If you go
› What: Mayberry Memories: A Celebration of “The Andy Griffith Show” with The Dillards, Maggie Peterson and David Browning› Where: The Caverns, 555 Charlie Roberts Road, Pelham, Tennessee› When: 2-5 p.m. CDT Saturday, May 25› Admission: $40› Online: www.facebook.com/events/1977695088991672/
More than 50 years after “The Andy Griffith Show” went off the air, Maggie Peterson still laughs at the antics she found herself involved in playing Charlene Darling, only daughter of Briscoe Darling. She gets especially tickled remembering perhaps her most famous line, which was uttered at the title of several songs her dad and brothers performed on the show.
Songs like “Dirty Dirty Me,” “Boil That Cabbage Down” and “Never Hit Your Grandma With a Great Big Stick” each had Charlene saying, “That one makes me cry.”
“Oh, isn’t that the funniest thing,” Peterson says of the bit. “We had the best writers.”
She admits that the first time she read it, she didn’t think much of it and certainly didn’t think it would become such an iconic TV line. Asked about it today, she lets out a hearty laugh at the idea of it. She laughs even harder later in the conversation when talking about Ron Howard, who was then a child actor playing Opie Taylor.