Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last

by Wright Thompson

The homogenization of America has left people wandering the land in search of a place to belong. We are a tribeless nation hungry for tribes. That longing and loneliness are especially on display

That’s what Thomas Wolfe meant, I think. We can’t go home again because the home we remember never existed.

Our fathers are often mysteries to us and therefore we are often mysteries to ourselves.

“Perhaps it is almost justice, dad, that we should have to go through war every so often to pay for the peace years—so filled with plenty and pleasure as compared with the other people on earth.”

tell ourselves a story to survive and then that story consumes us, destroys us. The mask eats the face.

“So this is what it means,” she said and I understood. We build a life to share, to pass on, so that some idea of us can live in our children and grandchildren, so that we might live forever and they might never be alone.

Maybe whiskey is so fragile because once the cap comes off, the past rushes out of the bottle and is gone forever.

working in factories and longing for the way they remembered the past, which often has little in common with the actual past they lived.

“Winston Churchill said that the Irish remember the defeats long after the English have forgotten the victories.

“When tomorrow comes,” it read, “this day will be gone forever, leaving something in its place I have traded for it.”

Vodka is for the skinny and scotch is for the strivers and bourbon is for the homesick.