by Fred Noe
I never gave much thought to my future at the distillery when I was a boy. The plant was just a big playground to me. Booker didn’t really make a point of teaching me anything at that time. Every so often, he would show me the still, or take a walk with me through the rack houses, which were dark and cool like an early spring night, and point things out, explain why we didn’t heat or cool our rack houses, or how and why we stacked our barrels. Once in a while, he would stop and knock the bung out of a barrel and let me stick my nose inside it.
“Take a deep breath. Keep your eyes closed, go on,” he said. And I would do as told, get a good whiff of my sweet past and future.
For the most part, though, Booker just let me roam. My older cousins were there, Baker and David, and I got to watch them work. I was impressed with what they did, how seriously they took their jobs. Baker kind of became a role model for me. He’s Jim Beam’s great-nephew, but he didn’t have any special favors thrown his way. Even though his last name was Beam, he started out in the labor pool, raking leaves and cleaning out septic tanks. He worked his ass off for years and eventually made his way all the way up to be the distiller of the Clermont plant. I always thought he personified the family: a low-key, hardworking whiskey man. I’m glad they named a bourbon after him, and glad it was one of our best ones; hell, he deserves it.
My favorite Baker memory involves trucks. I loved the ones at the plant and lucky for me, so did Baker. He used to drive an 18-wheeler through Kentucky to pick up rye and other grains. One year on my tenth birthday, as a big surprise, Booker got me up at 4:30 and took me down to Baker’s house, and there was Baker waiting in a truck. Baker kind of looked like the Marlboro Man, tall and lean with a mustache and dark hair.
“What are you staring at? Hop in,” he said, and I jumped up. I spent the day hauling rye with my cousin, back and forth from Louisville, sitting in the cab, listening to country music with the window down a crack, smelling the wet Kentucky morning. As good as it gets.
When I wasn’t at the distillery, I was busy being a boy in Bardstown, the Bourbon Capital of the World. Let me tell you about my hometown now; it’s important, the center stage of my life. It was a small town of about 3,000 people back then, a lot of whom had whiskey roots. It wasn’t exactly Mayberry, more like Mayberry on bourbon. I’ve been told that right after Prohibition, it was a pretty wild place. People came from Louisville and Lexington and sometimes all the way from Cincinnati to party; the world’s biggest distilleries were located within a 60-mile radius, so we weren’t going to run out of whiskey anytime soon. In fact, Bardstown used to be called “The Partiest Town in America.” There was even a book written about it, a somewhat scandalous book, called We’ll Sing One Song, which told out-of-school stories about Bardstown and its residents.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never read the entire book, just parts of it. But from what I could tell, it got Bardstown right:
. . . the tall honey locusts, the stately old houses, some in disrepair, some with tourists signs on their lawns, but gracious, still with dignity that could not be destroyed by years or weather;
It’s a fairly lively town . . . when you get to know it. We have as much activity per capita here as Lo’ville or Cincinnati. You won’t get bored.
That book was supposed to be fiction, but names had been changed to protect the innocent, and everyone knew it. My mom, Annis, said it was the talk of the town for years and the author, Olive Carruthers, wasn’t too popular after it came out. But I think she was related somehow to William, who was married to my Aunt Mimi, so they left her alone. Aunt Mimi ended up eventually divorcing William, but not because of the book, though that probably didn’t help things.
That was all before my time though. When I came around, Bardstown was a pretty quiet place. There was only noise twice a day: at noon, when the Bardstown Volunteer Fire Department blew its siren (we called that the lunch whistle), and when they blew it again at six (we called that the dinner whistle). I was never was sure why they thought that was necessary, but until this day, every time I hear a siren, no matter where I am in the world, I get hungry.
We lived a few blocks from the downtown. Little stores, shops. An A&P. We had two movie theaters, the Arco and the Melody, an ice cream shop called the B&B where I spent too much time, and a hardware store where our local judge, Freeman Carruthers, worked. (Not sure if he was related to the esteemed author; remember, this is Kentucky, land of four million people and ten last names.) Judge Carruthers wasn’t even a lawyer, but he was a judge, so if you had a problem, you had to go down to Grigsby Hardware and hope he wasn’t too busy selling fertilizer or screwdrivers so you could plead your case. When he saw you coming, he would point a finger at you and say, “What kind of bird don’t fly?” And you would say, “A jail bird,” because by then, you would know the answer. He would laugh, he always thought that was funny and if you were smart, you would laugh too, hoping to curry his favor. Most times, if it was just a ticket and you promised to tell your parents what you had done, he would let you off; he wanted to get back to selling fertilizer, his true calling.
I grew up in the house I live in now, on North Third Street, which used to be called Distiller’s Row, because a lot of distillers had homes on that street. The Samuels family, who started up Maker’s Mark, lived two doors down, and John Schenley, another prominent distiller, lived across the street. Big old Southern-style homes, testaments to America’s Native Spirit, bourbon. Bardstown was a distilling town back then. It still is to some degree, but when I was growing up, pretty much everyone either worked at or had someone in their family working at a distillery in some capacity. As I mentioned, we had a number of distilleries within an hour’s drive. Being a Beam wasn’t a big deal. We were just another family connected to the business. And it wasn’t a glamorous business; it was honest, hard work.
Booker, my mom, Annis, and I lived next door to the Big House where my Aunt Mimi, Jim Beam’s daughter, lived. The two houses used to be connected—they had been a girl’s school around the turn of the century (the Bardstown Female Academy, to be exact)—but when Jim Beam bought it in 1900, he divided them up: Big House, Small House. We lived in the Small House.
Aunt Mimi, Jim Beam’s daughter,1 had the Big House. By then, my great-grandmother, Maw Maw Beam, was dead so Mimi had it all to herself, which was a good thing because she needed the space, she needed room. Aunt Mimi didn’t like kids, but she did like Salem cigarettes, parties, bourbon cocktails, Cadillac cars, and, for some reason, me. When I was young, I would lie awake at night and hear people laughing, the piano playing, cars coming and going next door. Pretty much a constant commotion. The next day, I would get up and sneak over there and her cook, Emma, would make me breakfast. Ham, fried eggs, beaten biscuits. Eventually, Aunt Mimi would make her way down to the kitchen, a Salem dangling from her bottom lip, face a tad puffy, eyes a little red. She would nod a silent hello, pour herself a black coffee, and plop down in a chair across the table from me.
“What are you drinking?” she asked me some mornings.
“Milk,” I would say. I was six.
“Milk,” she said. “Smart boy. Stick with it. Stick with it as long as you can.”
In addition to me, Salem cigarettes, and parties, Aunt Mimi liked one other thing: Bourbon. Not just the whiskey now, but her Doberman Pinscher. Bourbon was big and brown and looked like he had been raised by the Devil, which was the rumor in Bardstown because he was a nasty-looking dog, growled at you if you breathed too loud. When I took him for walks, people would cross the street and avert their gaze. Bourbon always looked hungry.
Booker was never too crazy about that dog. Was suspicious of him. Thought he had too much influence in the family. The feeling was mutual. I don’t think Bourbon was too crazy about Booker either. For years they kept their distance, but one Christmas, things came to a boil.
We were all driving in Aunt Mimi’s Cadillac to my other Aunt Mimi’s (remember, Kentucky; we’re scarce on names) when Bourbon started p
utting his big, evil head on Aunt Mimi’s shoulder. I was driving in the front with my mom while Booker, Mimi, and Bourbon were in the back.
Well, Booker didn’t think that was proper. He didn’t like the idea of a dog, especially a dog that was rumored to have been born and bred in Hell, nuzzling his favorite aunt on the birthday of our Savior, so he raised a polite objection.
“Get your damn head off of her!” he yelled, and yanked at Bourbon’s collar.
Bourbon took offense to this. He bared his teeth and gave out one of his best and loudest growls. Now most men, when confronted by a growling Doberman Pinscher, especially a Doberman Pinscher that was sitting six inches from you, would proceed with extreme caution at this point. But my dad, Booker, was not most men. He was about six foot four, 300 pounds of Kentucky Mean, and he didn’t fear anything on Planet Earth, other than maybe an empty liquor cabinet on Saturday night. He growled right back.
Things were deteriorating fast, breaking down, and when Bourbon started barking and my dad started yelling some very un–Christmas Day things in the back seat, I feared the worst. I looked in the rearview mirror, not sure who was going to bite who first. Fortunately, Aunt Mimi intervened. Unfortunately for my dad, she took Bourbon’s side of the argument.
“Leave that dog alone now, Booker! Just leave him alone.”
“God damnit, he started it.”
“Get your hands off of him.”
“Tell him to get his paws off of me!”
And so forth.
When we got to the other Aunt Mimi’s house in Lebanon, everyone thought it would be best if Bourbon and Booker had some space put between them. After some discussion, it was finally decided that Bourbon would stay outside in the cold, although Aunt Mimi was lobbying hard for it to be Booker. And it was also decided that I would spend the day with him. So I ended up walking that dog around the block about 30 times that Christmas, wondering what everyone was having for dinner.
Aunt Mimi was more than all right. There was an air of wildness and excitement about her, an unpredictability. Not everyone liked being around her because she was a Beam and Beams speak their minds, but I loved her through and through and spent a lot of time over at the Big House. We had meals together, watched TV together, went into town for ice cream. After she got divorced, she took up with George Allen Barnes, who owned a produce store. George Allen Barnes would pick her up for a night on the town in his old truck that smelled like cabbage and onions, and many times Aunt Mimi would let me tag along.
“What the hell is she doing in that truck anyway?” Booker asked my mom one day at dinner. “She won’t even sit in a Cadillac that’s more than three years old.”
“She gets in there because Fred likes that truck,” my mom answered.
Booker shook his head, gave me a look. “God damn, boy, you have her tied around your little finger.”
If I did, it wasn’t intentional. Aunt Mimi had taken a shine to me and I to her. When George Allen Barnes showed up, she would make me a Shirley Temple and let me stand up in the back of his pickup while we cruised through the streets of Bardstown at dusk. I remember sipping on those Shirley Temples, smelling my aunt’s cigarette smoke, and watching the street lights flicker on. A person’s life is made up of moments; some stay with you forever, and those nights were as special as they get.
I ended up moving in with Aunt Mimi during my college years, got even closer to her. She was getting on in age and Booker asked me to come home from school and live with her for a while, she needed the help. I was happy to oblige—family is family—so I came home from Lexington, where I was going to the University of Kentucky, and helped out, did the chores, kept her company. Every night at 6 PM we’d have cocktail hour. We’d sit down in the parlor in big overstuffed chairs and have ourselves a drink and discuss the day. It was a ritual and we never missed it. It was during those evenings, before dinner, when she would tell me stories about my great-grandfather, Jim Beam. What kind of person he was like—how passionate he was about the family business, how proud he was to be a distiller and a Kentuckian. Those talks helped me appreciate the family legacy, helped me understand that I was part of something special. Aunt Mimi was proud of being a Beam, and our talks went a long way to instilling that same pride in me.
“You got to uphold the family name,” she would say. “People are going to be watching you, especially in this town. Your great-grandfather, your uncles, your cousins, they all worked hard to make that name mean something, you have to remember that. When your time comes, you got to make us all proud.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant when she said, “when your time comes,” but I answered, “Yes, ma’am,” every time the subject came up.
I spent a lot of time chauffeuring her about during those years. Aunt Mimi always seemed to have a new Cadillac, so I got to drive a nice set of wheels around town. Took her to the grocery store, to church, to visit her lady friends. She kept a running commentary on all things Bardstown from the back seat while I drove. It was right out of Driving Miss Daisy, and I enjoyed it. Aunt Mimi was an important link to my family’s past; she provided me with an oral history of who we were, brought the legacy to life.
She died on her 82nd birthday. I was holding her hand when she passed. The nurses and doctors and my folks had all left the room, so we were alone. She was trying to tell me something, but couldn’t and didn’t. She was an important part of my life, really a friend more than an aunt. I miss her to this day.
People assume since I am a Beam, I’ve had to have led a pretty wild life. That’s a pretty big assumption when you think about it. Just because we’re a whiskey-making family doesn’t mean we sit around all day and drink, hoot and holler, and shoot pistols off in the air or something. Besides, as I’ve mentioned, we’re a big family and there’s a lot of Beams. Some of us are wild, and some of us are flat-out boring. (I tend to avoid the boring ones.) That said, I admit, growing up I probably fell into the first camp, though I didn’t shoot many pistols off. At least not until after college. (More on that later. . . .)
While I didn’t commit any major, Class A felonies, I was no angel when I was young. I went to St. Joseph Parochial School in Bardstown, where I said a lot of prayers and wrote “I will not talk in class” a lot more. Saying I was an average student, something I aspired to be, would have been a major compliment. The nuns were hard on all of us, but especially me. Early on, I was singled out, had a target on my back: St. Joe’s Most Wanted.
A nun named Sister Dorothy had it in for me the most. She was tough, part football coach, part Marine drill sergeant, part Bourbon the dog. I’m pretty sure she spent her nights on her knees praying for divine guidance on how to make my life miserable. And, for the most part, her prayers were answered. She made my life hell.
When she wasn’t trying to save my soul by making me hold textbooks out with outstretched arms for hours at a time, or cuffing me on the back of head with the same hand she used to bless herself, she tried to get my “mind right” with something called the “the new math.” The new math was an evil invention, designed to confuse and terrorize dedicated non-academics like myself. But Sister Dorothy was committed to it and attacked all those who resisted, like she was part of the Inquisition. Despite her efforts and determination, the new math wasn’t taking with me, so Booker, he got involved. Every night we would sit at our round kitchen table and do homework, and every night I prayed a tornado, or an asteroid, or a tidal wave would make a direct hit on our house so I wouldn’t have to sit through the tutorials. Booker was a stern and determined tutor, thought he could teach me what scores of nuns couldn’t.
He also didn’t think much of the new math; it was a mystery to him, an unnecessary process.
“What the hell do we need new math for? Why are they teaching you this?”
I shrugged. He was asking absolutely the wrong person this question.
“God damnit. The old math works fine, don’t you think?”
Old math, new math. To be
honest, I didn’t really have much of a preference. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“Damn right. Go sharpen your pencil, we got some work to do.”
So he stuck with the old math, and that caused some problems back at Mission Control, St. Joe’s. It all came to a head one day. Sister Dorothy flunked me on a big test, even though I had the right answers. She said I hadn’t followed the proper process. When he saw my grade, Booker took umbrage. He stared long and hard at the test, his jaw clenched. “Let’s go pay a visit to this nun,” he finally said.
We went to school the next day and had an audience with Sister Dorothy. She sat behind her desk while Booker stood, towering over her. I kind of stood behind him in the event Sister Dorothy threw something, which she was not above doing.
“I assume you’re here to discuss Freddie’s failure on the last test.”
“He didn’t fail. He had all the right answers.” For proof, Booker held up my test and politely shoved it front of Sister Dorothy’s pious face. She took the test and put it down on her desk without so much as a glance.
“He didn’t follow the new process.”
“But he has all the right answers,” Booker said.
“He didn’t come to them in the correct fashion.”
“But a right answer is a right answer.”
Sister Dorothy was having none of it. She folded her arms across her chest, stuck out her chin. This was her attack pose. Rumor had it that she had magical powers and was capable of transforming herself into a wolf and eating people when confronted. I now moved directly behind Booker. By the time she finished eating my dad, I would be long gone, I thought. Booker would be a big meal.
