"Drunk as Cooter Brown" has some history behind it. There was a an actual guy named Cooter Brown whose house straddled the Mason-Dixon line during the American civil war. Both the Union and Confederate armies considered him theirs for drafting into service, but he didn't want to go. Military rules at the time said that a potential draftee must be rejected if he was intoxicated, so to render himself unfit for service Cooter Brown stayed drunk for pretty much the entire war.