America,"). He also told traditional, humorous Southern stories, the most notable among these being "The Motorcycle Story", "When John Gets Here" (also called "The Haunted House"), and his version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as set in Rome, Georgia. Brother Dave got a good deal of comic mileage from his boosting of all things Southern, making him a latter-day version of Kenny Delmar's "Senator Claghorn" on Fred Allen's classic radio show. He smoked cigarettes during his routines, describing them as "a Southern product," and declaring "I like cigarettes – I'd smoke chains if I could light 'em." He spoke of a Southerner's culinary fondness for "a Moon Pie and an Ar-uh-Cee (R.C. Cola)." Anticipating the bottled-water market by almost 30 years, he remarked that, at Hot Springs, Arkansas, he had seen "some o' them ignorant, stupid Southerners sellin' water to them brilliant Yankees." He noted that the difference between a Northern Baptist and a Southern Baptist was that a Northern Baptist said, "There ain't no Hell," and a Southern Baptist said, "The hell there ain't." While Gardner did spin routines based on a wide-ranging social freedom, some of his material did play off racial stereotypes of his time. Often, he had African-American characters in his routines speak with an exaggerated, high-pitched, Butterfly McQueen-style accent [and in style of Flip Wilson], as in "The Motorcycle Story." In another of his routines, a black woman exclaimed, "James Lewis, git away from dat wheelbarrow – say, you know you doesn't know nothin' 'bout machin'ry!" Although Gardner's early-1960s albums for RCA Victor contained questionable racial humor, there is nothing like the overtly racist content of his late-1960s act. Death After his popularity declined in the late 1960s, newspapers noted that he turned to drugs and alcohol, and began having health problems. He started a comeback in 1980, mostly speaking at college campuses. But he suffered a mild heart attack in January 1983, and had a pacemaker inserted while in Smyrna, Georgia. The following September, he was on a movie set near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, working on an Earl Owensby film called Chain Gang, when he had a much bigger heart attack. He had just completed filming that day, and was signing autographs and joking with people when he suddenly went into the studio and said he needed help. He died that night at about 9 p.m. in Grand Strand General Hospital. Rediscovery After being