For me the strong, heady vintages, whether still or sparkling, and the more potent distillations had mighty little appeal.

Champagne, to me, was about the poorest substitute for good well-water that had ever been proposed; and the Messrs.

Haig & Haig never had to put on a night shift at the works on my account.
Yet I came from a mid-section of the republic where in the olden days Bourbon whiskey was regarded as a proper staff of life.

The town where I was born was one of the last towns below Mason & Dixon's Line to stand out against the local option wave which had swept the smaller interior communities of America; and my native state of Kentucky was one of the two remaining states of the South, Louisiana being the other, which had not officially gone dry by legislative action up to the time when Br'er Volstead's pleasant little act went over nationally.
While I was growing up, through boyhood, through my youth and on into manhood, I had the example of whiskey-drinking all about me.

Many of our oldest and most respected families owned and operated distilleries.