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

by Wright Thompson

bourbon drinkers were often motivated by nostalgia—by this desire to stop the march of time and the cold hand of reality. It’s a drink made for contemplating, and what is usually being contemplated is the easy and often false memory of better days.

A bottle of bourbon is a coded way for so many unspoken ideas to be transmitted and understood.

Julian’s success felt like a road map, a guide for men to sort out what a son owes his father and what he should feel free to leave in the past. He took the life he’d been born into and rebuilt it so his children might enjoy it, too.

John and I shared a mutual love of literature and a hope that the better angels of the South might one day prevail. That night as we sat in the old plantation home that was now the university president’s house, and as we felt the immense weight of that change, not only in the faces and stories of my fellow diners but also in the air, I felt a profound and new sense of rebirth and of hope as I tried to wish the world I wanted for my child into existence. The positive news sank in slowly. I cried tears of hope and fear, then told the news to my mother, my brother, and my uncle Will—who since the death of my father has become the most important male role model in my life, a real surrogate for me. Will has never had a taste of Pappy Van Winkle, so I made a mental note to get a bottle from Julian to give to him. His smile when I hand it over will remind me of that night in New Orleans outside the Superdome, and of my father, who was present that evening and whenever Uncle Will and I are together.

Families stay together because of active decisions, because of patterns that turn into rituals, and they are torn apart most often not by anger or feuds but by careless inertia.

With my own father, I remember so clearly a moment in 1986, when he called me into the master bedroom where the final round of the Masters played on the television. It was the day before his fortieth birthday, I realized years later. I didn’t know then what that meant, but I do now—how a man is forced to examine his life and make an accounting of everything he wanted to be and everything he has actually become, to sort out dreams from failures, and to realize for the first time that the road he is on is the only road he’ll ever travel.

Will says things like that a lot. He’s funny and fun, with that rare kind of devout faith that attracts people with its promise of peace and an eternal life with God, rather than repels with its dogma and arrogance.