4 Apr - Cooter's Museum and Smith Creek Moonshine

 

Just down the street from our campground, across the street from the magnificent Gaylord Hotel is the Cooter's Museum, a tribute to the late 70's TV show "Dukes of Hazzard". 

From the IMDb website, "'Just some good ol boys, never meanin' no harm - they been in trouble with the law since the day they wuz born...' So began the classiest of all hicksville county roadchase shows, where each week those loveable two modern day Robin Hoods, Beaureguard "Bo" Duke [John Schneider] & Lucas K. "Luke" Duke [Tom Wopat] would pit themselves against some ner do wells, probably from Chickasaw county, and inadvertently manage to rub Sherriff Roscoe P Coltrane [James Best] up the wrong way to boot. Cue slo-mo shots of an airborne General Lee [1969 Dodge Charger]flying down leaf littered byways with Roscoe's cruiser once again in hot pursuit."

"Cooter" Davenport was played by Ben Jones, and ran the local auto repair garage.  He also had a tow truck which is featured outside the museum

The inside of the museum, which is free of charge, has about anything and everything you can imagine relating to the 'Dukes of Hazzard'. Some of my memories of that show include the hemi orange 1969 Dodge Charger, I have been a Chrysler fan since my early childhood and I always loved this car. I did learn something about the color recently: Apparently the exact color of the car has been a point of debate since the origins of the show.  I always thought is was the standard Chrysler color EV2 “Hemi Orange.  Apparently the original one was, but then they started using the Chevrolet paint color Code 70, Flame Red and that paint color was used on the remaining 300 Chargers used in the show.  Although the color code name was Flame Red, it was definitely orange.  So, there you have it and now YOU know!  Another little nugget of information I will never use, ha!

Another vivid memory of the show for me was the hottie 'Daisy Duke', cousin of the Duke boys, played by Catherine Back (eye roll by Doreen) and her Jeep. "Dixie".  One of her Jeeps is on display in the museum along with a "General Lee" and one of Roscoe P. Coltrane's police cruisers, also a Chrysler product (Plymouth Fury).  

Display of Catherine Back "Daisy Duke" pictures

Dixie, the iconic Jeep with the golden wings on the hood

Roscoe P Coltrane's cruiser

Again, anything "Dukes of Hazzard" you can find ion the museum.  A few more pictures before we move on:

Next door to the Cooter Museum is the Willie Nelson Souvenir Shop.  We took a quick walk through there, and they did have some sort of "pay to play" museum in the back but we did not go in.

Next stop is south of the Gaylord, south of the Grand Ole Opry.  In the south end of the Opry Mills mall is a little shop called Smith Creek Moonshine, offering free tastings.  Well, OK, twist my arm.  

Free tasting indeed!  Many different flavors of moonshine and I did not try one that I did not like!  So I had to ask the question, exactly what is "moonshine".  It is actually whiskey that is not aged.  Bourbon whiskey gets it's flavor from the oak casks in that it is aged.  Moonshine is distilled, unaged alcohol and the Smith Creek Moonshine is externally flavored.  So you could sample as many as they offered.  Their moonshine is sold in the iconic Mason jar.   and we selected coffee, caramel, cinnamon, apple pie, lemon-lime.  Doreen also bought some chocolate/banana/moonshine peanut butter. They gave us free shot glasses and a discount on the multiple flavor purchase.  We are headed for the Alliance RV owner's rally in August in Elkhart Indiana and if there is any moonshine left (there will be plenty left!), we will share with our Alliance FamAlly!