Remember "The Andy Griffith Show" from back in the 1960s? Listen and you can almost hear that whistled theme song.

What made the show such a success was its laughter, its life moments and, most important, its lovable characters.

The central character, Andy Taylor, was a good country sheriff who helped keep law and order in the sleepy, but never dull, fictitious town of Mayberry, N.C.

Taylor’s character always managed to rise above whatever problem was facing the town and get things back on track.

Like any good Greek literary tragedy, the show generally had a couple of common themes: One of its own residents had "gone bad" or temporarily had some kind of problem; or an outsider came into town and brought some kind of conflict or problem with them.

It’s funny; the outsiders’ level of "badness" was always indicated by the distance they had to travel in order to get to Mayberry. If they were just a little bad, they might have came from the "big city" of Raleigh. But if the outsider was really trouble, they probably came directly from New York City.

That notion is directly opposite of what many people find in business and industry. In the consulting world, often the rule is: they’re from some place far off; they must know what they’re talking about.

I loving refer to this phenomenon as the "50-mile expert syndrome." If you’re from 50 miles away, you must be an expert. Right?

Well, it isn’t nearly that simple or concrete.

In fact, a good example of expertise being called upon from a much closer source has been seen in recent weeks in our community.

Approximately 7.5 miles separate the Lawrence County Courthouse and the Rock Hill Local School District Office. Yet an "expert" who normally resides in the courthouse is making a big difference in the district.

Harold "Bucky" Shafer, superintendent of the Lawrence County Educational Service Center, has been acting Rock Hill Superintendent for a couple of months now. From an outsider’s perspective, Shafer and the county school board have done an amazing job of carefully navigating through the potential political minefield inherent in assuming operations of the district.

It would have been easy for Shafer and the county board to sit back and simply wait until the Rock Hill district’s legal disputes were complete and hand back over the reigns to whichever side ultimately wins.

But Shafer isn’t a simple man and he doesn’t appear to be a person who will let politics get in the way of doing what’s right for the children of the district. In the couple of months since he and the county board have been operating things in Rock Hill, they’ve made great strides in putting education first.

From identifying and fixing problems with the curriculum to purchased much-needed textbooks and saving the district money on textbooks, they’re doing things the Andy Taylor way.

I didn’t call Shafer before I began writing this, mostly because he wouldn’t want the credit. But if I had, he’d have certainly ended the conversation as he always does with media folks.

"Now make this old country boy sound good," he’d say with a laugh.

No need for my help. He’s doing a pretty good job of looking and sounding good by himself.

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Ironton Tribune. He can be reached at (740) 532-1445 ext. 12 or by e-mail to kevin.cooper@irontontribune.com.