Daily Archives: January 5, 2009

What I learned from Bo and Luke

For Christmas this year, Emily got me the entire DVD collection of the Dukes of Hazzard.  As a kid of the 70s and 80s, I was fortunate to enjoy some of the greatest television shows ever made – M*A*S*H, The Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, Air Wolf, Cheers, and the Smurfs.  I am delighted to watch the Dukes of Hazzrd with my kids as I am pretty sure that I was Isaac’s age when I was first really drawn to the Duke boys.

So, we got down to business watching the series from episode 1 (which, by the way, explains a lot of stuff about the series). The kids and I giggled and cackled and have been singing the DoH song at the top of our lungs.  It has been a great trip down memory lane.  I distinctly remember playing the Dukes in second grade.  Mrs. Kuhn’s desk made for a great General Lee and her yard stick was a perfect bow for me to shoot my dynamite arrows.  It was an awesome time to be a kid.  I guess it is posible that any time you are a kid, it’s an awesome time…but seriously, I had the Dukes of Hazzard to grow up on!  My best pal at  the time acquired a generic tv guide that had Daisy Duke on the cover.  You know Daisy, the prettiest woman ever (aside from my lovely wife)!  Anyhow, we knew we had something special but we also had enough information about the birds and the bees to know we couldn’t just parade around with the thing either.  Brainstorm…we found an old plastic lunch box my uncle gave me and gently laid Daisy into the box and set to work digging.  She remains buried somewhere in my parents’ yard to this day.  Anyhow, Isaac started talking about shooting a  yard stick bow and arrow and I knew we’d started a proper education for our kids.  Here are some things I learned:

– The good guys win…sometimes it’s hard to know who the good guys are at first, and they don’t always wear a white hat (or drive a Cadillac with horns).  They almost always have a dynamite tipped arrow and a bow on hand though.

-A lady is to be respected and treated right. The extent of her lady-likeness is inversely proportional to the length of her shorts.

-A properly waxed hood is important for proper aerodynamics and fuel efficiency and is properly buffed with one size too small Wranglers.

Emily - age 9

-I married WV’s finest Duke girl.  She was cute then and is even cuter now!

So, I learned some lessons, but I am left with several questions, namely about how the human species propagated itself through the 1970s.  I think I first mentioned this question after seeing Soylent Green.  Hair styles and clothes, and goofy come-on lines should have excluded most people from spreading their DNA.  Even if folks somehow got around that problem, I cannot imagine how the men had sufficient “swimmers” to make the trip.  I saw way too much of Bo Duke, if you know what I mean.  The Duke boys wore jeans that were at least two sizes too small.  Well, I don’t want to say too much more to embarrass myself so I’ll leave the rest to you.  “I may be crazy, but I ain’t stupid, this is crazy Warren, over and out!”