Put up your Dukes!

For good reason, it took a long time to question the plausibility of Bo and Luke Duke ripping it up in the General Lee on the dusty back roads of Hazzard County. But of course you can't be a mature American adult nowadays without understanding that had these two strapping fictional heroes in the "Dukes of Hazzard" lived the life they portrayed on television, they would quickly have:

1. died

2. been charged with no less then 1,000 counts of attempted vehicular homicide and fleeing the scene of a traffic stop

3. needed a full-time attorney, a cheap one, definitely a family friend with whom they could barter, maybe make payments in the form of chicken eggs and ham hocks. ...

I say for "good reason" because my generation (born before the mid-1970s) lived at the very tail end of American history when you could engage in innocent unruliness in plain sight without:

1. being arrested

2. being diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder

3. being medicated

You see, for boys like us in our footed pajamas watching the "Dukes of Hazzard" on a Friday night in the early 1980s — standing up the whole time because we couldn't contain ourselves — the Duke boys were our progenitors, their rebellion our birthright, despite the obvious difference in the details, among them being:

1. the Duke boys had to ford water bodies by going airborne, propelled by Hemi-power and a Dixie horn; we lived in a town with bridges.

2. they had Daisy Duke; we didn't have Daisy Duke — no, I would have remembered.

Still, nothing they did seemed too far-fetched for our not-too-far-away future; rather, it seemed close at hand. We already were a wily species, us boys, evidenced by the fact we:

1. jumped high, swam deep, peddled fast, and tried not to blink

2. knew where to hide

3. knew that as long as we didn't hurt anyone, our finest impulses were not to be slaughtered by arbitrary rules

4. knew when to button up and shut up.

This was all:

1. before America became so tidy, so mighty, so sterile

2. when the adventures in children's books were had by children rather than penguins

3. when you were told by your parents to come home when the streetlights came on — a confusing decree for those without streetlights.

We had zero understanding of private property. The shortest distance between two lines typically involved hopping the fences of Mr. Carey or Mr. Synnott or the Platts, and they never once complained.

Like the Duke boys, we strived to be chased by the cops because:

1. Boys need adrenaline.

2. We knew the cops.

3. They wouldn't tell our parents.

4. They did similar things when they were kids and could speak with a kindhearted authority about how stupid these things were.

5. They would conclude their lecture with: "And next time, run faster."

6. Their faces didn't appear to be built upon tempered-steel jaw lines.

7. They gave wide berth to free-range childhood.

And of course many of the things we did were stupid, such as:

1. lining empty soda cans across the main road

2. throwing acorns at the freight train

3. claiming a house under construction as our own monkey bars

4. climbing neighbors' roofs

5. blowing up pickle buckets with M-80s

6. hitchhiking

7. bumper hopping

8. pool hopping

9. inspired by Evel Knievel, making bike jumps out of plywood and cinderblocks and competing for how many neighborhood kids we could line up like cordwood and jump.

Fun? Yes. Surely.

Our parents fed us, scolded us, took us to church, made us do our homework and chores, and insisted we never behave like jerks. Short of a hurricane, they insisted we be outdoors and they pretty much stayed out of our business. They certainly didn't cart us around all year long to organized sports as if they were training future Olympians.

Bones were broken. Occasionally there were fistfights. But no one grew up to become murderers or bank robbers. This is how childhood used to be. Odd, isn't it? While statistics indicate violent crime in America has steeply declined in the past 30 years and crimes against children haven't much budged from the time we were kids, we parents have become inexplicably protective of our young, demanding they stay within our lines of sight.

It's been 30 years since my Friday evenings had me cheering for the Duke boys against nosy lawmen and small-town corruption, then waking up Saturday mornings to forage for fun in feral America. Hazzard County isn't the ideal by any stretch. But its appeal was in its heroes' primal hooting — once as natural to our world as that of the barn owl.

To slightly adjust the words of Saul Bellow, "Children have to dream, and dreaming in America is no cinch."

Too many laws. Too many cops. Too many attorneys. Too much order. Too many consequences.

At what point does all this policing add up to a police state?

Pity the safe children.