Threes

For reasons too numerous to go into, Mrs. bee and I usually do nearly all our television viewing between 7:00 and 10:00 pm, and mostly we watch old movies on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) or reruns of old sitcoms on channels like TV Land. We never watch any of the programs that are hot with the rest of America, especially reality show crap.

So it is that over the years, we've spent many hours watching The Andy Griffith Show, which was most entertaining when Don Knotts was in the cast as deputy sheriff Barney Fife, and while Ron Howard was still a little boy playing Opie Taylor, Andy's son.

One of our favorite TCM movies is "A Face in the Crowd." Andy Griffith plays a character far removed from the sheriff of Mayberry, a guy who doesn't have a likeable bone in his body. Another TCM favorite is the Ernest Borgnine movie called "Marty." Borgnine won an Oscar for that one, and we've seen it at least three times. He plays a bad guy in another favorite, "From Here To Eternity." The more time we spend watching TCM, the more entertaining movies with Ernest Borgnine we see.

At any rate, Andy Griffith and Ernest Borgnine departed this life in the last few days. Both had long and admirable acting careers. They say bad news comes in threes -- I hope that doesn't mean another actor we enjoy seeing checks it in.