Just the Good Ol' Boys

I remember it all started with this lunchbox. I came across it in a box I was unpacking a month after we were married.

So do you have a second? I'm about to tell you the story of how I was adopted into the Duke Family. Yup. The Dukes of Hazzard County, Georgia.

Olen told me that he got this treasured lunchbox (not as a collector's item, but for use) because the Dukes of Hazzard was his favorite TV show growing up. As a young adult he had the opportunity to purchase two Dodge Chargers from the year the TV show was in production. He told me of these cars and how they were being watched over by a buddy down in St. David. I thought "Um...that's cool. Moving on.".

Well, then Warner Bros. began releasing the original TV series season by season onto DVD. We started accumulating the whole 7-season set one by one. It became a nightly ritual for Olen and Porter to watch an episode of "The Duke Boys" before bed every night. Porter learned the theme song by heart by season two and perfected his "YEEE-HAAA!" by the end of the first episode. He was three and a half.

Porter paired all of us up with characters in the show.

He is Bo Duke.

Olen is Luke Duke.

He makes me be Daisy.

But I want to be Cooter. He's the one with the best ideas that always save the day. Plus he's the only one who ever gets out of Hazzard County. (And in real life Ben Jones, the actor, had a successful political career.)

London didn't join our family until the third or fourth season, so she gets to be either Uncle Jessie or Boss Hogg. It really depends on the episode.

Now fast-forward to present day. Olen and his good buddy (Jeff, down St. David way who has been so graciously watching over Olen's Chargers all these years) decided to begin working on restoring one car for the upcoming 2008 Dukesfest next month.

You heard me right my friends. And this year is the 30th Anniversary of the Dukes of Hazzard so it's going to be a doosie of a fest if there ever was one. All living cast members come and everyone wears bright orange and says "Yee-Haw" and calls each other "Cousin" for a whole weekend. It's a Hazzard-style hoe-down. Another tradition is driving your tricked-out General Lee to the show and either showing it off just for fun, or for sale. Thus brings me to the point of this tale down memory lane. They hope to sale.

Here's what they're working with.

These are actually pictures we took a couple months ago when we went down to the shop in Tucson where the Charger is undergoing General Lee transformation. The body has been reshaped and sanded down and Olen's buddy, Jeff, has done amazing things to the engine. Olen is going down this week to pick up the seats for refinishing.

But it still has a way to go until it looks like these:

I will begin a documentation of the transformation; because I'm sure I have you all on the edge of your seats with anticipation.


It will be Jeff that drives the car to Atlanta, Georgia for the Dukesfest parade of General Lees because it falls on the same weekend in June that Seven Brides for Seven Brothers preforms (I'm Martha's mother!) and Olen is staying behind to see the show.Yes, friends, he is that wonderful.

I was telling Olen how much fun it would be to bring the car up before the Fest and drive it down Mill Ave. or at least to church. He said that would be fun! And even funner if we were to dress up as the cast! I said fine. But I'm Cooter.