High-Speed Chase Down Memory Lane

Just the good ol' boys,
never meanin' no harm.
Beats all you never saw,
been in trouble with the law
since the day they was born.

In case you couldn't tell, I caught a few episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard last weekend during the Dukes marathon on CMT. I don't think I'd actually seen a whole episode from start to finish since I was eight or nine years old. Obviously, I hadn't forgotten about the car chases and Rosco P. Coltrane and the car chases and Boss Hogg and the car chases and Daisy... and the car chases. It really makes me thankful for creative people who don't title things only by the majority of what they contain, otherwise the show might have been called Goofy Southerners in Cars. In all honesty, even as a kid, I don't really think I cared nearly as much about the car chase as a whole element or the show. All I ever really wanted to see was that '69 Charger catch some serious air.

I remember it being my favorite show for quite some time and even being more than a little disappointed that Bo and Luke were replaced by two shmoes named Coy and Vance for a single season. Even though I was only nine years old I still knew that those two guys were awful. Anyway, while I was watching the marathon, I suddenly started to remember all the Dukes of Hazzard loot I had. I remembered having a T-shirt that had one of the iron-on styled images on the front with a sparkly outline around the image. You know, the ones teenagers are wearing now becasue they're so ironically cool. And I remembered the Etch-a-Sketch inlays that let you play connect the dots with the General Lee and pretend to race around the back roads of Hazzard County to escape the cops even though you were just a little grey line. I also had a the Matchbox version of the General Lee and a little wind-up version of it that sat in a plastic case that I kept strapped to my wrist. The little knob to wind the gears up stuck out of the side of the case and at my command, I could put my wrist to the floor, pop the case open, and the car would speed across the floor for about two seconds until it hit anything even remotely resembling carpet.

There was also the record album as well as the 45 single of the theme song. I remember role-playing Dukes of Hazzard scenes in my bedroom while I played the theme song from the 45 single. The only catch was that my record player at the time didn't have an arm that would return to the beginning of the record once it reached the end which meant that there was always a commercial break ever two to three minutes while I broke character to start the song from the beginning. Oh, and I vaugely remember having a plastic mock-up toy mountain that was supposed to represent Hazzard county that included yet another car that could wind itself up as you pulled it back along the floor.

Thankfully, the show reminded me about more than toys and records, although the toy memories dwarf everything else. I remembered saying out loud while watching the show that when I got my driver's license, I would drive around like the Dukes of Hazzard. My ever-practical dad then asked me where exactly it was that I thought that I could drive like that and get away with it. I don't remember my exact reply, but it was something along the lines of, "On the back roads!" Yeah... funny thing about that... it turns out I was right. Except for the jumping across rivers part. Or the driving on two wheels part. But other than those stunts, I think I eventually lived the dream.

Oddly enough, one of the commercials that played quite a bit in between car stunts was a clip about Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper which, hands down, is the longest, most cumbersome title for a soda that I can remember. Anyway, one of the commercials for this new, very long flavor makes use of the song, Mahna Mahna, from the Muppet Show. Jeff Matheson, a friend from my halcyon days in the mid-80s, and I used to sing that song during recess in between bouts of petty vandalism, one of us taking the speaking part, the other taking the falsetto singing part, and then eventually trading off. By the way, just in case you're prepared to chastise me for the petty vandalism, most of it was pulling crab apples off a tree at the back of the playground and throwing them at fourth graders. See? It was all for a good cause.