Bootleggin’ with B. Floyd
I have a few go-to movies when I need a complete break from reality. Near the top of the list is Smokey and the Bandit. If you live south of the Mason-Dixon line, you get it—and if you’re north of it, as I’ve heard from many New Englanders, you probably don’t. I just love it.
The last scene was filmed a few miles from where we lived in high school. In fact, many a time I tore ass down GA-400, north of 100 mph, thinking I was in the Bandit’s Trans Am with Sheriff Buford T. Justice on my tail.
But more than that, it’s the freedom that the Bandit and Snowman had that I fawn over. The idea that two buddies can spontaneously hit the road for a grand adventure is right up my alley.
On top of that, I love ’70s movies, and this one transports me to a time when beer cans had pull-tabs and a CB radio was the height of technology—before an entire nation went and lit its pants on fire with technologies nobody wanted or asked for.
I didn’t mind balancing a checkbook or using a gas station map, and I prefer using change in parking meters. As much as I enjoy having access to every song ever recorded for ten bucks a month, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if we went back to CDs. Life without passwords was sooo much better.
I’d like nothing more than to forget about all of that and hop in a souped-up hot rod, running shotgun for my buddy B. Floyd, bootlegging Coors across state lines.
As much as I like the Bandit’s ’77 Trans Am, I’d prefer a 1970 Plymouth Superbird with a rear wing and a 426 Hemi, in Vitamin C Orange—but I’d replace the Road Runner’s “Tweet, Tweet” horn with one that plays Dixie.
Give us 28 hours, with B. Floyd driving his granddaddy’s eighteen-wheeler, and we’ll get from Atlanta to Texarkana and back with 400 cases of beer—just tell me where to sign.
All this talk about hauling ass through the Southland got me thinking—I need to seriously consider getting into the moonshine business. And ol’ B. Floyd is gonna be my partner.
Between the two of us, I’m sure we could make a sour mash that’ll make your privates pucker. I’m talking 180-proof mountain dew in glass jugs. The kind of stuff that makes you go blind. We’d name it Floyd’s Fire Water.
We’ll set up a still in the backwoods of North Georgia—where wisteria, the color of grape jelly, hangs from oaks; where trout streams cascade over boulders the size of VW Bugs; and where the smell of sunburnt pine needles fills the air. Most importantly, Johnny Law would need a helicopter to spot us and a tank to find us.
We’ll spend two weeks in the woods, away from every other moron who makes life a chore—including, but not limited to, assholes who back into parking spaces and cyclists who can’t top eight miles an hour, even though they’re wearing spandex head to toe.
Just two friends, a tent, a Coleman stove, and enough bacon and Budweiser for two weeks. And lots of tobacco—from cartons of Winstons to bags of Red Man and a box of cigars.
Our days would look like this:
6:30 a.m. – Wake up to the sun rising
6:45 a.m. – Coffee and cigarettes in lawn chairs next to the river
7:15 a.m. – Breakfast: pancakes, bacon, coffee. Listen to a Marty Robbins cassette tape
8:00 a.m. – Fire up the still, stir in cracked corn, add sugar
12:00 p.m. – Lunch: hot dogs, Cokes, potato chips, smoke pipes
1:00 p.m. – Tend to the product, read a paperback or old Playboys from B. Floyd’s collection
2:00 p.m. – Argue over who’s the best pitcher: Smoltz, Glavine, or Maddux
2:30 p.m. – Siesta
5:00 p.m. – Quittin’ time
6:00 p.m. – Dinner: ribeyes, potatoes, Budweiser
6:30 p.m. – Build campfire
6:45 p.m. – After-dinner cigars around the fire. Listen to a Lynyrd Skynyrd cassette tape
7:30 p.m. – Take a bath in the river
8:00 p.m. – Reminisce about the trouble we used to get into, laugh until our jaws hurt
10:00 p.m. – Get in sleeping bags, put earplugs in, and snore like chainsaws
Yeah, I definitely need to look into this bootlegger thing. I figure we could make enough scratch for B. Floyd to pay his hunting club dues and fill a garage with every toy a good old boy could dream of. And I could live part-time at The Lodge at Sea Island when I wasn’t camping in the North Georgia mountains.
But first, we’d run into a charismatic redneck in overalls named Little George—even though he weighs 330 pounds—who’d bet we couldn’t move our hooch across state lines to New Orleans and back in 18 hours.
B. Floyd en route to New Orleans
In no time, we’d be heading west—me in my Superbird, on the lookout for a pretty girl (preferably a brunette), and B. Floyd in a matching orange Peterbilt with smoke stacks and his hunting dog, Cricket.
Oh, the adventures we’d have! I’m gonna bring this up next time B. Floyd and I hang out—which will probably be in the bar in his basement, where a Support Your Local Stripper bumper sticker is proudly affixed to his beer fridge.
Maybe this will be our retirement plan. Instead of playing shuffleboard at Del Boca Vista, Phase III, we’ll be bootleggers with CBs, living part-time in the woods, in search of a six-pack with pull-tabs.
*Composed, Edited, and Published in Atlanta, GA
