I
Once upon a time, there was an eight-year-old boy who was a rabid fan of The Dukes of Hazzard. It was an obsession. But weren’t all red-blooded boys in the late 70s and early 80s? He also had a few friends from his Cub Scout pack who weren’t part of the bully crowd. They, too, were avid Dukes of Hazzard fans.
For them, it was all about the General Lee.
That boy was me.
If you’re someone who didn’t watch the Dukes of Hazzard and is unfamiliar with the show, or worse, a Gen-Zer who’s already offended because “tHe cOnFeDeRaTe fLaG iS rAcIsT” allow me to summarize the show briefly and introduce the true star, the 1969 Dodge Charger with the “01” stenciled on the doors and the Confederate flag painted on the roof. The General Lee.
II
Yeah, the Confederate flag from the Civil War. Listen up, technically speaking, that flag wasn’t even the official flag of the Confederacy. The image most people associate with the Confederates was the battle flag born of necessity after the Battle of Manasses. Amid all the smoke and confusion of that battle, which was considerable and bloody (spoiler alert, the Union lost), rebel soldiers had difficulty distinguishing the official Confederate flag, the “Stars and Bars,” from the U.S. National flag, “the Stars and Stripes.”Confederate Congressman William Porcher Miles suggested that the army have a distinct battle flag. Then, General Pierre T. Beauregard chose a variation on the cross of St. Andrew. The battle flag, the one everyone knows, features a blue cross edged with a white band on a red field. Three stars appear on each arm of the cross, with one star in the center. The stars represented each of the states of the Confederacy, plus one. Beauregard bet that one of the states with pro-Confederacy leanings, Maryland, Kentucky, or Missouri, would join the Southern cause. That never happened, but the flag remained the same for the rest of the war.
There’s a quick history lesson for ya. Trust me, everything you think you know about the Civil War is mostly wrong. I’ve studied the subject extensively. What really happened is no longer taught in school, even for us Gen-Xers. I’ll probably write a post about it at some point because documentation of history, actual history, is essential. That’s what this compilation is all about.
So, all offended Millennials, Zers, and leftists from my generation, understand that the Confederate battle flag is NOT a symbol of racism and white supremacy. Hate groups appropriating the Confederate battle flag for their own evil purposes does not make the flag a symbol of their misguided ideology. Yes, I am aware of the KKK, and illiterate punks like the one who shot up the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina (I won’t use his name and provide that notoriety) used that flag to represent their cause. Do you know what other flag the Klan used to fly regularly? The U.S. Flag, and yet I don’t see anyone crying tears of offense when it’s displayed, so spare me the virtue signaling. Where I grew up, when I grew up, we didn’t see the Confederate battle flag as any of those things. We know it as the rebel flag the Duke boys used on their car, the General Lee (named after General Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Confederacy). We saw it as a symbol of Southern pride. If that bothers you, well, there’s the door. Don’t let it hit ya where the good Lord split ya!
As a side note, are you aware of which political party started the Klan and Jim Crow? Democrats. You know them. They’re the ones tearing down statues, renaming military bases, and attempting to rewrite history, so it never happened. Good luck with that, Big Brother.
In the 70s and 80s, they didn’t teach us to hate each other over stupid shit, unlike now, and why these poor Gen-Z kids hate each other and everyone, all while promoting the diversity and inclusion they pretend to want. It’s disgusting. Public schools are now indoctrination centers. Period.
“Hate this person for their color, but include them, or you’re a racist.” Yeah, I’d be a little confused, too. Is it any wonder they’re so fucked up?
III
The Dukes of Hazzard is about two young male cousins, Bo and Luke Duke, who live in rural Georgia (purportedly near Atlanta) and are on probation for moonshine running. The young men, their female cousin Daisy Duke, and other family (such as patriarch Uncle Jesse) have various escapades as they evade the corrupt county commissioner Boss Hogg and law officer Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane. Bo and Luke drive a customized 1969 Dodge Charger nicknamed the General Lee, which became a symbol of the show.
Also in the mix is Cooter Pettigrew, the local mechanic the Duke boys always called upon to fix The General when it broke down or needed repair. The funny thing is that ol’ Cootner never seemed to get paid for his efforts. I often wondered if it was because Cooter was such a good friend to the Dukes, or perhaps some under-the-table trading was going on with moonshine. Who can say? The show never did.
The show gave us a new adventure each week that revolved around the Dukes getting involved in some situations while avoiding Hogg, Roscoe, and his deputies, Cletus and/or Enos.
There’d always be plenty of car chases with Roscoe in “hot pursuit of them Duke boys” while Bo and Luke fled across the dirt back roads of Hazzard county. These chases usually culminated in the Dukes jumping the General across a downed bridge, ditch, or some other obstacle by launching off a ramp or a dirt pile.
And as the General soared through the air, Bo (usually the driver) would blast the General’s horn which would play the notes of “I wish I was in the land of Dixie.” That was the part of the hour-long show we patiently waited for.
Usually in the wings waiting to help her cousins was Daisy driving a 1980 Jeep CJ-7 “Golden Eagle” she named “Dixie.” She’d often flirt with Enos to distract him while Bo and Luke fled or hid. And believe me, Enos crushed on Daisy…hard! I think most of the boys did.
In the end, Bo and Luke were just “good old boys, never meanin’ no harm.”
But still rebels.
IV
Sometimes I’d hang out with my friend Billy, who was part of my Cub Scout Pack, at either his house or mine. We’d ride bikes simulating chases between the Dukes and Roscoe. This usually meant building flimsy ramps and poorly packed dirt ramps and jumping our bikes as high into the air as we could manage. Without helmets. Such things weren’t required then. The key was to jump the ramp and pull up on the handlebars, so the front tire pointed into the air. This ensured a landing on the back tire, and the front tire could fall into position on the ground. If one didn’t jump a ramp in that fashion, the front tire would point down and hit the ground first, causing the bike to halt abruptly. It potentially meant a bike wreck, and those weren’t fun.
As time went on, the ramps would become larger and more ambitious to the point of danger. I see that now. As a kid? Nope. Higher and longer jumps were always the endgame. Sometimes I’d land so hard that the handlebars would move forward.
That would mean going home, finding a crescent wrench, and doing DIY repairs on the bike to make things right again.
I really beat the shit out of my first bike. It was a standard street bike not designed for off-road adventuring. It didn’t last long with the pace I put it through. My next bike would be the dirt bike I needed to continue my childhood debauchery.
In my neighborhood, set back off Arthur Avenue, was the Optimist’s Club. When it was built, they modified plenty of land for a large parking lot but used only a portion of it, leaving the rest in loose dirt. That’s where we, the neighborhood kids of Arthur Avenue, made our dirt track, complete with sketchy ramps.
Then, round and round, Billy and I would go on those dirt trails, jumping ramps like Bo would do with the General Lee until the street lights or porch lights flickered on. Any Gen-Xer knew that meant to get your ass home to wash up for dinner.
V
Halloween of 1980 was a memorable evening and worthy of sharing.
Like every other kid on Arthur Avenue, my sister and I went trick or treating. I went as a ghost (not something one could easily do today with the white sheet with the holes cut out for the eyes). Billy was with us that year, too. I honestly do not remember what his or Meg’s costumes were. We walked the length of Arthur Avenue, which meant almost two miles’ worth of houses and their treat offerings.
The parts I remember best were what happened when we finished our trick-or-treating before the eight o’clock hour was over. Halloween fell on a Friday night that year. It became a moral imperative to finish treat or treating before The Dukes of Hazzard came on at 9 p.m. It also meant we could catch the tail end of The Incredible Hulk and at least one scene of Lou Ferrigno as The Hulk, arguably the best part of that show.
After Dukes of Hazzard was Dallas, the show Mom liked to watch. That typically meant bedtime or at least the time Meg and I were to go to our room to do something quiet before bed.
I didn’t begin watching Dallas until the family patriarch Jock Ewing disappeared in a helicopter accident in South America. For some reason, that seemed tragic enough to warrant my attention. Then Bobby and J. R. Ewing went looking for him and came up empty-handed. And that, kids, is how they padded a season when they were still between 22 and 24 episodes per season.
This night, Halloween night, The Dukes of Hazzard would be a repeat. I didn’t know that. I watched my shows as they came on, not yet understanding the concept of seasons and repeats. So, that night was the first time I’d seen the episode titled “The Ghost of General Lee.”
That should’ve been a hint of what was coming. I didn’t even think about the foreshadowing of the title. My night, now flush with trick-or-treat candy and goofing off with my friend Billy, was about to take traumatizing turn. Well, traumatic for an eight-year-old in love with the General Lee.
There we were, sitting in the living room on the brown with huge yellow flowered sofa, watching the intro to Dukes of Hazzard.
“Just a good old boys. Never meanin’ no harm. Beats all you never saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they was born—”
I remember Mom being in the room, too. It may have been her checking our Halloween candy for possible nefarious things. There always seemed to be some scare from the media about razor blades in candy bars. Better safe than sorry. I know that when I became a father, I checked my son’s candy, too.
The episode began predictably enough. Bo and Luke were running from Sheriff Roscoe in several chase scenes. Eventually, they outran him and hide by a lake, where they went skinny dipping. Meanwhile, two pool hustlers are on the run after some shenanigans at the Boar’s Nest, Hazzard county’s one and only bar, it seems. Incredibly, the two hustlers stumble upon the General Lee obfuscated behind some of that Los Angeles, err, Georgia shrubbery. They steal Bo and Luke’s clothes and the General and flee. Bo and Luke watch as the hustlers steal their car, unable to give fight or chase as they are nude. Soon after, the hustlers come face-to-face with Roscoe, taking a crazy right-hand turn while smashing into Roscoe’s front end. The goofy Roscoe thinks the Duke boys have crossed the line and gives chase. They circle Hazzard Pond (not where Luke and Bo are), and the chase ends with the General jumping a dirt hill and into the lake, where she sinks.
With my jaw firmly dropped, I broke down and cried. And not just whimpers or superficial crying. I’m talking about a downright, almost uncontrollable breakdown.
Why?
If you asked me when I was eight, I’d tell you what I told Mom. That’s the General Lee! It’s at the bottom of the lake! In my undeveloped mind, a car at the bottom of the lake may as well be ruined forever, and I didn’t know how I’d live in a world without the General Lee. When I tell you The Dukes of Hazzard and the General Lee were the most significant things in my young life, perhaps even an escape from the misery that was school, I am solemnly serious.
As an adult, I see the situation objectively and for what it was. I had attachments to objects. The General Lee was one of the first. It’s a symptom of a condition I’ve had all my life and didn’t understand until very recently. It makes sense now, the fantastic reaction I experienced at the perceived destruction of an icon such as the General Lee.
I wouldn’t have my first official anxiety attack until that December. My reaction to the potential loss of a loved car might as well have been a precursor. It took some soothing from Mom to calm me down. I may or may not remember this clearly, but I have a lingering memory of Billy laughing at me. Not teasingly, but in such a way that my reaction was extreme. Someone in the room told me it was just a T.V. show, and it wasn’t real, that the General would somehow be okay.
Well, what I can tell you was, at the time, it was very real for me, and the advice wasn’t helping. Much the same way people without anxiety tell me that mine is all in my head and that I need to get over it. Oh, how I fucking hate that more than anything.
Obviously, once I’d calmed down and returned to reality, I knew the General would somehow survive. Bo and Luke loved that car as much as I did, and Cooter wouldn’t sleep until he’d fully repaired her. That’s what happened. A twist in the plot revealed the town thought the Duke boys were dead. Boss Hogg used the opportunity to accuse them of stealing a gold watch formerly owned by Jefferson Davis, Hogg’s namesake (Davis was also the Confederate States of America’s president during the Civil War). The Dukes and Cooter fixed the General and tricked Roscoe into believing it was a ghost and that the ghosts of Bo and Luke were driving it. They tricked him into admitting Boss Hogg set them up, and they saved the day.
I felt better but also foolish over such a peculiar outburst.
It wouldn’t be the last time.
VI
Mom owned a 1970 Camero nicknamed “Bessie.” She was another car I was fond of. I often asked if I could get into the car the same way the Duke boys did, through the open window. Sometimes I could, sometimes not. I’m sure it revolved around Mom’s mood and how busy she was. Bessie was also the first car I remember since becoming self-aware sometime between the age of two or three. And my father’s brown van, which was only around for a few years.
Bessie survived until I was out of high school, but not without incident.
Sometimes in early 1981, which month I can’t recall, I’d been riding my bike with one of the neighborhood kids, Kevin F., who lived at the top of Arthur Avenue. I must’ve lost track of time, for dusk had set, and Mom didn’t want me riding back to the bottom of the road in the dark. So I called her and asked her to come and get me.
The problem was getting my bike into the car. We tried to fit it into the backseat and experienced trouble doing so. During one attempt, we’d pushed the bike in through the driver’s side door and attempted to pull it in from the passenger side, leaving the driver’s side open.
An inexperienced driver with her father in the passenger seat came tearing down from the top of Arthur Avenue and collided with the open driver’s side door. I don’t remember her attempt to slow down after the collision.
There are some sounds in life one doesn’t forget. One of them is the sound of metal colliding with metal and the consequent smashing of a crushed car door into the chassis. It happened so fast. The safety glass of the door’s window shattered and scattered everywhere.
The sheer level of that commotion set other neighbors out of their homes and into the street. I walked around the back of the car to see the damage on the driver’s side. As I had with the General Lee jumping into a lake, I broke down into uncontrollable sobs. I remember thinking Mom’s car was ruined. And what if she’d been standing behind the door when that other car hit it? What if that had been me?
I fell to the ground crying so hard that I began to hyperventilate. One neighbor, Ms. Bea (also the school nurse at my elementary school), knelt beside me and helped me control my breathing. It took some effort, but I got there and calmed down. Assurances that the car could be fixed helped, even though looking at the ruin of the driver’s side door suggested differently.
Was it my attachment to Mom’s car or the reality that one of us could have died that night the cause of my breakdown? It’s not something I’ve explored. Probably both. I know I felt the exact same way I did when I watched the General Lee plunge into the depths of Hazzard Pond.
My father, Charlie, was a mechanic. He wasn’t an intelligent man, but he knew how to work on cars and had some high-functioning part of his brain that allowed him to tear down a car, a carburetor, or a transmission, repair it, and put it back together. He was also dyslexic and couldn’t write a sentence or spell correctly to save his life.
He located a replacement door within days and fixed Bessie. The replacement door was clearly one pulled out of a junkyard. It had a badly damaged red paint job with the word “HOOD” spray painted across the side. The rest of Bessie was a dark rust-red with a black vinyl top. The mismatch in coloring was apparent, but at least Mom’s car was roadworthy again.
Eventually, Charlie took Bessie to the shop where he worked (in Odenton, not a quick trip from Eldersburg) to sand down and repaint Bessie. It’s probably a good thing he did. When he removed the vinyl top, it was apparent Bessie had rust and decay underneath. Over weeks, Charlie sanded Bessie down and repaired all the rust and decay.
That’s when the subject of what color to paint Bessie came up. I’d either overheard the conversation was my input was sought. Surely by now, you should be able to guess what color I proposed. If you said, “something like the General Lee,” you’d be spot on. Maybe even weld the doors shut so we could get in and out through the window. Of course, they rejected my suggestion outright.
I then pitched an alternative; the color of another car I was obsessed with. The 1978 Indy pace car, a Corvette, the top half painted black, the bottom half painted silver, and a red pin strip running across the middle.
I must have really pushed it because that’s precisely how Charlie painted Bessie.
Mom loved that car more than I did. She doesn’t recall the exact reason she sold Bessie, except that it may have involved the vehicle needing repairs we couldn’t afford or we weren’t interested in making the investment. In 1990, Mom sold Bessie to a student at Liberty High School who was readily interested in buying her. If the reason was due to expensive repairs, the new owner would do them or spend the money on them.
That’s probably why I didn’t ask to inherit Bessie because I would’ve in a heartbeat. I loved that car.
But don’t all red-blooded men?
VII
The other thing we schooled-aged boys who were Dukes of Hazzard fans wanted was the Matchbox car version of the General Lee (technically, Matchbox didn’t have the license for it, Ertl did).
When I say that finding one was more difficult than finding a needle dropped out of an airplane, I’m not exaggerating. Well, maybe a little, but damn, it was a challenge.
When the miniature die-cast version of the General Lee became available, they sold out faster than stores could restock them. I know because I spent months calling every toy store in Carroll County (Kmarts, primarily) and Baltimore county, where stores like Lionel ToyTown and Toys-R-Us were located. Every time, my query ended with ‘sold out.’
It wasn’t until 1982 after we’d moved out to Woodbine, that I got lucky. A cold call to Kmart at the Carrolltowne Mall in Eldersburg finally gave me the good news I’d waited nearly a year to hear. They had some in stock but would surely sell out by the weekend.
I asked if they’d hold one for me, citing the many months of frustrating searches that yielded no results. Actually, I’m sure I didn’t word it so eloquently. Nevertheless, they agreed to hold one if I’d pick it up before they closed at 9 p.m.
You’d better believe I begged and nagged the hell out of my parents to take me to Kmart (about a twenty-minute drive from Woodbine) so I could finally buy the coveted General Lee. I already had the 1978 Corvette Pace car and Speed Racer’s Mach-5, which would complete the miniature car collection I just had to have. There was also a time limit, and who knew when this opportunity would present itself again? Again, I’m positive I worded it much more simply and in pleading terms.
One of them relented because, after many grueling months of searching, the miniature of General Lee was finally mine.
VIII
I still own it today, along with the Mach-5 and the ’78 Corvette Pace car.
Why?
Well, I have many things from my youth I’ve not parted with. I seem to have an attachment to objects. I’ve always dismissed it as sentimental value. Remember, I’m the one who returned to Woodbine in 2021 after Charlie passed away to root through my childhood home, looking for the slides and home movies I left behind in 1992 after we violently parted ways. I may have also had several pieces of furniture I grew up with shipped to South Carolina.
Objects. Because of sentimental value. I also told people they originally belonged to Mom and wanted them back. After she passes, I’ll still have them, and I’ll be able to look at them and recall a happier time in my life.
I wholeheartedly believe this even as I pause writing this to look over my shoulder at the green harp table I brought home, the eagle lamp I use to light my office, and the secretariat I now use to keep papers filed away. Furniture Mom owned before I was born.
I’m attached to objects. Objects will never hurt me, you see. People will, and I have little doubt, even without seeing a therapist, that this is why I can’t get attached to them anymore. I keep everyone at a distance, even if they deserve better, and that makes me feel so fucking guilty that I just want to cry about it.
But I can’t. I don’t cry anymore. I don’t allow all the pain and anguish I keep bottled up over losing my son and Becca to surface. It’s permanently sealed, and it affects everything else. It’s why I self-isolate so often, caught in an unwinnable situation. I don’t want people to suffer from my past sins, but in doing so, I accomplish the very thing I seek to avoid. Tell me, how the fuck is one supposed to reconcile that?
No winning. Only degrees of losing.
IX
This is me, or how I’ve been described…
- Poor coping strategies.
- Having a difficult time making friends.
- Attachment to objects.
- Loneliness.
- Reclusiveness.
- Poor social skills.
- Appearing to lack empathy.
- Highly sensitive to criticism.
- Stubborn, opinionated demeanor.
- Difficultly with change.
But…
- Superior vocabulary.
- Advanced ideas and opinions.
- High levels of creativity and problem-solving ability.
- Extremely curious and inquisitive.
- Very imaginative and resourceful.
- Wide range of interests not related to school.
- Penetrating insight into complex issues.
- Specific talent or consuming interest area.
- Sophisticated sense of humor.
The worst and the best. Two sides of the same coin. And as I learned recently, these are hallmarks of being an Aspie.
To be continued…
