A place like Mayberry

When I meet Kendall Regen at a Panera Bread Co. outside of Knoxville, Tenn., he’s talking to one of the patrons. They didn’t know each other until just now, but you wouldn’t know that by listening to them; you’d think they’d known each other a lifetime.

Such is life with Regen, founder and owner of Dickson, Tenn.-based Regen Financial Services. It wouldn’t matter if he was in the insurance business or any other walk of life — he’s never met a stranger and never will.

When we find a table for our interview I ask him a question. Before Regen answers he says, “yes sir,” though he says it as one word: “y’sir.” It catches me off guard. The courtesy is one I’m not used to these days. Then again, I’ve been away from the South going on 13 years.

The question I’d asked him was about the baby boomer generation and what it meant to him growing up a boomer.

Regen’s eyes light up as they do on almost any topic. As a boy, he tells me, he didn’t watch much TV. Most of the time, he and his brothers would be playing outside.

If it was baseball season, they were out swinging a bat. If it was football season, they were running and tackling, playing for keeps. Regen’s daddy played football at the University of Tennessee, and Regen himself looks like he could still suit up, at least for a couple of plays.

And if the Regen boys weren’t playing sports, they were playing army or other games boys played after school in the ’60s and ’70s. In other words, they weren’t staring cross-eyed at videogames.

When he did watch TV, he had a favorite: “The Andy Griffith Show.” “I liked it for two reasons,” Regen says. “It was good, clean comedy, and it taught good core family values.”

He remembers one episode where Opie broke a window with a rock. With Aunt Bee looking on, Andy sat Opie down and talked to him father to son, but also man to man. That struck a chord with Regen because when he’d screw up as a boy, his own daddy talked to him in that same stern, respectful way.