In Mike Cockerham’s hometown, I spot granite everywhere. I see a home, a bank, a public library, a post office, and even a few churches built with the chalk-white rock unearthed from the city’s mammoth granite quarry.

Mike calls this place home: Mount Airy, nicknamed The Granite City. He tells anyone who asks that he was “born and raised in Mount Airy.” His great-grandfather worked at the quarry, having moved his family to Mount Airy for that job. His grandfather, a brickmason, needed quarry granite for his work. I don’t need to ask for what. Mike shows me. He pulls his Ford pickup beside First Baptist Church and points to the 107-foot bell tower beside North Main. He then tells me about the man he calls “Papa.”

“In the late ’60s, when I was a kid, Momma would drive by here in the car, and he’d be up on a scaffold, building that bell tower right here,” Mike says. “He’d be up there laying that granite. That’s some heavy stuff, brother.”

The Mount Airy quarry is so massive, locals say astronauts can see it from space. Photography courtesy of Mount Airy Tourism

Mike is proud of how granite, known in the construction trade as Mount Airy White, connects with his past. But his present is powered by a 1960s squad car and a place we all know as Mayberry. Mike first discovered that fictional town with the help of a woman named Mutt.

“When my mom had to go to work, she dropped me off at Mutt’s house,” Mike tells me. “I was about 5 years old, and I’d be there on the floor in front of her round picture tube TV, and my first memories of television were watching in black-and-white The Andy Griffith Show and seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

“Being that young, I had no clue Andy was from Mount Airy. I just liked watching him and Barney.”

Didn’t we all.

• • •

Here’s what I remember.

I’m 5, maybe 6. I plant my elbows on the carpet in the den, position both hands under my chin and lie stomach-down a few feet from my family’s big TV console. Television is a four-channel universe, and I watch in black-and-white the escapades of Barney, Opie, Goober, Otis, Ernest T. Bass, and a small-town sheriff in ankle-high boots I know by one name: Andy.

Andy Griffith Show photograph by CBS via Getty Images, James Steidl/stock.adobe.com

Mike has those memories, and he gave them wheels.

In October 2002, Mike sat for hours in front of a barricade in downtown Mount Airy, wearing a rain poncho and braving a downpour. He wanted a sweet spot up front to hear Andy speak. It was the actor’s first public appearance in his hometown in 45 years. He’s come for the dedication of an 11-mile section of U.S. Route 52 in Mount Airy to be named “Andy Griffith Parkway.”

Before the ceremony, Mike met people from across the country who’d come to see Andy. When the rain stopped, Andy spoke for nearly 30 minutes, telling stories of growing up in Mount Airy and getting his own TV show.

“People started saying that Mayberry was based on Mount Airy,” he told the crowd. “It sure sounds like it, doesn’t it?”

His fans cheered.

Afterward, a bit awed by what he’d seen and heard, Mike started thinking. At the time, he was working third shift at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, so his mornings and afternoons were free. And he’s always loved tinkering on cars.

You know what, he told himself. I’m going to build a squad car and give people a tour.

A year later, he did.

• • •

During his 37-year career as an electronics technician at RJR, a job that took him to Puerto Rico and throughout Europe, Mike never strayed from Mount Airy. He and his wife, Debbie, a social worker, raised two daughters here. After retiring, he devoted his time to his two car washes and his decades-long project: a 1967 Bolero Red Camaro RS/SS convertible.

Then there was Andy.

Mike began scouring the country to find Ford Galaxies built between 1960 and 1967. Over the next two decades, he bought seven and turned them into mirror images of what fans remember from the show — whip antenna, black hood, black trunk, white doors, a red-domed siren on the roof, and a five-pointed star ringed with the word “Sheriff” and a town known worldwide, “Mayberry.”

A squad car tour of downtown Mount Airy stirs memories of Floyd’s Barber Shop, Snappy Lunch, and the whistled tune that Opie and his dad made famous in a town called Mayberry. photograph by Jerry Wolford & Scott Muthersbaugh

Mike works under the hood and inside the cars to make sure they run and look like new. He now has a dozen part-time drivers to help him turn an hour-long trip in a Mayberry squad car into a bucket-list moment.

They ferry tourists around the city in a wide boat of a car. It lacks AC, has a speedometer that doesn’t work, and burns a gallon of gas every seven miles. But Mike’s cars aren’t meant to go fast. The drivers know that tourists want to look. And if those tourists get hot, they know they can go old-school and roll down the window.

“We’re always going slow because the drivers are pointing, maybe stopping, and someone in the back is saying, ‘Hold it a minute! I gotta take a picture!’ ” says Mike, now 62. “So a lot of people around town, they know: Don’t get trapped behind a squad car if you’re in a hurry.”

A tour through Mount Airy leads visitors to iconic Mayberry destinations. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

When I slide across the red vinyl seat in one of Mike’s Ford Galaxies, I roll down the window and listen to Mike. Memories, long forgotten, come rushing back.

When we crawl down East Haymore Street, we stop. I look beyond my open window and see what I later realize is the brick-and-mortar genesis of what’s endearing about Mount Airy and Mayberry. It’s a small house with no fancy facade. A sign tells me everything about the inextinguishable draw: Andy Griffith’s Homeplace 1935-1966.

• • •

When I ask a few drivers about where their carloads of tourists come from, they give me a geography lesson — Canada, England, Germany, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and all 50 states. They all have stories, both poignant and funny.

Norm Schultz, one of Mike’s drivers, shares one: A few years ago, one of the passengers he took on a tour was a mother in her 20s, decorated with tattoos and wearing a nose ring. She drove down from Pittsburgh, a six-hour trip, and brought her young son. Her dad, a big Andy fan, couldn’t make it. Through tears, she told Norm why. He had died. She came for him.

Norm Schultz (far left) — sittin’ for a spell with tourists Kay and Les Wall, and Bruce Bradley and his dog, Miles — is one of Mike’s dozen drivers. photograph by Jerry Wolford & Scott Muthersbaugh

“You have no idea,” she told Norm. “You helped us heal.”

Norm has a name for that: Mayberry Magic. He says Mike is a big part of it.

“He still has that little-kid joy of Mayberry inside him,” says Norm, 60. “He’s breaking his knuckles and taking care of the cars, but it’s not just about business. It’s about the business of Mayberry, the business of people.”

• • •

The more I listen and watch, the more I realize that what Mike does for where he lives brings him joy that’s hard to describe but so easy to feel heart-deep.

I hear it in a catch in his voice when he mentions his friends who’ve passed on. I see it when he gives the 11-year-old boy from Kentucky, a big Andy fan, a free Squad Car Tours T-shirt and hears the boy say, “For me?” I sense it when we leave behind the turtle crawl of a Ford Galaxie and slip into his 1967 Camaro convertible. On roads he knows well, Mike shifts into fourth gear and opens it up.

Over the roar of his muscle car, Mike shows me the open fields where he once primed tobacco from ages 8 to 16, and the place where he played baseball for the Red Sox in the mid-1970s on an infield layered with granite dust.

With the top down, Mike has to shout. As I listen, I understand why he never left and why he wants his hometown to remain vibrant and alive. He doesn’t have to tell me. I know.

For more information about Mount Airy Squad Car Tours, visit tourmayberry.com.

FOR FEBRUARY: A mother’s vision helped transform a former dairy cattle farm in Whitsett into a place where differences dissolve, friendships flourish, and every life — even a barn cat’s — shines on.