MEANWHILE DOWN AT BOSS HOGG’S…

When we’re not taking pictures of each other pissing against the side of the van from its roof, we speed down the Interstates, sometimes at 75mph. Giant water-towers signify each new town we pass. Town names like Dixie and Wells and Between emblazoned on the side. The water-towers sit silently watching over the townsfolk’s compliant behaviour like sentient mechanical beings from H.G. Wells visionary imagination or Ed Harris’s Christofl surveying Jim Carey’s Truman.

Much of Louisiana and Alabama reminds me of The Dukes of Hazzard. I don’t know if it was a real or imagined place, Hazzard County, but it was the only place in the world that mattered when I was six. Every Saturday tea-time, I’d sit speechless save for the odd whoop as the General Lee “did a jump” over a river. Before Knight Rider, before the A-Team, before Airwolf, there was Boss Hogg. Oh and the first love of my life - Daisy Duke. Every episode was the same, Boss Hogg’s immoral scheming foiled by the Duke boys whilst all the while hiding Uncle Jesse’s moonshine from Officers Roscoe P. Coltrane and Cleetus. I remember drawing the General Lee for a girl at my first primary school, she was called Mandy and I saw her knickers. That was probably the day I was scolded by mother for getting into the car after school by climbing through the window like Bo and Luke.

The last season jumped the shark, Bo and Luke went away and were replaced by their cousins. It just wasn‘t the same and part of me never recovered. I think that’s probably the day I was scolded by mother for using the phrase crock-of-shit. I also used it when Scrappy Doo was introduced to our screens and when Keith Flint became Prodigy when they released Firestarter