Pickle Story, The (TAGS Episode)

Episode Info

The Pickle Story

• S2.E11
• Filmed: 43
• Aired: 43
• Original Air Date: 1961/12/18
• Writer(s): Harvey Bullock
• Director: Bob Sweeney

Plot Summary

It's canning time again, and Aunt Bee has put up another batch of pickles. After realizing the only thing they're good for is killing flies brave enough to land on them, Andy and Barney decide to substitute store-bought for her homemade and hand out the originals to travelers passing through Mayberry. After the switch, Bee decides to enter her pickles in the county fair. Unfortunately, the perennial winner is Clara Johnson, Bee's best friend, and she has her heart set on winning her 12th blue ribbon in a row. Andy and Barney have no choice but to get rid of all eight jars before she can enter, so they eat night and day until all the pickles are gone. They do their work proudly, but Bee decides that since the boys liked them so much, she will make a double batch.

Plot

The episode opens in the Taylor household, where Aunt Bee proudly presents her latest batch of homemade pickles to Andy, Barney, and Opie. Unbeknownst to her, her pickles are infamously inedible, often referred to as "kerosene cucumbers" due to their foul taste. The trio, unable to tell her the truth to spare her feelings, grimaces through each bite while feigning enjoyment, setting the stage for the episode's central conflict.

Determined to avoid consuming more of Aunt Bee's pickles, Andy devises a plan to replace her eight jars with store-bought pickles from Myers' Pickle Factory, which are far superior. With Barney's assistance, they execute the swap while Aunt Bee is distracted, and Barney disposes of the original pickles by giving them away to unsuspecting passing motorists, including one heading to Portland, Oregon, in a humorous bit of absurdity.

The plot thickens when Clara Johnson, a friend and accomplished pickle-maker who has won the county fair's best pickles contest for 11 consecutive years, visits the Taylor household. Clara tastes Aunt Bee's bad pickles and, aghast, suggests improvements, but Aunt Bee, confident in her recipe, dismisses the advice. Inspired by the exchange, Aunt Bee decides to enter what she believes is her latest batch—actually the store-bought pickles—in the upcoming county fair, hoping to challenge Clara's winning streak.

Andy and Barney face a moral dilemma when Clara confides in Andy about how much her winning streak means to her. Realizing it would be unfair for store-bought pickles to compete, especially against Clara, they decide to eat all eight jars of the store-bought pickles. This forces Aunt Bee to prepare a new batch of her own pickles for the contest, which are, predictably, just as bad as before.

At the county fair, Clara wins the blue ribbon for the 12th consecutive year. Aunt Bee's entry does not place, but she remains undeterred. Encouraged by Andy, Barney, and Opie's apparent enthusiasm for her pickles (actually the store-bought ones they consumed), she makes another batch of 16 jars and begins preparing another canned good, likely marmalade. The episode concludes with a comedic twist: Andy and Barney mistake the smell of her new project for ammonia or paint thinner, only to discover it's her latest culinary endeavor, as highlighted in a MeTV trivia challenge.

Odd Facts Known by Few

• This episode has been voted the favorite episode of the entire series in several polls. Fan clubs and watcher groups have consistently placed this episode in their Top 10.

• It takes 2-3 months for pickles to set in jars before they are ready to eat.

• Don Knotts stated, various times, that The Pickle Story was his favorite TAGS episode.

• Based on the show's airdate of 1961, Clara would have won her first pickle competition in 1949.

• Barney tells Andy that Aunt Bee's pickles are scattered from Oregon to Nova Scotia.

• Since this is season #2, Aunt Bee only moved back to Mayberry in the last year. This episode would imply she has made a special annual trip to Mayberry just to enter the pickle contest and lose to Clara for 11 years in a row.

• Aunt Bee's pickle jar entry number in the pickle contest was 11; Clara's was number 4.

• Ron Howard has mentioned that he never liked pickles.

• In this and earlier episodes, Clara's last name is Johnson. In later seasons, her last name is Edwards. Hope Summer's character is also called Bertha and Clara Edwards in other episodes. Edwards is the more common.

• The two pickle judges at the fair are banker, Mr. Meldrum, and jeweler, Ray Watson.

• In every other instance through-out this series and Mayberry R.F.D., Aunt Bee's cooking is regarded as being excellent. In an 8th season story, "The Mayberry Chef," Aunt Bee is asked to host a televised Cooking Program based upon her well known talent. She doesn't even have to audition. In this, "The Pickle Story," Aunt Bee oddly never tastes her own-made pickles, realizing her recipe's obvious extensive faults.

• After Andy, Barney and Opie swap Aunt Bee's bad-tasting homemade pickles with some better-tasting store-bought pickles, they put the home canning jars that now contain store pickles back into the Taylors' kitchen cabinet. Barney then leaves the kitchen with a valise full of the bad homemade pickles in the store-bought jars. In the next scene, Barney is outside of town giving the motorist from Portland a home-canning jar of Aunt Bee's bad pickles as a Safe Driver Award. He should be handing out the store jars from the valise, not home canning jars.

• "Water bath canning" is suitable for preserving high-acid foods, like pickles, and recipes containing added vinegar. The most common size water bath canner is 21-quarts, which can hold up to 7 quart-sized jars. So, a "batch" of pickles would normally have been 7 jars and not 8 as we see in this episode. That's an odd fact but it doesn't take away from the fun of the episode.

Bad Information Found Online

• The following is incorrect but is posted on IMDb.com.
  • When the judges are evaluating the pickles, they're standing at a table before a background of shelves filled with other home-canned fruits and vegetables in glass jars. After the first prize is announced, the background shelves are full of cakes.

Character List

• Andy Griffith - Andy Taylor
• Don Knotts - Barney Fife
• Ronny Howard - Opie Taylor
• Frances Bavier - Aunt Bee Taylor
• Hope Summers - Clara Johnson
• Lee Kreiger - out-of-state motorist
• Stanley Farrar - 1st judge
• Warren Parker - 2nd judge