Courier-Journal, The (Louisville, KY)

The Courier-Journal
BRISTOL, Tenn.

The Bristol Motor Speedway has seen its fair share of collisions, but none more spectacular than the crack-up that occurred last weekend when Jeff Foxworthy's best joke crashed into Ulysses S. Grant's worst nightmare. The place was swarmed by Southerners and surrounded by General Lees.

Horns played "Dixie" at dawn.

A cavalry of orange Chargers roared through town and endlessly around the racetrack.

Ten bucks - and a heaping helping of patience - bought five laps and the priceless opportunity to feel for a fleeting moment like Bo or Luke: the charge of the white lightning brigade. "Gosh, it was awesome," 22-year-old Kentuckian Dillon Faulkner said.

If you wait in line two hours to ride five minutes in a '69 Dodge w! ith a Confederate flag painted on its roof, you might be …
A 9-year-old girl from Woodlawn, Va.
A 63-year-old grandpa from Lincoln, Neb.
A serious "Dukes of Hazzard " fan, most of all.

More than 25,000 of them descended on the Bristol Motor Speedway last weekend for CMT DukesFest 2005. Adults paid $15 to $25 a head for an event that proves that Robert E. Lee lost the war but won the battle. The PR battle, at least.

One hundred and forty years ago, at a private home about 190 miles east of this Tennessee mountain town, the surrender at Appomattox left Lee a beaten man. But the Southern myth machine gradually converted his shame to fame.

In 1979, CBS premiered a show that would carry Lee's name into the 21st century. On "The Dukes of Hazzard," General Lee didn't ride a charger. He was one - a bright orange 1969 Dodge Charger R/T, to be exact.

(There are worse ways to be remembered. Outside of history class, the man who vanquish! ed Lee is best known as the punchline to dumb jokes about the resident of Grant's Tomb.)

Despite its Dixiecratic iconography, "The Dukes of Hazzard" is less about rednecks than the red-state values that DukesFest so dutifully reflects.

The speedway's beer booths were closed last weekend. A makeshift park with inflatable jump-houses for kids was opened.

Evidence of the new "Dukes of Hazzard" movie, a Jessica Simpson-Johnny Knoxville vehicle scheduled for release in August, was nowhere to be found.

DukesFest organizer Ben Jones, who played ace mechanic Cooter Davenport on the TV show, said the bawdy flick is a disgrace to the wholesome series.

"It's a scurrilous, slacker version with a lot of toilet humor," Jones said. "I've read the script. I tell people, 'Please don't make the mistake of taking your children to see it.'"

Jones was a Georgia congressman from 1989 to '93 who lost to Newt Gingrich in 1994. But the show that made him famous was scrupulously apolitical - aside from its all-American attitude! of mistrust for authority.

Race certainly wasn't an issue. Except for an African-American sheriff who appeared in only a handful of episodes, Hazzard County was as monochromatic as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

The plot lines, however, were proudly black and white.

"The good guys always won," Jones said. "And the bad guys always lost."

"The Dukes of Hazzard" is a cornpone comedy about two handsome, young moonshine runners from rural Georgia. Bo and Luke Duke are rebels with a Robin Hood-like cause, alternately fleeing and foiling the inept, corrupt rule of Boss Hogg and his Straight Outta Hee-Haw henchmen.

"It's a show the whole family can watch, and Hollywood doesn't make many of those," said Scott Gordon, a 31-year-old corrections officer whose wife and two sons drove eight hours to DukesFest from Abbeville , Ala. "I grew up on the show, and now my boys are too."

Los Angeles Times critic Howard Rosenberg , a Pulitzer Prize-winning! alumnus of The Louisville Times, originally said the show "wouldn't last past the first commercial break." He has been eating Southern-fried crow for 26 years.

"The Dukes of Hazzard" played prime time for seven seasons and roosted in Nielsen's top 10 from 1979 to '82. Cable networks have rerun the show's 147 episodes for ages.

More than 23 million people watched the weekend marathon with which CMT (Country Music Television) launched its "Dukes" revival in February.

"It's a testament to the fans who refuse to let this show die," said Jones, whose wife, Alma Viator , graduated from Louisville's Valley High School.

Nobody - not Rosenberg, not CBS, not even the show's stars - knew the Dukes would be such an abiding hit. The secret lies in a timeless formula, Jones said:
"Fast is always fast, funny is always funny and good-looking is always good-looking."

The Batmobile was faster, a host of shows were funnier and the casts of other '80s hits such as "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest" were better-looking. In Hazza! rd County, however, the whole was greater than the sum of its hokey parts.

Who knew that Bo, Luke and their leggy cousin Daisy would become national sex symbols?

Who knew Daisy's short shorts would become the stuff of low-fashion legend?

Or that Waylon Jennings' theme song would become a top-40 smash?

Or that the fish-tailing, ditch-jumping General Lee, with a horn that played the first 12 notes of "Dixie," would become one of the most celebrated vehicles in TV history?

The star car's Confederate pedigree notwithstanding, "The Dukes of Hazzard" is about clan, not the Klan. University of Virginia professor Ted Blake said the Duke family is a classic manifestation of "television's Simple South."

Every Duke neatly fits a pre-fab Southern archetype. Bo (played by John Schneider, the blond) and Luke (Tom Wopat, the brunette) are good-hearted good ol' boys in the tradition of Andy Griffith and Jed Clampett.

Daisy (Catherine Bach) i! s a half-dressed but wholly virtuous Southern belle, like Ellie Mae Cl ampett and the Bradley sisters - Bobbie Jo, Billie Jo and Betty Jo - of "Petticoat Junction."

Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle) is, like Grandma and Grandpa Walton, the sage voice of experience. His CB handle is "Shepherd." The Duke boys are "Lost Sheep."

That the show, as Blake writes, "repackaged stock characters and settings" is hard to deny. But so is its enduring appeal.

Hundreds of people stood in the June sun for an hour or more to take a brief spin in one of the 40 or so General Lees that roared in for the weekend.

"With all these people, I'm going to need a relief driver soon," said Bruce McKeever of Kenly , N.C. "I might need four new tires and another tank of fuel too."

The speedway grounds were criss-crossed with endless lines of adoring, autograph-seeking fans. Only three members of the main cast were missing.

Pyle died in 1997. Sorrell Booke , aka Boss Hogg, died in 1994. Wopat is acting in the Tony-winning revival of David Mam! et's play "Glengarry Glen Ross ."

Danielle Donovan, 28, was bound and determined to meet Schneider. "I Bo Duke," her T-shirt read.

Donovan flew 600 miles from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., waited an hour in traffic and another hour in a ticket line. She was five people shy of the promised land when the tickets ran out on Saturday.

"I will meet Bo tomorrow," Donovan vowed. "And if I don't, I'll be mad." Dillon Faulkner already is. He's proud of it, too.

Faulkner, a Mount Sterling, Ky., native, is plum crazy about "The Dukes of Hazzard," that rebel-rousing automobile most of all.

"When we pulled into our hotel, we saw a General Lee pulling out with Rosco's police car chasing him," Dillon's dad, Harvey Faulkner, said. "He was going ape."

Dillon Faulkner, a maintenance worker at Mary Chiles Hospital, owns most every "Dukes" knick-knack there is. He said he has watched the show "at least a thousand times." He even has a "Dixie" horn in ! his '84 Dodge truck.

"You could reasonably say he's a little bi t obsessed," Harvey Faulkner said, smiling. "But as you can see, he's got plenty of company."

"The good guys always won, and the bad guys always lost." DukesFest organizer Ben "Cooter" Jones
Photos by Chris Hall, Special to The Courier-Journal
General Lee replicas drew a lot of attention from those attending DukesFest in Bristol, Tenn. Posing with one replica was Brian Pearrell of Winchester, Va., with his son, Austin, and daughter, Harley.

Hundreds waited in line at the Bristol Motor Speedway to get a ride in a General Lee replica at the DukesFest.

The original "The Dukes of Hazzard" TV show starred Catherine Bach as Daisy, Tom Wopat as Luke, left, and John Schneider as Bo. Country Music Television (Insight 66) airs a different episode every weeknight at 7 and 11 EDT.

Harvey Faulkner, left, and his son, Dillon, from Mount Sterlin! g, Ky., purchased Dukes of Hazzard items while at DukesFest. "Gosh, it was awesome," said Dillon, 22.

Copyright (c) The Courier-Journal. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.