I’m eastbound and I’m down and out

Scott Hollifield
Published: September 5, 2008

Here’s how I figured it would happen: I’m sitting in a greasy spoon off some steaming Georgia blacktop, flirting with a red-headed waitress and waiting on a diablo sandwich and a Dr. Pepper, when in
walks none other than Jerry Reed.

He shakes off the road dust, orders a couple of burgers for his flop-eared dog outside in the big rig, glances at the bikers in the corner booths, then looks me straight in the eye.

“Son,” he says, “I’m needing somebody to help me write a hit record as well as haul a truckload of bootleg beer up from Texas while evading the po-lice and trading wisecracks on the CB. You up for the
job?”

And I say, “Hoss, that’s a big 10-4.”

Alas, it will never happen. Jerry Reed died Aug. 31 from complications of emphysema. He was 71. And he was one of my lifelong pop culture heroes, projecting the image of a good-ol’-boy Renaissance
man: guitar picker, songwriter, movie actor, fishing buddy to the stars.

Reed was already in pretty high cotton — Elvis had recorded two of his songs, “Guitar Man” and “U.S. Male” — by the time he unleashed “Amos Moses” on my 6-year-old ears. It cut through the static of
a dime-store transistor radio and filled my young head with visions of a Cajun wildman fighting alligators in the bayous 45 minutes east of Thibodeaux, La., an exotic locale for a mountain young ‘un with
red-clay dirt between his toes.

I didn’t know at the time that Reed was an inspiration to serious guitar players, having developed his own finger-picking style known as “the claw.”

All I knew was that one-armed Amos Moses, named after a man of the cloth, would knock gators in the head with a stump and I never tired of hearing about it. (Note to some animal-rights activists who
have contacted me about previous columns: In no way am I endorsing the act of striking an alligator or other reptile in the head with a stump or stump-like object. But, in defense of the actions of the
aforementioned Mr. Moses, he was, as the song states, used as gator bait by his daddy and later had his left arm bitten off “clean up to the elbow.”)

Two years and several hits later, Reed showed up — in cartoon form — on “The New Scooby-Doo Movies,” singing “Pretty Mary Sunlite” as the gang searched for his stolen guitar. For an 8-year-old with a
stack of Jerry Reed 45s and a brand new second-hand hi-fi, it was nirvana — Scooby and Jerry framed in our GE black-and-white console, big as life on the small screen.

Perhaps bitten by the acting bug or given some good advice by Scooby’s agent, Reed then embarked on a successful Hollywood career, with his crowning achievement being, in my view, his portrayal of
Cledus “Snowman” Snow (and no, as he tells an operator, he is not Hank Snow’s brother) in “Smokey and the Bandit,” a movie I watch every time it comes on TV, which actually eats up about 45 percent
of my life.

Sure, it’s not great. It’s silly at times and poorly edited and the cuss-free sanitized TV version has some bizarre dubbing, but it features two of my favorite performances — Jackie Gleason’s scene-
chewing turn as the foul-mouthed Buford T. Justice and Jerry Reed’s wisecracking throttle jockey the Snowman. And a dog named Fred. And lot’s of car crashes. And the song “Eastbound and Down.”
And two characters named Enos.

Did I say it wasn’t great? Right, it’s not great, it’s freakin’ awesome.

When I was 14 and “Smokey and the Bandit” played for countless weeks at the twin cinema on the five-lane, I wanted to smoke the tires on a Trans-Am, outsmart Sheriff Justice, take my hat off for Sally
Field’s Frog and hang out with the Snowman.

Nearly 30 years later, I still do. But it looks like I missed my chance.

Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C. Contact him at P.O. Box 610, Marion, N.C. 28752 or e-mail .