Me as a Riverview Middle School-aged kid watching Smokey and the Bandit for the first time: “This is the greatest movie ever made.”

Me as a grownup, proudly showing my wife Smokey and the Bandit for her first time: “This is the greatest movie ever made.”

I can’t vouch for others, but if I knew a genie or someone who owned a time machine, I’d go back to 1977. So much of my cultural identity was forged in that year, despite the minor technicality of not yet being born. Just off the top of my head, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won their first game, Margaritaville was released by Jimmy Buffett, the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash happened, and Elvis Presley (allegedly) died. Though that latter pair of tragic events continues to be mourned by Southrons, there is an especially pleasant memory that will forever be cherished by those same folk in an effort to balance the good and the bad: Smokey and the Bandit premiered on May 19, 1977.

I will explain why Caroline Countians should care towards the end of the column, but in the meantime, let me justify my lifelong fascination. Naturally, Burt Reynolds as Bo Darville put it best as he was trying to convince his partner in crime, country singer Jerry Reed, aka a tractor trailer driver named Snowman, to accept the challenge that is the premise for the entire film: “For the good old American life — for the money, for the glory, and for the fun…mostly for the money.”

To be clear, I have made very little off of any travel quest I have ever written about in the Caroline Review or anywhere else. Some people drink, some people smoke, and some people are addicted to tattoos, but as for me, my disposable income goes toward road trips. With that said, my desire to see all the national parks, visit all the counties, and so on defines who I am and gives me a peace that I did not have before starting these journeys back in 2006. I suppose the first of two beagles I adopted that year and my wife/toddler grant me some degree of serenity that I did not know existed prior to their arrival in my life as well.

So here is what I was trying to say through the above quote before I interrupted myself: from the very first time I saw Smokey and the Bandit, I thought to myself: “This is the America I want.” I wasn’t of driving age yet, but racing from Atlanta to Texarkana and back seemed like an incredibly satisfying road trip. Quite frankly, to this day any road trip sounds like a fun one to me, but add in the danger and adventure of a high-speed chase and the high-stakes gamble of attempting to deliver 400 cases of bootlegged Texas Coors beer to a stock car event in Georgia as the terms of a bet is the most Southern, if not most American, thing you’ll ever experience on film. Disregard the entire history of the Academy Awards.

I wanted in. So to this day, if we are traveling, whatever roadside diner we stop to eat at is immediately a “choke and puke” to me no matter the quality. Channeling my inner Buford T. Justice, I warn my students in the following way when going over certain classroom rules: “You can think about it…but don’t do it.” I then hope they never google the context of that line. I announce to people in professional historian circles that “when you tell somebody something, it depends on what part of the country you’re standing in as to just how dumb you are” to casually see if they recognize the quote but also to coyly ascertain if they understand just how true that colloquialism is. I got a hound just like the dog Fred that accompanies Snowman throughout the film. I no-showed a family birthday party so I could attend a Jerry Reed concert at Sailwinds in Cambridge. I could go on all day but I only have so much space; I believe it is abundantly clear that I identify as a Bandit and therefore my pronouns are 10-4/Good Buddy. Maybe Denton will permit me to hold my own festival this spring, but more on that idea a little later.

My attempt at glory materialized in 2006. I was still in graduate school, teaching six classes at the top-rated college prep institution in Maryland, coaching their Model United Nations team to victory, training my puppy on how to be a good dog, and more, so I logistically had not yet been able to pursue any marathon cross-country travels. Milwaukee was as far west as I had been, and quite frankly, that entire state (with the exception of Wisconsin cheese) was wholly unremarkable. The stars aligned, however, that December: Christmas fell in such a way that it gave school employees the maximum number of days possible for the holiday break.

I decided, rather immediately after receiving the 2006-2007 work calendar, that I was going to retrace the route depicted in Smokey and the Bandit. Sort of. In the interests of full disclosure, technically that feat is impossible to accomplish for two reasons: for starters, though I treat the movie as a documentary depicting an ideal Southern lifestyle, in actuality the film is a work of [gasp!] fiction and was filmed almost in its entirety outside of Atlanta. Secondly, the Interstate Highway System has greatly expanded since 1977, making the route from Georgia to Texas and back far different than the country roads and two-lane blacktops that would have been used by the Bandit and Snowman.

Nevertheless I persisted, finding myself in Texarkana just after Christmas in late 2006. I won’t bore you with the circumstances and details of the drive there since the film does not, and after all, the theme song for the movie is “Eastbound and Down” and not west. I criss-crossed the city (this is before smartphones) until I found a Coors distributorship; so as to not incriminate myself, I decline to offer any information about the quantity of beer bottles I may have requisitioned while there, but I do want to acknowledge I was not driving a tractor trailer so 400 cases simply would not fit in my passenger vehicle.

If you were today years old when you realized the place name Texarkana is a combination of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, that’s okay. The nomenclature allowed me to justify the path I cut through the southwest corner of the Razorback State, ducking Buford T. Justice all the while, to make my first ever visit to Louisiana. Would Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed have gone that way? I have seen, believe it or not, serious online studies published by film and highway experts suggesting three possible 1977 routes that would have logistically allowed the stars of the movie to do “what they say can’t be done” (1800 miles in 28 hours) and this is one. And hey, any excuse to go to New Orleans is a valid one. The French Quarter was exciting and beautiful, even in the post-Katrina rebuilding phase; my shrimp po-boy was delicious. I went back in 2009 twice, 2015, and 2020 with plans to live that life as often as possible in the future.

The journey then took me into Mississippi. I had been there before to see Civil War-related national park units such as Shiloh National Military Park and Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield, so I was able to make good time with few stops. Not encumbered by a time-sensitive bet with Big Enos Burdette, I was able to actually get out of the car and rest. I stayed that night in Meridian, which normally would be uneventful but in this instance allows me to share a brief anecdote that was awkward back then but not so much now: the hotel desk clerk was highly suspicious of why I, as a twenty-something man, would be checking in to the hotel with, get this, a woman. It didn’t matter to the battle-axe that we were married or that I was a frequent and literally card-carrying Hilton Honors guest; we must have been up to no good. I have passed through that town at least three times since but have never again stayed at the same hotel. I won’t hold that incident against the rest of the otherwise fine establishment proprietors of Meridian, however; after all, they did see fit to open both a Cici’s Pizza Buffet and a Buffalo Wild Wings there.

Alabama was a bit more memorable, but again in unforeseen ways. I paid my respects to Bear Bryant and Forrest Gump at the college football stadium in Tuscaloosa before moving on to Birmingham. East of that city, true to the action of Smokey and the Bandit, I saw a car being pursued by a police vehicle lose control, spin off the road, and flip several times. He wasn’t hurt, but unlike the movie, the trooper apprehended that particular bandit.

We made our return to the Peach State on New Year’s Eve without further incident, though the story does not end then or there. After a ten-year intermission of sorts, I found myself back again in 2017. That year, of course, marked the 40th anniversary of the movie release. The town where most of the filming took place, Jonesboro, Georgia, wanted to celebrate. I couldn’t miss that, especially when it was announced that none other than Burt Reynolds himself would be the guest of honor. Imagine the joy in my heart as I spent several days participating in on-site re-enactments of Smokey and the Bandit scenes, watching stuntmen re-create iconic jumps, posing for pictures with various cars and trucks from the movie, greeting basset hounds, and anything else one who is familiar with the movie might expect. What was improbable and unexpected, however, was being picked at random to ask a question of Burt on stage! If our Caroline County squad beating all the Easton teams to win the Talbot Kickball League championship in 2015 was the greatest day of my life, then this evening was a close second.

I had to shoehorn in something about Caroline County to make my transition to this month’s local tourism suggestion. Seeing how resident thespians took me up on my published proposal to revisit a nineteenth-century duel in Marydel and even gave a character my last name in their April stage production script, I know area movers and shakers heed my sagacious words. So here goes: Burt Reynolds made a bunch of memorable films in his storied career, and no, we are not going to bring back Miss Mona’s Chicken Ranch despite the preponderance of broiler houses around here. There were two Bandit sequels and two Cannonball Run movies that continued to capitalize on the formula that worked so well in 1977, so let’s create our own tribute event — a Caroline Run, if you will. Since many of Burt’s commercially successful projects were highway or destination-oriented, let’s put our many historic locations on display. Create a “road race” (or at least a scavenger hunt) with stops in each town. Contestants would have to answer questions and take selfies at sites of interest, which might also include a restaurant or two in order to work in additional local stakeholders.

What would the winner receive? A party featuring 400 cases of our sponsor’s finest, of course.