May 31, 2023 - Like me, I am sure that you have heard the phrase descriptive of total inebriation, “Drunker than Cooter Brown”. The phrase is in common usage by both white and black southerners. The question is who is Cooter Brown and why was he such an infamous drunk? Well, the question is enough to drive a person to drink because very little can be found about Mr. Brown, although there are quite a few bars scattered around the country that call themselves “Cooter Browns”.
There are only a couple of theories that I could find about the origin of Cooter Brown and his drinking. One theory is that Cooter Brown was a real man who lived during the mid-nineteenth century. Cooter reportedly resided somewhere along the innocuous line that divided the North and the South. Cooter’s relatives of both Northern and Southern blood lived in the surrounding hills and valleys. It was fatefully only Cooter that lived right on the dividing line.
It is reported that Cooter Brown was a bi-racial man, half Cherokee and half black, a trapper by trade who lived alone in an old shack. When the civil war broke out, Cooter didn’t want to choose sides because he didn’t know who might win. He didn’t like people much and was fearful of either side. Because of this, Cooter, who was a heavy drinker anyway, began drinking all the time. He always dressed like an Indian so as to confirm the fact that he was an Indian and not a black, and as such was a free man.
As tensions grew war became imminent. He found himself in quite the quandary – his position on the Mason-Dixon Line proved him eligible for enrollment in either side of the war. He was faced with the impossible position of deciding which side, and which family members with which to side. So, Cooter chose a third option – he got drunk, and stayed drunk. He got so drunk and stayed so drunk that he became useless to either side and therefore ineligible for service in the entire Civil War.
By the time the war ended, Cooter couldn’t stop drinking if he had wanted to. Whenever soldiers, Yanks or Rebels, showed up in the area they would always find him drunk. Often he’d offer the soldiers a drink.
One night his shack caught fire and burned completely to the ground. When locals investigated the burned site the next day, there was nothing that remained of Cooter’s body. They surmised that old Cooter had so much alcohol in him that he had just burned up. Ever since that fateful day, Cooter Brown has been synonymous with drunkenness.
Another theory is that Cooter is the slang term for a turtle. Another spelling is “coota”. The derivation seems to be the West African words “kuta” or “kuts”, all meaning a turtle. Now, what does it mean to be drunk as a turtle? Could it be slow, lumbering, and unable to perform any complicated task? It may not make much sense, but it is an accepted theory. If anyone can enlighten me as to how a turtle became a symbol of alcoholic inebriation, I’ll be very appreciative.
So, I’ll put my money on the side of the real Cooter Brown who remained drunk throughout the entire Civil War.
