Life
According to the film, Uncle Jesse was a Korean War veteran. The narrator indicated that Jesse had only been to two places in his life: Hazzard County and Korea, and believed that was "one place too many."
A flashback episode, which featured the shows actors portraying their own ancestors post-Civil War, had him mentioning the clan had come to America in the 1700s and had resided there ever since. Since the early 18th century, up until the late 1970s, the Duke family had a family tradition of making what was commonly known in Hazzard County as "The finest shine this side of the Mason-Dixon." However, after his nephews Bo and Luke were arrested, tried and convicted for illegally-transporting moonshine, Jesse Duke struck a deal with the government: he would cease and desist all moonshine brewing in exchange for Bo and Luke being released on probation.
Jesse Duke drove a 1973-77 Ford F-100 pickup truck.
Jesse remained in Hazzard long after his niece and nephews had moved on. Sometime between 1985 and 1997, the farmhouse was replaced with a much better quality two-story house. In 1997, he chaired the Hazzard Homecoming reunion committee, although he was alienated by much of the town by rejecting "Mama Maxx"'s plans to build a theme park on Hazzard Swamp - creating additional jobs, revenue and entertainment for Hazzard County. However, in order to build the park, Maxx needed access to the Duke farm. For the Swamp's sake, Jesse held out and eventually - Bo, Luke, and Daisy returned to help their uncle, and - in the process - exposed Maxx's plan as fraud: she wanted the rights to the land solely to mine for its valuable ore.
Shortly after this last adventure, Jesse died (Pyle had died in December 1997). However, his legacy lived on through the many of his famous recipes that were passed to his friends and family. Cooter used Jesse's barbecue sauce recipe to enter the Hazzard Hoe-Down BBQ sauce contest in 2000. But due to a missing secret ingredient, he could only muster second place. Just after the contest, thanks to Enos, Cooter inadvertently discovered the secret ingredient.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I have not read of any Arcadian life which surpasses the actual luxury and serenity of these New England dwellings. For the outward gilding, at least, the age is golden enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union,
But through separation”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)
“In a period of a people’s life that bears the designation “transitional,” the task of a thinking individual, of a sincere citizen of his country, is to go forward, despite the dirt and difficulty of the path, to go forward without losing from view even for a moment those fundamental ideals on which the entire existence of the society to which he belongs is built.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)