169. Fizzy Lifting Drinks

169. "Theme from The Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol' Boys)" by Waylon Jennings

I watched The Dukes of Hazzard religiously from the time it premiered in 1979 until the fifth season character replacement debacle when Bo and Luke disappeared and Coy and Vance showed up. BOOOO!!! This song not only brings up many fond memories of the show (mostly of Daisy Duke in her Daisy Dukes), it also brings to remembrance how I used to drive like the Duke boys on our farmland and the gravel and dirt roads of Marsh Valley. I prefer the TV version over the longer version Waylon recorded commercially. The TV version has the banjo throughout and a hardy "Yeee-haw!" at the end on the intro. And the ending credits have Roscoe's distinctive laugh to close it all out.



The Dukes of Hazzard was one of the few shows on television that I could at least partially relate to. No, I didn't have a souped up car that could jump and/or fly over ravines and creek beds, but I did live on a farm outside of town, my wardrobe was very similar to what the Duke boys wore, and I had lots and lots of cousins with the same last name living in the same county.

Also, like the Duke family, my family had a long tradition of making alcoholic beverages from scratch. No, we didn't make moonshine. We made root beer, which my Mormon Mom assured us at that time was completely alcohol-free. But later in life, when my own son did a 5th grade science report on how root beer gets its fizz, I found out that if you put yeast and sugar together then the yeast will turn lots of those sugar molecules into alcohol molecules and fizz molecules. The more fizz in the drink, the more alcohol. And Mom used to let the root beer cure in the basement until it was super-fizzy--to the point that some of the bottles exploded (one reason we wrapped them in quilts). Mom still believes there was no alcohol in our strange brew to this day, even though I've explained to her that it is chemically impossible for us to have created fizzy root beer without any alcohol. So, while we weren't bona fide moonshiners, we did make and transport alcoholic beverages of our own making, and we did serve them to kin and friends when they came over to the house, which I guess made our home kind of like the Boars Nest, only without a steady stream of country stars performing their biggest hits live in order to get out of speeding tickets. Yessiree, if you ever drank a bottle or glass of root beer from the Olson family, then you were drinking some of the finest Mormonshine in Idaho!

Yeeeeee-haaaaaaawww!