A Tourist in Mayberry

2/6) Resident at Riverview: Romey Honeycutt, Retired Deputy Sheriff

Mayberry Fact: Don Knotts, who played the part of the beloved, bungling deputy Barney Fife, on The Andy Griffith Show won five Emmys awards. He is loved by all. Real life Deputy Romey Honeycutt is no Barney Fife.

Description of Officer Honeycutt: He was handsome in his twenties - tall, dark, and handsome. The ladies loved him, but, forty years and forty pounds later he had what Nana Gail called "a magic mirror". He still thought the ladies loved him and was known at the office for being somewhat creepy with any young, attractive woman out of his league. He was also lazy which did not endear him to the more mature single ladies who would have appreciated at least a little flirting.

Deputy Honeycutt was a bully in his youth, and he carried this skill into adulthood. As a deputy, he especially enjoyed bullying women traveling alone who gave him one comment he called "attitude". In his early deputying days, Officer Honeycutt was put on administrative leave for an incident involving the arrest of a female business owner having a bad day who was right back obnoxious to him when confronted about her garbage can being too close to the street. As it turned out, the lady was friends with a local politician who also happened to be a lawyer. Sometimes people assume a person is powerless and they push them around, but sometimes weak people know important people who like to push people right back.

But for the fact he was a decorated veteran, a former football legend, and local hero who was shot at once while chasing a man who robbed the downtown bank, Officer Honeycutt would have been fired a long time ago. Luckily for the townspeople of Mount Airy, he retired when he inherited a small windfall from an uncle. Deputy Honeycutt soon set up residence at the retirement community of Riverview.

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Resident Romey Honeycutt, former deputy sheriff, as told to Jenette Smithfield, Celebrity Magazine, Hometown Hero section. This excerpt includes notes from interviews and journal entries (The article was written after my town became famous that summer.)

I watched and listened as Officer Honeycutt was interviewed so I could learn how to be a real writer. I can tell you this, the actual article made Officer Honeycutt out to be a hero. He was doing his version of flirting with the writer during the interview, and I believe she was flirting back. I guess you have to use all the tricks to get people to open up and be their real selves.

Deputy Romey Honeycutt speaks:

I was new to the retirement center and wanted to meet some new people because I was dying not of old age, but of boredom, so I spent the first week going to almost all the activities in the activity hall. I still consider myself a ladies man - which was my main reason for coming to the retirement center. It was like a smorgasbord of desperate ladies. Sure, after my wife passed on I wanted a younger gal, but they were too much trouble. They wanted you to wine and dine them and buy them something pretty before they would let you touch the goods. What I discovered, after 6 months of chasing the young girls, was older ladies at church who wanted to feed me casseroles and play cards with me as their partner. I found these ladies wanted to take care of me in all ways including the bedroom. (As you can tell so far, Officer Honeycutt did not know the difference between talking to a lady reporter and talking to the guys).

This all being said, I am not dead yet and I still like to admire the younger gals "ass-ets" whenever possible. Here at the retirement center I like the activity director and underpaid friend to the old and lonely. Her name is Dorothy. She is what the younger kids call "hot". Maybe not hot like they believe, but definitely attractive to those of us who consider ourselves still in the game.

"So here goes," Dorothy began the activity she called - Finding Yourself through Your Words, "Writing about our past lives can help us".

I don't remember how the whole writing thing was supposed to help us find ourselves, I was looking over the top of my glasses praying she'd drop the stack of paper so I could catch a shot of her ass-ets , so I was NOT paying attention. I lived to please this woman, so when someone said they did not know how to begin their memoirs, and she said why not tell something interesting about yourself no one knows - I asked, "Like a confession, or a secret?"

And Dorothy said "Sure. Don't sign them and we will read them aloud and all wonder who could the mystery person be. Won't that be fun?"

Here are some of the more interesting confessions in no particular order:

Along with, "I stole some tootsie rolls as a youngster at the general store", and "I used to ride my motorcycle over 100 miles an hour down an old, abandoned road", and "It was me who went skinny dipping at Cross Creek Country Club pool with a boy I loved when I was 23", there was:

I once made love to the handy man on the quilt my great- great- great grandmother brought out west on the Oregon trail while my husband was at work and the baby was asleep in the crib.

The first person I killed was my father. I was 10.

I spent the night in jail once in Paris for swimming nude in the town square fountain. It was after a night of sex with two different married men, most certainly not at the same time. I am not a whore. Viva la France.

I was a prostitute in west Texas. I was rescued by two handsome strangers. I stabbed the boss in the eye on the way out the door. She absolutely deserved it.

I was an international assassin, and if you guess who this is, I will have to kill you.

My best friend and I retired from the CIA. We were what some would call embassy workers, but we prefer to be called "The Avengers".

After reading these out loud, pretty-little-thing Dorothy, said, "Oh Lordy, not again." She rolled her eyes, put her hands on her hips, and dropped her stack of papers. This is where I learned I was not the only older gentleman who was willing to help a pretty, young thing. I've never seen so many old farts move so fast and elbow so hard. It was like a Thanksgiving black Friday sale at the Walmart.

After the confessions, I decided this place might not be so uneventful after all. I decided right then and there I needed to do some "vestigating".

I laid back after the meeting and that's when I overheard them uppity card players the Sheriff calls the Wild Bunch talking. Shiela, the beautiful blonde, who for some reason would not give me the time of day said, "Matty, you devil, you are going to get us kicked out of here, or worse, killed."

Matty winked at Shiela. "Well Shiela, apparently I was not the only one having some fun. I liked the part about handsome strangers. And, I'm sorry, but you know how restless I get here."

That's when the slanty-eyed guy said, "Both of you need to lower your voices and remember we have a final mission, and we can not compromise it."

"Sorry, " said Matty. "I know this is important to you. I'll do better."

After Matty wandered off, Shiela said, "Lighten up on him, Izzy, you know he's different since Lacey changed."

And then slanty-eyed said, " You remember the rules. Discretion at all costs."

I knew the FBI and CIA and spy rumors like everybody else in town, and now I knew some of it was true. I got my old police log out right then and started to take notes.

This was the beginning of my months long investigation that led to the end of a serial killer.

Author's Note: Just because you're over 50 doesn't mean you are not interesting. I had a colleague who once had to go on a home visit and assess a man suffering from "early stages of dementia" because the nurses joked he thought he was some kind of FBI agent. After she talked to his wife too, turns out he really was a retired FBI agent.