Gentle Wisdom; Confident Common Sense. We'll Miss You, Andy!

Andy Griffith, with very few exceptions, gave us characters that were decent, moral, and strong: qualities, it seems, that are no longer permitted

With most tributes focusing on the iconic Sheriff Andy Taylor and Matlock, I gotta ask: how many out there remember Salvage 1? It was a short-lived (16 episodes) sci-fi series that debuted in 1979 – warm, ingenious, and a real hoot.

Andy played Harry Broderick, a junkman with astronautical ambitions:

Narrator: [opening narration] Once upon a time, a junkman had a dream.
Harry Broderick: I want to build a spaceship, go to the moon, salvage all the junk that's up there, bring it back, sell it.
Narrator: So he put together a team. An ex-astronaut. A fuel expert. They built a rocket ship, and they went to the moon. Who knows what they'll do next.

I loved the pilot episode better than any that followed. Putting together a rocket ship using salvage from his junkyard, assembling his team of misfits, and actually launching was vintage Andy Griffith hilarity. The flight, however, had its heart-stopping moments. They hacked into NASA’s navigational systems, see, and…

Look it up. You’ll love it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSsqsbv0FWg