Cooter Was Real America

Ben Jones died Sunday in his favorite chair, waiting for the Braves to come on and, as his wife Alma put it, “whoop the Yankees.” He was 84. A massive heart attack took him at home in Virginia, and I don’t mind telling you I had to sit down when I read the news in my group chat.

Here’s the thing about Ben Jones. The man grew up in a railroad section house in Portsmouth without electricity or indoor plumbing. His daddy worked the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. He started “drinking and drifting” at sixteen, straightened himself out, put himself through school, became a television star, and then got himself elected to the United States Congress. Two terms. Georgia’s 4th district, 1989 to 1993. A Democrat, which I know some of my friends will hold against him, but the man was a Democrat back when Democrats still knew which bathroom to use and didn’t think the American flag was a dog whistle.

The Tony Awards on YouTube (BY) via wikimedia

He played Cooter Davenport on The Dukes of Hazzard for all seven seasons. Cooter ran the garage across from the sheriff’s station and kept an eye on things for the Duke boys. He was an honorary Duke. He was the guy you called when your truck broke down and you needed somebody who wouldn’t charge you an arm and a leg and would probably throw in a cold drink while he was at it. That’s who Ben Jones was on screen, and from everything I can tell, that’s who he was off screen too.

Now I know what the pearl-clutchers in the media want to talk about. They want to talk about the General Lee and that flag on the roof. They’ve been trying to cancel that show for years, pulling it off streaming, acting like a car with a painted roof is the reason this country has problems. Meanwhile the same people who want Dukes of Hazzard memory-holed will put their kids in front of whatever garbage Netflix is pumping out this week, and I promise you it ain’t family-friendly comedy about cousins outsmarting a corrupt sheriff.

Here’s a detail that made me smile. In the 1997 reunion movie, they wrote it so Cooter had become a congressman. Art imitating life, because Ben Jones had already done it for real. He beat a Republican incumbent named Pat Swindall to win that seat. A mechanic from a television show walked into the People’s House and started voting on laws. Tell me that’s not the most American thing you’ve ever heard.

Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz / Pexels

And here’s what I keep thinking about. A man with that background, that story, that kind of grit? Washington chewed him up in four years and spit him out. He served two terms and then got redistricted out. The bureaucrats gerrymandered him right back to private life. They always do that to the ones who actually came from somewhere. You can’t have a guy in Congress who knows what it’s like to live without indoor plumbing. He might ask too many questions about where the money goes.

Ben Jones died watching baseball in his own chair, in his own home, with his wife nearby. That’s a good death. That’s a peaceful death. And I think about my own daddy, who would have loved nothing more than to go out the same way, and I think about how many people in this country still recognize themselves in a show about family, loyalty, and a fast car with a loud horn.

Redneck Country Club (BY) via wikimedia

They don’t make them like Cooter anymore. They don’t make shows like that anymore. And they sure don’t make congressmen like that anymore.

Rest easy, Ben. The Braves are on.