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Monday, Oct. 12, 2009

N.C. duo portray Barney and Gomer at Georgia National Fair

PERRY — The first thing people ask Scott Epperson when they meet him is “Where’s your bullet?”

Epperson doesn’t have to say anything. He just gives a haughty sniff, reaches into the left breast pocket of his khaki uniform and displays TV’s most famous piece of ammunition.

“I’ll probably get asked that 20,000 times today,” said the 53-year-old Epperson.

Since he was 19 years old, people have told Epperson that he resembles Don Knotts, who portrayed high-strung deputy Barney Fife on the 1960s-era sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show.” It used to really upset him. He’s even Knotts’ exact height and weight — 5 feet 8 inches, 147 pounds.

For the two or three readers who may be unfamiliar with the show, the significance of the bullet is that Fife’s boss, Sheriff Andy Taylor, doesn’t trust him with any more firepower than is absolutely necessary.

Coincidentally, Epperson grew up in Mount Airy, N.C., Griffith’s hometown, and works as a law officer. He’s a detective for the Dunn, N.C., police department.

For years Epperson performed in community theater, but he resisted the role he was born to play. Five years ago his colleagues and his wife conspired in talking him into dressing up as Barney Fife to entertain some children at a local festival.

In another coincidence, Gomer Pyle was also at that festival. That is, Bruce Newnam of Raleigh, N.C., was there portraying another character from “The Andy Griffith Show,” the dim-witted auto mechanic made famous by actor Jim Nabors. In yet another coincidence, Newnam, 55, is a retired police officer.

“We didn’t know each other,” Epperson recalled. “Of course, when we bumped into each other the crowd was really responsive. The following year we came back and did the same thing again, and it was even triple the response that we had to start with. So we said, ‘We’ll do a couple dates together.’ And that’s what we’ve been doing, we’ve been doing dates together.”

Epperson and Newnam call themselves Memories of Mayberry, after the fictional North Carolina town where “The Andy Griffith Show” was set. They tour the country, entertaining at fairs and festivals and recording ads for TV and radio.

Epperson said he’s past denying his inner Barney.

“God’s done this for me,” he said. “I look at myself, believe it or not, as a messenger of happiness. If you can make people laugh, smile, feel good for the time they’re in your presence, I’ve accomplished what I needed to do.”

This week, Epperson and Newnam are at the Georgia National Fair in Perry as “roving entertainers,” mingling with the crowd in costumes copied exactly from the TV show, posing for photos and slapping backs. They’ve even got a 1962 Ford Galaxie police car, painstakingly built to match Barney Fife’s car right down to the siren and radio. This is their third year at the fair.

Look for Barney and Gomer daily from 1 to 9 p.m. It may take a little searching, because their job is to roam all over the fairgrounds.

Gomer might be easier to find. Not only is Newnam 6 feet 5 inches tall, but through painstaking practice he has learned to mimic Nabors’ booming voice.

There are three words that Newnam relies on: “Shazam!” “Surprise!” and “Golllllllly,”

“The reaction I get from those words, the expression on people’s faces, it almost stops them in their tracks,” said Newnam.

Like Epperson, Newnam wears a police uniform and a pistol in a holster.

That’s because he’s portraying Gomer from an episode in which he was named an auxiliary deputy. But he’s still got Gomer’s lopsided ball cap and his oil rag from Wally’s Filling Station.

Sunday, Gomer was moved to dance the electric slide with a group of women in front of one of the fair’s live music stages.

Barney is also prone to cut a rug from time to time. But he is seen to best effect doing the Barney Walk; quick steps, shoulders hunched forward, arms swinging with purpose. Barney loves to blow his police whistle. Just ask the Perry police officers who had the nerve to stop their golf cart in front of him.

“Come on, ya buncha deadbeats! Let’s get that thing through here!”

About that time a bystander asked the inevitable question: “Barney Fife! How many bullets ya got?”

“How many bullets do you think I got?” he said, producing the projectile in question. “What are you laughing at? Ain’t you ever seen a real lawman?”