All right! Now that ya'll have heard from the local riff-raff, I think it's about time I told you how things really work around here.

First off, let me introduce myself. My name's Lawrence, and I'm the Law around here. See that shield on my door? That says so! What? Yeah, I know it says Hazzard County Sheriff, but that don't make no difference - sheriff and law are the same thing, right? Bunch of smart-alecks! Oughta let Rosco cuff ya and stuff ya for irritating an officer! What do ya mean I ain't an officer? I'm the sheriff's car, ain't I? I got a badge right here, ain't I? Yeah, I know it's painted on - how else are you gonna put a badge on a car? I don't wear shirts, ya know! Now, do ya'll want to hear about the sheriff's department or not? No respect for the law anymore!

As I was saying, folks around here call me Law. I'm so well known that I even hear newcomers saying, "Here comes the Law," when I pull up! Ain't many folks can say everybody knows their name as soon as they meet them. That hotshot General Lee can't say that! Most people meeting him for the first time say things like, "What kind of car is that?" Listen, I hear y'all muttering over there. They ain't talking about Rosco! You humans think you're the only ones that matter! I bet y'all didn't give General this much trouble with his story.

All right, if you're so all fired interested in the humans, let's talk about the humans I work with! First off, there's Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane. He's my partner and a lot like me. We both love our jobs - police work is our lives! We both love hot pursuit - and we're experts at it!

Yes, I know General Lee and the Duke boys get away from us a lot, but, you see, there's an explanation for that. General cheats! That's right, you heard me - all those fancy jumps and all. I could do that, but, as an officer of the law, I'm sworn to serve and protect. What if Rosco or some innocent bystander got hurt because I insisted on copying General? Yes, I know, I've made a few jumps myself, but that's just 'cause Rosco refused to give up. He was afraid we would lose them if we went around, so he insisted on jumping. You notice, though, that I always try to aim for something soft like water, just in case we missed. Yes, I know, that tree we landed in wasn't real soft, but Rosco jerked my wheel just as we took off. You can't exactly change directions in midair, you know. Even General has to have something solid under his wheels before he can direct his jumps!

No, I ain't jealous of General Lee! Who said that? He just shows off more than the rest of us, and his flashier paint job catches your attention faster. Humans always seem to notice flashier things first. Besides, he breaks the law all the time - speeding around like that - how could I be jealous of that? I done told you, police work is my life!

Getting back to Rosco, though, I know y'all probably figure you know all there is to know about him and the rest of the police force, don't you? Well, I'm here to tell you that you don't! Everybody figures that Rosco has always been for sale, but there was a time when he was the best lawman around. No, not just the best Boss Hogg's money could buy! He couldn't be bought back then. (Now, I ain't quite old enough to remember all this myself. I'm going by what Rosco's old car, Lucille, told me before she retired, so you've got to forgive me if I get things mixed up a mite.)

Boss hated it back when Rosco was completely honest! He had to sneak around with all his schemes and such - and make sure any frame-ups or double-crosses were iron-clad - but he couldn't fire Rosco without making Lulu mad. That's why he made sure Rosco's pension got taken off the budget. He figured that either Rosco would quit and find a better paying job, or, if Rosco got broke enough, he could corrupt Rosco with a couple of small kickbacks. It was a win-win situation - either he brought in a new sheriff already on his payroll, or he added his current one to his payroll. Either way, he no longer had to sneak and hide.

Of course, Rosco balked at the idea of crooked schemes at first. You don't spend twenty years upholding the law just to jump straight into a life of crime - however minor your part is - at the first chance you get! Then, Momma Coltrane got real bad sick. I don't know exactly what was wrong with her - cars don't pay a whole bunch of attention to human diseases - but she spent almost a month in the hospital. Lulu and Hortense helped, of course, but Rosco felt like he should pay most of the medical bills himself, since he lived with her and all.

It took just about all of his savings to keep the house after all the bills was paid. He never told his sisters or his momma how close him and Momma come to losing everything - too much pride, I guess. He did make the mistake of telling Boss, though. Boss ain't never been called a slouch when it comes to seeing opportunities, and he pounced on this one like a chicken on a June bug.

It just so happened that Boss had a load of shine ready to go to his distributors up in Tennessee. The only problem was, those distributors didn't know they was his distributors, yet. You see, they had the annoying habit of buying from Jesse Duke - just because he made better quality shine and had lower prices! I know - the nerve of some people! Anyhow, Boss come up with a plan that didn't seem quite so bad to Rosco, and it ended up paying enough to finish off the last of the medical bills.

Old Boss was slick about the whole thing, let me tell you! He didn't tell Rosco exactly why he wanted to stop the Dukes from making their delivery. He just pointed out to Rosco that making, selling, and delivering shine are all against the law, and that meant that them Dukes were breaking the law. Of course, he conveniently left out his own trucks, ready to roll with the same product. When Rosco pointed out that half the county made their living by making and running shine, Boss pulled out the big guns. He told Rosco that there was a reward being offered for runners - but especially for anyone that caught the Dukes, since their shipments were always big and they never got caught - fifty percent of fifty percent of fifty percent of the value of the shine. True, that's only about twelve percent, but Rosco never was real good at percentages, so it sounded like a lot more to him. (Boss, of course, gave Rosco the "reward" out of his own sales - and established their typical split to this day.)

Lucy said that they had a time and a half just finding Bo and Luke, much less catching them! By the time they did get close to the boys, they was almost to the Tennessee line, and Rosco wasn't about to call in back-up. He was afraid he would have to share the "reward!" According to Lucy, if the back tire hadn't blown on poor Sophia, an old car the boys had borrowed from Cooter, she would never have caught them. (For those of you who were wondering, that's when the Duke boys ended up on probation.)

Boss was so happy - he got the shine contract, wouldn't have to compete with Jesse for new customers, and got two convenient targets to frame for his future schemes all in one fell swoop - that he did something unheard of. He increased Rosco's share from thirty dollars to sixty dollars - the exact amount still owed on Momma Coltrane's hospital bill!

Of course, this "bending" of the law so that it only applied to certain people was the start of Rosco's downward slide. It wasn't long before Boss quit rationalizing those schemes of his for Rosco. I guess it's true what they say. Once you get comfortable breaking little rules, it's an easy step up to the bigger ones. Now, not only does Boss not hide his plans from Rosco, normally, but Rosco is usually involved from the beginning.

Now, all this don't make Rosco a bad person, or even a really bad police officer. If there's a young'un or an animal in any kind of trouble, Rosco's always first in line to help. If anybody, other than Boss, tries to bring any kind of crime into our county, we run them out. (Sometimes with help from the Dukes, but they're usually more of a nuisance than anything else - always lying to us with their phony stories that end up being true and bothering the tourists!)

The third part of our little trio - and proof that Rosco ain't no crook, thank you very much! - is Rosco's dog Flash. She's been trained at a real police dog academy to sniff out crooks. You've never known her to so much as really bark at Rosco, have you? Of course not - she loves him! - so he can't be a crook, can he?

Flash is a very good dog - she's never gotten sick or had an accident in me, which is saying something with some of the situations we've gotten into. Plus, she won't let other animals "mark" me when she's around, neither. I ain't sure how much she understands when I talk to her, but she knows that I hate it when dogs "mark" me - I ain't no tree, you know!

She's real smart, too. Whenever our speeds get too high, or we're about to jump, she goes and puts on her seatbelt! That's another reason I'm careful about my jumps. If anything ever happened to Flash because of me, I would be ready for the crusher. Of course, Rosco would probably put me in it himself, but I wouldn't care - I would deserve it.

I really think Flash is the smartest deputy Rosco's got - and she works cheap, just a box of doggy num-nums, and she's happy. I mean, really, look at the other two. Like Rosco says, Enos is a first-rate dipstick, and Cletus is so bad that even the dipsticks call him a dipstick!

Plus, Enos and Cletus are honest! That ain't no way to run a police department - running around being completely honest all the time! One good thing, though, they do follow orders. The bad thing is that, if they can, they warn the Dukes first. Possum, their car, has told me before how far they have gone in their warnings.

Enos has gone over to the Duke farm on his lunch break and just flat out told the boys what was going on. He said that his lunch break was his own time, and Boss and Rosco couldn't tell him what to do on his own time. Cletus, not wanting to be disloyal to his Cousin Boss or his superior officer, has even resorted to charades to warn those reprobates! Enos and Cletus both came back to work and followed orders to chase and try to apprehend the Dukes, but still - no sense of loyalty to their job! And, just as bad, Enos and Cletus have both counted to ten before letting Rosco know that the Duke have escaped, just to give them a little bit of a head start.

I asked Possum why she didn't try to stop them, and do you know what she said? She didn't see anything wrong with it! She thought it was the best way for Enos and Cletus to "be loyal to their friends and their jobs." What a bunch of hooey! Next she'll be telling me that I'm wrong for helping Rosco catch the Dukes- and we do catch them, a lot more than Enos and Cletus do. Just goes to show, if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself.

One good thing about Rosco's "monkey see, monkey do" philosophy on chasing the Dukes, I get to spend a lot of time over at Cooter's garage. What? No, I don't want to be lazy, you meadow muffin! It's just that the company is better there than it is over at the courthouse - and I ain't talking about Cooter, neither! I'm talking about the lovely Miss Beulah. What do you mean, "Who's she?" You can't tell me you ain't noticed her - she's only the most beautiful tow truck in all of Georgia!

Me and Beulah get to spend a lot of time together - when she's pulling me out of the pond, when she's towing me back to the garage, when she's pulling me out of ditches - quality time! Yes, I know it's her job to come pull cars out of bad spots - that's why she's called a tow truck - but, she's told me herself that she always enjoys coming to get me. No, not just because it means that General got away! Yes, she and General are friends, but she enjoys coming to get me so we can visit. I do have friends of my own, you know! What do you mean, name one? I can name three - Beulah, Possum, and Louise! Louise is Boss Hogg's Cadillac. She's just about as smart as Boss, too - But she don't like people to talk about her, so I'll just let her tell you her own story.

Getting back to Beulah, I tell you, she knows every car in this county - and has opinions about everything. She was the one who introduce me to General. I was over at the garage to get my paint job done so I could be an honest to goodness police car. I was fresh off the assembly line and full of big ideas about what police work would be like. I didn't like civilians like them Dukes poking around inside me to see how big my engine is, neither! Cooter's different, he's a mechanic - it's kind of like going to a doctor for y'all, you expect a bit of poking. Some things should be just between a car, his person, and his mechanic, though - just not anybody else's business. Well, once those nosy boys moved off a ways, Beulah and General pulled up a little so we could all talk.

I guess I might have been a little stand-offish back then, but, you've gotta remember, Lucille and Louise had been telling me all kinds of stories about the Dukes - and none of them were real nice from a police point-of-view. I knew General Lee was their car, and I didn't really want to associate with him. It don't look good for police to associate with known criminals, you see.

Beulah was real patient, though. She explained to me that General was new to his family, too. Of course, she conveniently forgot to mention what he had been involved in before he came to Hazzard - just that he hadn't been with the Dukes long enough for their crimes to have rubbed off on him yet. I noticed that she winked one of her headlights when she said it, but I figured that it was just because Cooter and the Dukes were friends, so she didn't notice their crimes as much. We all talked for a while after that, and I got to feeling a bit better about General and our places in Hazzard.

Then, I went back to the courthouse where Louise was telling Possum how things work around here. (Me and Possum came in together - Enos had just been hired as a deputy, so he had to have a car, an Lucille was finding it harder and harder to bounce back after all those "horrendous crashes," so Boss got us both.) According to Louise, there are two types of cars that must never associate, except through work - the police and the riff-raff. The General and his family, of course, are the riff-raff. She told us all about General's past. Plus, just as bad, General once even splashed mud all over her pretty white paint job - just thirty minutes after she had been washed! He said he was sorry, of course - as he sped off - but Louise swore she heard laughing. I ask you, what kind of car does something like that? Louise is a county commissioner's car - she's even more important than I am. All those important people that come to see Boss see Louise, too, as a representative of our cars. Even more important, their cars see her. We can't have them going back and telling their friends that we're so backwards that even our best car isn't kept clean! Disgraceful!

Personally, though, in spite of everything, I ain't got nothing against General Lee. I love to chase him, and a lot of the time we ain't really serious. I just wish he didn't take so many chances with his people. You humans can't just go to the garage and get new shocks or doors to get you back on the road again, you know.

Oops, gotta go - duty calls! I see you, you orange meadow muffin! Don't think you're getting away that easy! Come on Rosco! Police work is my life!!