until reinforcements arrive.
Thomas Ewing Bulleit, my father, the gunner, swivels the tank’s big gun and blasts into the swarm of converging German tanks. The Panzer tanks return the fire relentlessly, riddling the five American tanks from all sides, from every angle. Inside my dad’s tank, the hammering of the gunfire deafens him as a torrent of bullets rips through the tank’s metal skeleton like it’s made of aluminum. My father, shocked, blinded, blood pouring down his face, pulls himself out of the tank, drops into two feet of snow, and crawls on the ground, away from the massacre. Advancing Allied troops pick him up and bring him to a triage station. Shortly after, the only available surgeon, a dentist, removes his right eye. He spends a year in England, recovering, fighting infections. Finally, he returns home, and after undergoing several operations to reconstruct his face, my dad gives up his career in banking and takes a job as a purchasing agent for Delmonico Foods. Despite horrific migraine headaches from shrapnel lodged in his brain, he never misses a day of work and I never once hear him complain. The Panzer Division assault on his five-tank patrol lasts less than five minutes, but we prevail in the Battle of the Bulge and win the war. My father—soldier, warrior—has completed his mission.
* * *
Lessons taught without words.
As I grow out of my youth and enter my teens, a new relationship with my father forms. He’s no longer my playground chaperone, my bike rider teacher, my evening reader. We remain fishing buddies, though more and more infrequently, the silences between us becoming longer and increasingly acute. I drift into friendships with kids cooler than my parents—all kids are cooler than everyone’s parents—and I discover girls. At home, although something about us has changed, I remain aware of my father as this omniscient, godlike figure, a tall, dapper, well-dressed man in button-down shirts and slacks, never in jeans—even when fishing—a cigarette dangling from the fingers of one hand, a bottle of beer or a glass of bourbon cupped in the other. He’s a quiet man, not unaffectionate, but not what I would call warm. He is, in the best sense, a survivor, of war, of business, of life. At times—too many times—he enters the one bathroom in our house, locks the door, and sighs heavily, the smoke from his cigarette slithering up from the narrow opening between bathroom door and hallway floor. I know he’s closed himself off to try to stifle the debilitating agony of his nearly constant migraines. I can’t imagine that smoking helps his condition, but I tell myself that maybe it somehow lessens his pain. In the mornings, he emerges from the bathroom, sits down for breakfast at 7:00, and leaves in time to make it to work by 8:00. I don’t realize then that I assimilate key life lessons from my father’s simple, consistent behavior. Accept the hand life deals you. Don’t complain. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Work. Keep moving forward, never stop, never quit. Work.
* * *
In 1961, I graduate from Trinity High School, enter the University of Kentucky, and major in partying. Thinking back, I don’t recall a single moment in which I cracked a book or studied for an exam. My grades confirm this. Somehow—I have no idea how—I eke through freshman year and stumble into sophomore year, my dedication to partying escalating, which I never would have thought possible. I excel at Phi Delta Theta, my fraternity, which makes Animal House seem like a monastery. Concerned, my parents arrange for what today would be called an intervention. They first bring in Sister Aunt Jean Clare, one of my father’s sisters, whom I refer to as “Top Nun,” a college professor whose attempts to convince me of the value of education, fails. They then call on tough-as-nails Aunt Pearl, my father’s other sister, who sits me down for a constructive conversation about my future.
“You will never amount to shit,” she tells me.
I concede that she may have a point, but I do, in fact, have a plan.
* * *
Kentucky. Land of rolling hills, thoroughbreds, and bourbon. Kentucky is to bourbon what the Napa Valley is to wine. Actually, more so—95 percent of the world’s bourbon is made in Kentucky. Later in life, I will discover that bourbon, while always in my consciousness, is also in my blood. But I know that bourbon has always been in my family.
In the mid-1800s, my great-great-grandfather, Augustus Bulleit, emigrated from Europe, landed in New Orleans, and moved north to the Louisville area. He married, sired five children, opened a tavern, and began distilling bourbon using a recipe of two-thirds corn and one-third rye. Augustus, salesman, entrepreneur, and man of mystery, would load barrels of bourbon onto his wagon and his raft, haul them to New Orleans to sell, helping to create the legend of Bourbon Street. On one of his trips from Louisville to New Orleans, Augustus and his wagon and raft full of bourbon disappeared, vanishing from the face of the earth. We’ve considered all the obvious explanations: Augustus was slaughtered by Indians; Augustus was robbed by bandits who murdered him, stole his money, and absconded with his bourbon: or, the most intriguing, Augustus disappeared on purpose, perhaps into the arms of another woman, a second wife he had stowed away in New Orleans. As a teenager, the legend of Augustus Bulleit, my great-great-grandfather, bourbon distiller, possible bigamist, and creator of our family bourbon recipe remains romantically etched in my mind.
* * *
I work summers at a distillery. The sounds, the smells, the action, the camaraderie, the world of making bourbon affects me in ways profound and small. I can’t articulate this feeling to anyone yet, because I can’t put my finger on it. But it feels like a cross between catching the bourbon distilling bug and falling in love. Most of all, the world of bourbon feels like my world. I see this world—bourbon distilling—as my future, my calling. In my gut, I know that I want to become not just a distiller, I want to revive Augustus’s recipe. One afternoon, coming home from my job at the distillery, I find my dad at his customary position on our front porch, enjoying a bourbon and a cigarette. I decide this is the perfect opportunity to inform him of my grand plan.
I nod as I climb the stairs to the porch. I take a seat next to him. I hold for a count of three.
“I’ve been thinking about my future,” I say.
Dad raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“I have a plan.”
“Well, that’s a relief, Tom,” he says, “because your grades are, frankly, abysmal.”
I smile. “Thanks, Dad.”
It takes him a moment to realize I have no idea what abysmal means.
“What’s your plan?” he says.
“I want to go into distilling and bring back Augustus’s original recipe.”
My father shakes his head slowly.
The head shake.
One simple movement that signifies exasperation, frustration, and disappointment without saying a single word.
“No,” he says, as punctuation.
“No?” I squeak.
He takes a long sip of his drink.
“No. You will complete your undergraduate education, you will enlist in the military, and then you will go to law school and become a lawyer.”
I think of our family’s educational lineage, daunting to me. My grandfather attended the University of Chicago, my father, Notre Dame.
“Law school?” I say. He might as well have instructed me to land a spacecraft on Mars. “But my grades are … abysmal.”
