The Godfather of Hazzard County

Sorrell Booke
Jan. 4, 1930 - Feb. 11, 1994

Okay. Let's see if I can get through this after two Seagram's Black Cherry Fizzes. I must admit the high blood pressure medicine has made me a lightweight when it comes to alcohol consumption, and I'd no doubt laugh out loud at even the Coy and Vance episodes of Dukes of Hazzard at this point.

So...Boss Hogg. Childhood friend and former moonshine-running associate of Uncle Jesse, now sworn to the destruction of all things Duke. From his headquarters at The Boar's Nest, he runs Hazzard county with an iron fist, or an iron boot...or an iron something. Point is, he's a badass. Big cigar, big white hat, owns a big gas-guzzling Cadillac convertible. He's a man of means, a man with a lot of juice.

So why didn't he just have them killed? It would just seem logical. He wanted the Dukes' land so bad, he could have them all shot and buried. No problem at all. What's up with that? Accidents happen. Farms burn. '69 Dodge Chargers explode. Happens every day. Sheriff Roscoe and Deputy Cletus could take care of the whole thing. Enos might not like it, but he would keep his mouth shut.

Why wasn't there ever an episode where Boss Hogg's voice came screaming from the office of the Boar's Nest, "I want Jesse Duke dead! I want his family dead! I want that farm burned to the ground!"?

But nobody died in Hazzard County, except of completely natural causes. I always wondered why, in the hundreds of accidents over all the seasons of the show, nobody was ever even injured. Never made sense to me...but then again, I was a kid.

Watching Dukes of Hazzard was a big part of my weekend ritual in the late '70s and early '80s. Along with The Muppet Show and The Incredible Hulk (in that order), it made my Friday night. Did I mention I was 10?

Sorrell Booke had a long, long career in television and the movies. He was best known as Boss Hogg, though...and in his later years he made the most of it. You might be surprised to know that he studied at Yale and Columbia University and mastered five languages. During the Korean War, he worked in counter-intelligence. Seriously.

The most shocking thing I learned about Boss Hogg was that he was not seriously overweight. He wore a fat suit that made him look larger.

Probably also slowed him down, or surely he would have caught those Duke boys. And surely would have had them killed, as they long deserved.