Opie (Ron Howard): I told Mr. McBeevee I'd be right back.
Andy (Andy Griffith): Who?
Opie: Mr. McBeevee. You don't know him. He's new around here. I just met him this mornin'.
Andy: Oh.
Barney (Don Knotts): Oh, a newcomer in town, eh? Where's he live at?
Opie: I met him in the woods.
Barney: What's he doin' in the woods?
Opie: Well, mostly he walks around up in the treetops.
Barney: He walks in the tree ... Mm hmm. I suppose he's invisible, too.
Opie: No. Mr. McBeevee's easy to see, especially his hat. He wears a great, big, shiny silver hat.
Not everyone likes the episode of the Andy Griffith Show that first aired on this night in 1962, but I have always liked it because it so beautifully summarizes the father–son relationship between Andy (Andy Griffith) and Opie (Ron Howard).
The episode was called "Mr. McBeevee," which was the name of a telephone lineman (Karl Swenson) Opie had befriended in the woods.
The story began with Opie and Andy playing a game that parents undoubtedly have played with their children since time began — the game of pretend, of make–believe.
Opie had an imaginary horse he had named Blackie, and Andy was playing along with the game one morning. When Barney (Don Knotts) showed up, Andy and Opie spoke so convincingly of Blackie that Barney never doubted that Blackie was real, running out in the yard to see Opie's new horse.
Then Andy advised Barney that Blackie was "on the invisible side."
Barney was a little put off, believing himself to have been the victim of a practical joke, but he got over it — until later when Opie came to the courthouse telling of a new friend he'd made, one who walked in the treetops and wore a "great, big, shiny silver hat."
Andy and Barney believed Mr. McBeevee was make–believe, too — until Opie came home with a hatchet that definitely was not imaginary. He claimed Mr. McBeevee had given it to him.
That was something Andy couldn't understand so he instructed Opie to take the hatchet back where he found it and leave it there.
Turned out Mr. McBeevee was real — and Opie described him in the only way an 8–year–old boy could, but Andy and Barney couldn't comprehend. It was a classic failure to communicate.
Anyway, Mr. McBeevee took the hatchet back, acknowledging that Opie's father probably had been right to insist that he return it, but he wanted to give Opie something for doing some odd jobs for him so he gave him a quarter. (That may not sound like much in 2017, but it was a small fortune in 1962, at least in a boy's eyes.)
In the meantime Barney told Andy that he did believe Mr. McBeevee was real. Opie had already provided information that would be difficult for a child to make up, and Barney was going to get a more complete description using a technique of the law enforcement officer's trade — an eyewitness description.
At first it went well, but then Opie spoke of how Mr. McBeevee "jingles ... like he has rings on his fingers and bells on his toes." Barney pressed him on that point, and Opie conceded that Mr. McBeevee didn't really have rings on his fingers and bells on his toes. The jingling came from the "12 extra hands" that hung from his belt.
That was how Mr. McBeevee had described the tools he used in his work, but Andy and Barney had no way of knowing that. Opie's description of Mr. McBeevee was a source of endless amusement for Andy.
Then Opie showed them the quarter Mr. McBeevee had given him, and things changed. Andy couldn't believe the person Opie had described had given him a quarter. Opie suggested that they go to the woods and talk to Mr. McBeevee, and Andy agreed to do that. So they went to the woods.
Unfortunately for Opie, Mr. McBeevee had gone to get a colleague to help him with a task so he wasn't where Opie expected him to be, and Andy believed Opie had gotten into the habit of "stretching the truth a little out of shape."
When they returned to their home, Andy sent Opie up to his room and followed him there later, intending to punish him for lying.
Their conversation, in my opinion, was one of the great scenes in sitcom history.
Andy told Opie that he could avoid punishment if he admitted that Mr. McBeevee was imaginary. But Opie couldn't say that. Mr. McBeevee was real. "Don't you believe me, Paw?" he implored his father.
Andy sighed. "I believe you," he said and went downstairs, where he told Barney and Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) that he hadn't punished Opie.
When Andy told them that he had told Opie that he believed him, Barney protested that what Opie had told him was impossible.
"Well," Andy replied, "a whole lot of times I've asked him to believe things that, to his mind, must have seemed just as impossible. ... I guess it's a time like this when you're asked to believe something that just don't seem possible, that's the moment that decides whether you got faith in somebody or not."
Barney wanted to know if Andy believed in Mr. McBeevee.
"No," he insisted, "but I do believe in Opie."
Later, of course, Andy's faith in his son was justified when he met Mr. McBeevee in the flesh.
I have said many times that I thought Andy Taylor was the best father on TV, better than any who came before or who have come along since. This episode proved it.
