Half of our caravan is camped alongside the tracks in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. The rest opted for the same old usual campground. Our rewards are long trains in the middle of the night and a brief walk to the banquet hall where we gather for libations and dinner each evening.
Art and Ellen keep taking our meals to a higher and higher level. And in Lynchburg, they may have reached the pinnacle. Miss Mary Bobo’s Boardinghouse presents luscious food in a distinctive manner. The building started in 1817 as a hotel. In 1908, Mary and Jack Bobo turned it into a boardinghouse. There are now eight dining rooms where platters and bowls of food are served family style.
First the menu: Fried chicken (three platters at our table), pork, green beans, fried (creamed) corn, fried okra, squash casserole, rolls, cole slaw, and apples with bourbon sauce. Chess pie was for dessert. All of this was fabulous.
A hostess sits at the head of each table and shares the history of Lynchburg, Mary Bobo and Jack Daniels. Our hostess Mary Lou Hoge, explained that the location for the original two-room log cabin hotel was based upon an underground spring of limestone filtered water. Additions to the hotel were made of brick.
Mary Lou told us about two boarders who never got along. Tom Moltow was a nephew of Jack Daniels (more about him to follow). Tom wanted to head to the northeast after college but was told by his brother, who was running the distillery, to come home to Lynchburg and head the bank. Because Tom believed lending money to buy a car was irresponsible, he was in a constant state of feuding with Mr. Parks who ran the automobile dealership. The last boarder died in 1967 and later the restaurant opened. At the age of 100, Miss Mary was featured in an ad for Jack Daniels Distillery. She died in 1983 just shy of her 102nd birthday.
Our hostess also explained why Moore County, where Jack Daniels is located, is a dry county. The answer is not religious but political. After 1934 when Prohibition ended, states and their counties chose to be wet or dry. In Tennessee it took 1200 signatures on the petition to request a vote. More county barely had 1200 people,let alone 1200 voters who would favor going wet. To this day they still do not have enough voters to end local prohibition.
Happily sated, we went to Jack Daniels for our tour led by David, an overhaul-wearing, bearded, sixty something who could have made a living doing standup comedy.
Along with his patter and the stories we had heard at Mary Bobo’s, we learned of the man who made Tennessee Whiskey famous.
Jack left home at the age of six and moved in with Reverend Call. Call knew Jack was smart and taught him to operate a still. When the Reverend was forced to choose between his pulpit and his still, he sold the still to 13-year-old Jack for $25. Jack and his brother loaded a wagon with spirits and sold them to Union and Confederate soldiers as a pain killer. At sixteen, Jack built a distillery and at seventeen he rode to Washington, D.C. to register his still. Around this time Jack became known for his gentlemanly attire and fondness for women. This statue of Jack is almost life-size.
Eventually he turned over operations to his seventeen-year-old nephew Lem Motlow who was the one to expand the distillery. In 1956 the distillery was bought by Brown - Forman of Nashville.
Jack died a painful death. Known for his temper, he got mad, kicked his safe and contracted gangrene. Here is the actual safe.
Over a period of two years, he lost his toe, foot, and leg before succumbing. He was sixty-one. It is said that so many women mourned his loss, that the cemetery placed chairs next to his stone for them to sit and weep.
Several things distinguish Jack Daniels from other whiskeys. The water comes from Cave Spring Hollow and is naturally filtered through limestone. They make their own barrels. They mix 80% corn, 12% rye, and 8% barley. There is a six-day fermentation period. Then they mellow the distillate drop by drop through ten feet of crushed sugar maple charcoal before barreling. Gentlemen Jack is filtered twice. By a 1941 law, Tennessee Whiskey must be mellowed in charcoal. Jack is aged for at least four years but no date is put upon the label.
They bottle one barrel at a time. They also allow no photographs inside the plant.
Four hundred happy employees work at the distillery. They are happy because on the first Friday of each month they get a free bottle of Jack Daniels.
This white wood building was Jack’s original office.
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