from the fix-it/pawn shop and took the next bus out of town. No one ever saw him in Mayberry again.

When it was clear Opie wasn’t coming back, Mary and the kids moved back home to live with her parents. Suzy and Opie Jr. never understood why their father left them. They were too young to understand the struggles he went through.

I feel like everyone would like to go back to Mayberry. To live in a small idyllic community where the biggest problem in life is figuring out how to break it to Aunt Bee that her pickles will never be as good as Clara’s… To spend the lazy summer days down at the fishin’ hole… To sit by the fire strumming familiar tunes on the ol’ guitar… There are times that I look out the window at the rain and wish life wasn’t so complicated, and that Mayberry was just a bus ride away. But it isn’t. Mayberry doesn’t exist. It probably never did.