Whiskey River: Maker's Mark Distillery, Loretto, KY

Though it is not without its problems - like the lady we saw pumping gas, holding her baby, and managing a cigarette all at the same time - Kentucky is home to dozens of whisky distilleries. You can smell the rye drifting through the air for miles. It’s fucking beautiful.

As a whisky drinker, I found myself in a lush's Shangri-La when I realized we had unknowingly shacked up for a few days in the Bourbon Capital of the world, using Bardstown as our home base. We researched tours and, with some help from Alex's grandparents, settled on the Maker’s Mark distillery. They still hand make the product and haven’t gone all corporate like some other brands, collaborating with shit-food chain restaurants to create a syrupy sauce to pour over a hunk of all-purpose beef. In fact, they have their own chain of restaurants.

Descendants of the original Maker’s Mark family still live on the property where the whisky is made, bottled, and distributed. Tours are affordable at $7 per person, and the best part is most people usually don’t bring their little kids. Good parents, at least. There’s always that one family who thought a whisky distillery would make for an appropriate family outing and just think it is so cute when their dumb little angel decides to tell the docent that they love Batman.

They led us through the sweltering-hot room where the product ferments and turns from an oatmeal-like substance into actual, drinkable whisky. Our guide let everyone dip their fingers into the enormous wooden vats to taste the product at it’s three stages. I’m not a germaphobe but I know what people do with their hands. She assured us it was safe, and we all stuck our fingers (some used their whole hands) into the tub of boiling slop. It tasted like cheap, stale beer. Each vat was more potent than the last, and eventually, you could taste the whisky.

The bubbling brew.

She showed us to the packaging and distribution center, where workers in hairnets slapped on labels and dipped thousands of bottles in red wax, the product’s signature. They clattered by on a conveyor belt, the wax dripping down the neck on its way to shipping.

At the end of the tour, our guide led us to the tasting chamber, where we sampled four different versions of Maker’s Mark, including the top shelf one that I know I’ll never be able to afford. We finished our samples and stumbled, as always, into the gift shop. We didn’t buy anything, but then again, we never do.

We aren’t drinking much on the road, save for special occasions and when we visit friends. For the moment, it has been deemed an unnecessary expense, which it is. When we finally are back to earning paychecks, I’m going to buy a bottle of Maker’s Mark, pretend it’s one I saw rattling by on the conveyor belt at the factory, and pour myself a whisky and ginger ale.

Southern Man: The Jefferson Davis Memorial, Pembroke, KY

Alex’s grandparents live in Madisonville, Kentucky, a modest grid of 18th century buildings housing under-visited businesses and strips of teeming fast-food restaurants. Papa, a former anesthesiologist with the Air Force, and Gramma, the sweetest, most honest woman alive,  live in a 60s split-level brick home a mile from the center of town. We spent a weekend with them on our way from Memphis to Indiana in the middle of the summer. Gramma fed us eight-layer bars and Papa told us stories about his parents, friends from the service, and even one about the time Alex stayed with them for a weekend and refused to pick up his toys.

In the morning, we drove 45 minutes south to Pembroke, Kentucky, a hamlet even smaller than Madisonville, to see the Jefferson Davis memorial. A 351-foot obelisk of pure Kentucky limestone stands among a brood of spindling trees on the same land where the Confederacy’s biggest hope was born. We rode the elevator to the top, a narrow platform with barred windows and views of the emerald Kentucky countryside.

Papa

Just a few hundred miles to the East, in a similar patch of Kentucky sawmill grass, is where Abraham Lincoln was born.

A couple joined us to the top and then down to the base. Papa talked with the man, wearing a tanned, chocolate brown cowboy hat and silver belt buckle. His wife, a spirited, stout woman, whose few remaining teeth matched her husband’s hat, told us they were Civil War re-enactors and first-rate historians.

“We wear the traditional hoop skirts and everything,” said said in a stilted twang. “Some of those dresses cost nearly $500!”

Their authentic rifles cost nearly three times that amount, and thousands of proud Kentuckians come every year to watch the South rise and fall again.

As she waddled alongside us, she said her teenaged daughter had just gotten in trouble in school for “correcting the teacher” while discussing the Civil War. The historian thought it important we know the teacher was black.

Like fracking, abortion, and whether or not our president is really an American, the Civil War remains an issue that divides this country nearly 150 years later. There are legions of disappointed, disheartened people, embarrassed about the day Lee folded and determined that antebellum will rule once more. Like the historians, they claim it has more to do with land and pride than race or slavery, but everything in this country is always about race and slavery.

In reality, Davis was a reluctant hero, disinclined to secede, and possessed little desire to be president over the Confederate nation were they to win. The puppet in president’s clothing, and when the South crumbled, the one to blame.

We walked through the small museum in the building next to the monument, detailing Jefferson’s life, beginning with his Kentucky roots and upbringing in Louisiana and Mississippi, moving through his marriages, and on to his military career. It displayed cases of his letters, photographs of his family, and the side of him lost under scrutiny and opposition. Jefferson Davis was the brain child behind public services we still employ today, including ensuring veterans receive compensation after their service. It was his idea to construct the nation’s capital, but it doesn’t matter. Most people will always, and only, remember him as the guy who let down the South.