152. Oklahoma Road Trip - Bourbon and Storytelling

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts, Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

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Hey, this is Big Chief from the Bourbon Road and I'm here in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma today. Flew out here, spending the weekend with my baby brother. He works out here after he retired from the Marine Corps. So we thought we would sit down and do a little tasting for him. We went out and found a couple of Bourbons, one local and then one from our home state of Texas. We thought that'd be nice to try. But the one we're gonna start out with, Mitch, is Poochettown from down near Broken Arrow. Here, I guess that's southeastern Oklahoma. So this right here is a really young bourbon, less than two years old. It's 80% corn, 10% rye, and 10% malted barley. It really looks light in the bottle, everybody. It's young bourbon, $50 MSRP at the distillery. And I found it over here in Oklahoma City. Not bad looking whiskey, young still, but craft distillery, you would expect it to be youthful and stuff. It gets pretty cold up here, right? It does get pretty cold. We've had a pretty rough winter. Yeah. And lots of snow, so.

Is that flat wind blowing across Oklahoma? Yeah, just a flat wind because there's no trees.

Well, that would make it make it young. Well, let's let's nose this thing.

What are you getting? In all honesty, it smells like a Coke, like a Coca-Cola, if you had it open, if you were sniffing over the top of it. All right. Like that sweet smell you get from a Coca-Cola.

I get obviously I get a lot of corn in this. I get that kettle corn cooking at a fair. Not a whole lot of rye on this. Maybe it's just because it's got that 10% in there. What are those? Corn puff cereal. Know what I'm talking about? Pops? Yeah. I think they're, are they called corn pops? Yeah. I get that corn pop cereal smell. A lot of youth on this. Not a bunch of alcohol. This is 90 proof. They have this in single barrel too. That's a hundred bucks. I didn't want to pay that much for a single barrel for a hundred bucks. It's less than two years old. If it was like eight years old or something like that, I might, I might pull the trigger on it. That's what I get out of this.

Corn pops, young corn, a lot of corn, corn, corn, corn, corn. I can smell the corn.

I was trying to pick up something, anything else on it. That's what I get is that sweet corn cereal, Cracker Jack's, you know, anything like that kettle corn. Well, let's let's taste this thing. Cheers. I still get that corn pop cereal on this on that taste. Super sweet. Kind of rolls back on your tongue a little bit. Get a little bit of peppery on it. It's pretty nice, actually, for a young bourbon. I'm quite surprised. It's not off-putting or anything. You don't get no magic marker or anything like that. What do you get out of it?

You can taste the corn in it whenever you drink this. And the only reason why I say that is We made some moonshine recently and I tried to sample the mash after we made our moonshine, just because it looked good and it tastes, the corn was really, really strong. You could still taste the sugars in it and you can taste it in that.

There shouldn't be any sugars in it. It's all that corn sugar in the corn, you know?

That corn taste. Yeah. Like a starchy taste.

So you served how many years in the Marine Corps? 23? 23. And then you retire. Yep. And now you work for Pratt & Whitney. What's Pratt & Whitney? What do they make?

They make jet engines, plane engines. They started making Pratt & Whitney began as making replaceable machine parts and weapon parts right before the Civil War and on into the Civil War. Then by the turn of the century, they were starting to make airplane parts. It became another group, bought the name of Pratt & Whitney, and we've made airplane engines since.

I think a Pratt & Whitney. Sounds like a laundry detergent from the early 70s. Oh, I know.

A lot of people think it's Dunder & Mifflin or Paper Company or like Briggs & Stratton, like a lawnmower company, but it's not. It's airplane engines.

Or Lawyers. I guess a lawyer's office or something. Somebody had two names. You don't see a lot of companies out there anymore with two names. That's kind of cool that you know that history that goes back before the Civil War and the company still around today. So was that hard transition going from the from you think from Marine Corps to working for a corporation?

Yeah, it was as far as having to. be your own HR in the military to go into Pratt & Whitney where you had to use HR. And I think it was personnel management was probably the hardest part for me because there's a certain structured way we do things in the military. If somebody says, get something done, we go and get it done. in Pratt and Whitney, you can't just direct somebody to do something. They won't say, I serve two bags full. They'll tell you to go pound sand. So you have to do it the politically correct way.

Yeah, that's definitely true. I don't know. It's a little bit different for me because I still work for a military. You can still tell people what to do, but a lot's changed in 30 years. So you still got to be kind of a Jimmer. So let's go back to our kind of our childhood or our teenage years, I would guess you'd say. You remember your first sip of whiskey?

Well, I don't know if this would qualify as a sip of whiskey, but when I was six, I did have an incident where I was told if I wanted to be tough like the big boys, I was going to drink a bottle of peach schnapps before I got from town A to town B. So is that considered whiskey, peach schnapps?

No, it's a spirit, I guess. It's a liqueur, more sugar than, you know, than anything. I just let all of our listeners know that I'm only a year older than Mitch. So that definitely wasn't me forcing him to drink that peach schnapps at age seven. So think about when was the actual whiskey, though?

Do you remember that? I think I think my probably my first taste of whiskey was when I was in high school, somebody was passing around Jack Daniels, black number seven around and we all took a shot and I realized that I probably need to mix it with Coke. So, because I was, I don't react well to hard alcohol.

As well, I know. So there was an incident where we, in our hometown, there was a place called the square and there was no courthouse or anything there, right? It's just a square around the town. The towns are kind of built around a boardwalk of stores on four corners, a bank and a church, and then a grocery store, a couple more stores, a bunch of antique stores, a laundromat and a feed store. And that's kind of creates the square of Evante, Texas, right? And we went up there one night partying with your teenagers. And I may just remember you being in the back of my bed on my spare tire having a great night after you drink a bunch of beer.

Yeah, I vaguely remember that because all I did is work. I mean, there's nothing to do in an event except to fry fish on Friday night and drink. So, I worked a lot. I mean, because that was the one thing that, I mean, I got addicted to money. But that one time that I was off, I remember somebody showed up with Keystone Light. to the square and we all got obliterated. And by the end of the night, Mike didn't tell you about this part, is the law showed up to the square and all of a sudden everybody starts putting beers on tires and that's not my beer. I don't know who was drinking that beer. And somehow I got escaped the getting a minor in possession. And after all was said and done and the law got through getting everybody citations, everything, we all decided to drive home drunk. They just told us to get home. They didn't. They just gave us M.I.P.s, but they told us to get home. So I ended up in the bed of Mike's truck. Now, I worked at the Cowpoke Cafe and I always got free hamburgers there and it was a huge hamburger. So I ended up finding most of my hamburger and his spare tire in the bed of his truck as we rode home.

I think I've told that told that story about that that night before on the show. Only people that got minor possession that night in distributing to minors was me and my best friend, Larry. Yeah. Because me and you used to hang out with these two boys, they're Kruger boys, right? Robert and Larry, and they were kind of cut from the same cloth as we were. Good guys. Good, great guys. But me and Larry had hauled hay that day. I think we did like a thousand bills that day and that's a lot of, that's a lot of hay, right? In a day to haul. We got our money. I think you make, we talked about this on this trip, I think 75 cents.

About 75 cents a bill is what we got for the square rails. Yeah.

Uh, so we had a little bit of cash in our pocket and at the time me and Larry could walk into a beer store in Texas and, um, buy beer. And I'm just a guy that bought all that keystone. Yeah. Um, but that's a great night and stuff. Uh, even though we had to pay our, our fines and stuff, still great memory. Maybe not a great memory for you that night and stuff. Cause I remember that that kind of set you back and drinking a little bit, right? You didn't want to, you're like, I don't drink it no more.

Yeah, it did. I think whenever I was younger, I didn't like the taste of beer. I wasn't real sure about it because I had never, I wasn't exposed to it a whole lot. But the Holland Hay story, I do have a little bitty thing I'd like to share with Holland Hay. Okay, let's hear it. You know how we were talking about how this Hoka Town smells, to me it smells like Coke a little bit. Well, A lot of times what Mike and I would find ourselves doing is free labor for our stepdad at the time, hauling hay during the summer. He's like, he's going to haul this field, he's going to haul this field and me and Mike could load it and he'd haul it somewhere and sell it and keep all the profits. Well, the only pay that Mike and I got was he would stop at a local store and buy us a Coke and a candy bar. So we would all load up in the truck. And of course, I was young, so I had to sit in the middle while Mike had a window to himself and our stepdad had a window to himself. Now, mind you, our stepdad is a tobacco chewer. The big leafed Levi Garrett or a red man. And he kept his bottles in the seat. So it's hot. It's a hot summer day. And we were going from one town to another out on a flat stretch of highway. And we're pulling this big old loaded up thing of hay. So you can imagine after we've both hauled this hay and stacked it, we're just dead tired after we got our coke. So I put my coke in my seat. I go to sleep for a little bit. I wake up and I grab my Coke and I take about three gulps and realize that there's a leaf to chew and tobacco and hacked up loogies that are my stepdad had spit in there. So immediately I start hacking. and spitting it all over the dash. Meanwhile, Mike's nearly hanging out the window laughing at me and my stepdad swerving, swerving the truck and trying not to whip the trailer over. So he has to pull the truck over so both of those two can finish laughing as I finished spitting up the rest of that chewing tobacco that I swallowed. So lesson learned there too. I think that broke me from drinking sodas for a while as well, so.

That's not bad. I mean, that was a bad memory or a good memory. You laugh about it today and stuff. We all have memories like that. I can remember in high school that not Larry, but Robert and me would take your truck, because I didn't want to take my truck. And we would go, we would procure whiskey from different locations, from hunting camps. And he called, I called him my little whiskey running buddy. And that's kind of where I got my, I guess, taste for whiskey. And I had some of those moments too, where I drank too much whiskey at high school, but I still had that taste for whiskey and I love and respect for it. I didn't learn until later on that you just don't drink it straight out of a bottle and start mixing it. And today you still drink whiskey, right? How do you drink your whiskey?

Well, what I do now, and I have a taste for Gentleman Jack. I like that sweet taste that it has, and I know that it's probably mixed with something, but it has a nice sweet taste to it. It's not a... And I don't want to offend any whiskey drinkers out there, but... Jack Daniel's number seven to me tastes like it's been filtered through charcoal. It just has a really strong taste for me. So I found that Gentleman Jack has a lot smoother taste. But what I'll do sometimes is I'll cut it with Coca-Cola and I'll get one of those solid balls of ice and drop it in a cup. and drink it, and it's wonderful.

I think that probably does offend some whiskey drinkers, like the purists, the whiskey nerds as I like to call them, people that think they are better than they are. But truth be told, the master distillers, the distillery owners, they don't care how you drink your whiskey. They just want you to buy it off the shelf now. I tell you this, and I might've told this story on the podcast before, but when I made Chief in the Coast Guard, me and my wife went down to Jack Daniels. And as a surprise, we did like a private tour there and she had him engrave a bottle of Gentleman Jack for me with my date of rank and Chief Hyatt on there. It is a nice bottle and it had a Coast Guard emblem on there. So I had saved that bottle, not opened it. I was going to save it for a long time and I put it inside of our bar. Big mistake. I should have like hit it somewhere. But we were out of town. I don't know where we were. We were on vacation in Mexico, I think, and you needed a place to stay in St. Louis. And I said, yes, go ahead, man. Stay at our house. That way you don't have to pay for a hotel or anything. So I come home from vacation. First thing that didn't work was my TV. I couldn't figure out how to get my TV back on. I was like, that dude broke my damn TV. And then I go to get some, something whiskey or something out of the bar. And I see that bottle bottom or the, I see that bottle of gentlemen Jack and it's almost completely gone. I mean, how many days do you stay there? Two days. We went to a football combine for my son.

And you tore that gentleman Jack up, didn't you?

I still have the bottle to this day, but it's only, I think it's got like a small pour of whiskey left in it. So warning to you, if you're going to have family members come to your house and you have a sentimental bottle of whiskey that you don't want drank that's been engraved or signed and you want to keep it back there for collectible. And I say, I don't collect whiskey. Uh, But if you want to have that bottle and you want to have it for a long time, make sure you hide it from people like Mitch so they don't drink it. Well, this this whiskey right here, Mitch, it's young for 50 bucks, though. If you're coming to Oklahoma and you want to get a whiskey from Oklahoma, I would say this is a good whiskey to get there. Actually, it's distilled here. The grains come from here in Oklahoma. I don't see where they're growing grain here, though. I didn't see no grain fields while I was here. All I saw was a bunch of dry stuff and dry trees.

Yeah, I think you'll see a lot of out in western Oklahoma City. Once you get out of the city, you'll start seeing all the fields open up and even, I mean, east, west. Once you get up north by Kansas, I guess. Oh, yeah. You'll start seeing that. And then out west, even out going towards the Panhandle, you're going to see all of that. I mean, a good farm country out there, but Oklahoma City, most of it is sucked up by buildings and stuff. So there's a whole lot of agriculture that you'd see here. And there's also crop rotation. You got to remember we were the part of the center of the dust bowl.

Yeah, you'd have to have crop rotation, which brings me to another point. I'd like to see the small distillery try to use some wheat. That's kind of weird to me that they don't have a wheat. You know, most Texas bourbons have have wheats. And on the second half of the show here, we're going to actually drink a Texas bourbon that I'm pretty excited about. So Yeah, keep listening to us and we'll be right back.

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All right, listeners, we're back for the second half of the Mike and Mitch Storytelling Podcast. No, seriously. I'm just hanging out here with Mitch today, my baby brother here in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And on the second half of the show, we're actually going to taste a bourbon out of Grapevine, Texas. Recently moved the distillery over to Palestine, Texas and Eastern Texas, great vines up around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. But this is Tawa Cairo. Four grain whiskey, a bourbon whiskey there. This is a little over two years old, which for a Texas whiskey is not a bad age. Now this is like Coca-Cola color, right? It's dark, dark amber, real beautiful. The mass bill on this is 65% corn, 11% wheat, 11% rye, and 13% malted barley. This is, All distilled, produced and bottled in Texas. All the grains come from Texas, which I like. Being our home state, you know, it's always nice to take a chance to try something new out of there. I'm always big on the Texas whiskeys. So what are you getting on that nose?

All right, so I got a couple different flavors here. I got like buttered caramel. And oddly enough, if you've ever opened up like a sour grape, like a wine, you kind of get that smell like a really strong sour grape smell. Not sour like in that sense, but like if you made a wine out of those really tart grapes.

Yeah, I'm getting some burnt sugars on this. Like if you almost tried to make some caramel in the pan. If you're cooking some kind of dessert, like a creme brulee or something.

A little bit of corn on here.

I like that they kept it lower and they went with that four grain. Some of that softness with the wheat. A little bit of that rye there. I'm not sure what else I get on that. I'm not really getting any cereal notes or anything. I'm actually getting a little bit of coffee on this. And that could be that darkness that we're seeing in this. Maybe a little bit of oak. I hate doing typical bourbon notes, but I get a little bit of leather and oak on this. Nice smell of bourbon. Four grains are always a little different, Mitch.

Did you say leather? Yeah, a little bit of leather. You know what, when I first smelled it and I didn't want to offend anybody on here but it kind of smells like those new leather shoes that your grandpa had or something that... Well, you actually bought a brand new pair of boots. There is a hint of leather on here but I was like, I don't know if I should mix that with what we're talking about here but it does. It really does have that leathery smell and you don't want to, I don't know if you kind of take that with alcohol or not but...

As this is opening up, I'm getting a little bit of baking chocolate in there, too. I mean, like, I remember my mom would make those no-bake cookies that we love so much.

Yeah.

You get a little bit of that Hershey's baking chocolate. Well, hey, I say cheers. Let's taste this thing.

Kanpai. Wow.

That is super good. I actually get a little bit of pecan pie with that. Just that corn sweetness is coming through. The softness of that wheat. Just a hint of spice like white pepper.

Now it does, to me, I get a chocolatey taste, but it's actually really smooth. Normally, alcohol has a bite whenever it hits my tongue and then when it hits the back of my throat. But this one right here, it's pretty smooth because I'll let it set on my palate for a little bit and it's really, really smooth going down. It's not bad.

Yeah, I get those chocolates in it too. Super beautiful whiskey. I am so glad I picked this up. The only problem with me picking this up today, right, is that I opened it so I can't take it on the plane. So I'm gonna leave it for you. I'm glad you like it.

A little peppery going down. You think it's peppery? Yeah. Whenever you swallow it to the back of your throat, you can feel a peppery.

I get that just a hint of white pepper, but I get no Kentucky hug on this at all. I didn't get any Kentucky hug actually on the first bourbon either. This bottle is a little different too. It's not round. It means it's It's got a round shape to it. It's not round. It's kind of flat on the sides though. But I haven't seen a lot of bourbons out there like that. Yeah, like a banjo maybe. I could get that. So you're not actually, we were talking in the break about childhood memories and you live up here in my tornado alley. Yeah. I was surprised because I went in your garage and it almost looked like you had a fallout shelter. Well, it's a fallout shelter, but I thought it was like a place where you change your oil. I said, man, that's a nice garage. Got a place to go down there and get underneath your car. Actually, you could. Do a little work, right? But it's a tornado fallout shelter. And we had to deal with that when we were growing up, tornadoes. People from Eastern part of the country, the East Coast or the West Coast, they don't have to deal with tornadoes like we do here in the Midwest.

Well, I think they're starting to, as the weather patterns are starting to change, you're starting to see that on the East Coast and the West Coast, but we do a lot. And I know whenever we were growing up as kids down in Texas, we would see that a lot. We'd look on the horizon, you know, our parents would take us out and we would look for tornadoes on the horizon like, okay, now we're going to see the train come to our house. But our mom would tell us, she would say, Mike, Mitch, and the girls, she'd say, all right, if you hear a tornado, it's going to sound like a train coming. So, the first thing that comes to mind to me and Mike is we're going to hear the train going, We never heard a train come, unfortunately, but now we know what that is with 100 plus mile per hour winds coming down and what it did to more Oklahoma and to many different places. I know Mike provided support to Joplin, Missouri, and he got to see that destruction firsthand. Nobody wants to do that, so it definitely scares you. It's like a bolt of lightning. I mean, that's one of those things that you just want to avoid. And tornadoes is something to really take seriously. So that area that we have in our garages, our house may be leveled, but that thing is strong enough right there because it's built in concrete to prevent the house from falling on us. The only thing that I would fear inside those things that are built inside of our garage, because it's ground level, is if there's a hard rain after it and it floods, you could potentially drown.

That's a scary thought. Yeah, I actually provided tornado relief to Moore, Oklahoma. Whenever that tornado happened there. One of the girls at our unit I was at at the time, she was from North Oklahoma, and I wanted to make sure she asked me if we could do something. I said, yeah, I'll get it together. We actually sent an entire semi full of supplies down to North Oklahoma. And then we may flower Arkansas, which is right outside of Little Rock. They were hit by a tornado a couple of years ago. And I sent a trailer full of stuff down there, too. And then I obviously I did job in Missouri also with with the help of many people. But so Mitch, another great talent you have, but I'm super proud of you and I wish that you would have not been in the Marine Corps and you've got to kind of lived out your passion. And I won't say you're not too old to live out your passion, but you're a pretty damn good singer too, right? And you play the guitar a little bit.

Yeah.

You think you play, you think you play any whiskey songs for us?

Probably not today.

You don't think you can?

No, I don't think I can.

Do you know any whiskey songs today? You don't know Tennessee Whiskey?

No, not all of it. You don't know the whole thing? No.

Well, if everybody, if you follow me on Instagram or you follow me personally on on Facebook, make sure you check out one of the videos I'll post of Mitch singing at a club while we were down here. You went out saying some David Allen co song.

Mama tried right now. It was never call me by my name. Never call me by my name.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you were saying that about hearing the train coming, I was actually thinking about Johnny Cash and him singing his song Fouls of Prison. I could hear that train coming. In my mind, whatever Mama said, Hey, you're going to hear a train coming. I was like, man, maybe Johnny Cash would be swinging.

Yeah. I always try to interject Mike into whenever I'm singing. And in generally, whenever he comes and visits, we sing Pancho and Lefty together.

But yeah, there wasn't enough whiskey or, you know, I was actually, I felt pretty good that night. I'd say by the end of the night, both of us had major heartburn going on. We ate some barbecue earlier in the day, but maybe that's what it was. That bar was super packed that night here in downtown Oklahoma City. You can go downtown, beautiful area, got a Riverwalk area.

It's kind of like San Antonio, a small scale version.

Smaller scale version. It's still really nice and a nice place to visit. Kind of shocked me that that was downtown. I wasn't expecting that. I was just kind of expecting a big city center and I would like to see Louisville, Kentucky or Lexington, Kentucky do something like they do on the Riverwalk or they got in Fort Worth, Texas. Dallas is supposed to be like that now. Cities are turning their downtown areas into a place to visit. I'd like to see more of that in Louisville, Kentucky, but you never can tell. The urban bourbon trail is coming back there. It was nice to find these two bourbons on a shelf here in Oklahoma. It was kind of shocking. And then I found a bunch of other little allocated bourbon, actually. I found a couple bottles of Weller 107, around 80 bucks a bottle for that. A little over, but not too far over where I didn't feel bad for paying for it. And I actually found some Elijah Craig barrel proof, which was a shock to me right at MSRP at $65. So I was over the moon for that. It was nice that we had opened the Willard 107 another night and let our baby sister taste some of that.

I don't know if she even tasted any. She wouldn't taste it. I think she's allergic to alcohol. She'll turn red. She turns redder and label on the Willard 107 here. So yeah.

Well, this is, this is actually a really decent whiskey. You know, you got to go on the interview where I did at Balcony's episode and you come pretty much stumbling out of that place because they just poured the whiskey for us, poured the whiskey, treated us great. Even after the episode was over with, they took us outside to their hospitality tent at the time they had outside and gave us a bunch of drinks out there. We were just having a good time over there. But it's nice to see these expressions coming out of Texas like this. And I will tell you people that if you're not picking up these craft distilleries, if you're not picking up these bottles and trying them at least once and sharing them with your friends, you're missing out. This to me is a very special bottle. 90 proof. It doesn't drink like a 90 proofer. It's actually 96 proof. It doesn't drink like that. I would say it drinks right in the 100 range, but it's not super hot. Very drinkable, nice, easy sipper. I got to give these guys a thumbs up, Mitch.

Now, would you think that, I know that a lot of Kentucky people might say, no, the bourbon trail begins and ends here, but would you feel like that there's some smatterings in Texas? I know that you talk very highly of some of the bourbons that you drink down in Texas, from Texas. they're still there, where do you feel like there's kind of a pattern?

It's not, I wouldn't say it's pattern. The Texas Whiskey Trail is growing and the whiskeys there are gaining more respect. Whereas Iron Root this year, 2020 actually beat out Rebel Yale 10 year as Bourbon of the Year for World Whiskey Awards. That's some high praise. People are starting to see that Texas, I think it should all actually be its own category of whiskey. It's just that special to tame that Texas heat. They're very dark. They're very chocolatey. Some people say they're too oaky. I don't get a whole bunch of oak in this. Did you? No, not at all. It's not that overpowering oak where you would get it out of like a 17 or 20 year old Kentucky bourbon. And I think bourbon drinkers need to understand, yes, great bourbon does come out of Kentucky. Some of the world's best bourbon comes out of there. That doesn't mean at some point Texas whiskeys aren't going to rise to that level. You know, Kentucky has been doing bourbon since 1790s, earlier than that really. Texas has only been, last 20 years is all they've been doing whiskey. So did they have a little bit to catch up? Heck yeah, it takes a while. If you took a, me and you both have a great love for football, right? When we get together, we'll talk about football. We call each other every day and use the conversation, some of that conversational role around football, what's going on in either college football or the NFL or even sometimes high school football. It's kind of like a division one football team or a division two football team saying, Hey, we're going to move up and we're going to play division one football. Um, they don't hit it out of the gates and win a national championship that first year, right? Yeah. It would take them how many years to get to that point?

Potentially several, several. I mean, you've got, but then again, there might be one or two of those bourbons there that, that pull it out like Boise state and, and they're beaten top tier. top tier teams, you know, like that.

And that's, to me, that's our route. We're, you know, Texas bourbon and Texas whiskey. They don't have to wait as long for their whiskey as Kentucky to do really to age. I think our route that won the Harbinger 115, it was 32 months old. went up against 10 year old bourbon. Yeah. And it's actually darker than that 10 year old bourbon. I've brought several people to my house. Now this right here, this, I mean, listeners, I'm telling you how dark this is and you'll see the photos I took of this. This is some dark stuff. It's like Coca-Cola. Yeah. I just, I'm super impressed with this. I'm so glad I bought it. I'm so glad I'm leaving here for you. And I'm glad you're starting to appreciate whiskey is a whiskey drinker. You know, you start, tasting, sipping on a little bit different and you don't get that big bite. You don't shoot it back. We were actually talking to Eric, your son, yesterday about it. He said, well, maybe I need to re-approach whiskey in a different way. And I would tell people that if you've had a bad experience with whiskey, approach it from a different way. Listen to go to a tasting and learn how to taste whiskey. Or don't be ashamed to mix it with something, you know. Heck, I can remember mixing whiskey in high school with all kinds of crazy stuff.

Yeah, I would say the biggest misconception that I know is a lot of folks whenever they first start taking alcohol and kind of experimenting a little bit and drinking is they want to shoot it. They'll pour bourbon and they'll just shoot it. It says whiskey on it, I'm going to get a shot of whiskey. And whenever you're drinking bourbon, I find that if you're really going to truly enjoy it, you've got to kind of let it sit on your palate and sip it. Don't go crazy with it. And like Mike was saying, mix it with something that you can handle if you can't quite handle the alcohol. And I know some people are allergic to alcohol or have reactions to it. Some people will cut it with water. It really depends, but that way you can still enjoy that taste because we all have a certain taste that we enjoy, whether it be food or whatever. Try to enjoy that whenever you're drinking bourbon.

Well, can you remember yesterday, I mean, you were sitting at a bar yesterday and we're eating some chips and dip, right? We ordered it, some queso's on that plate. If you don't know what queso is, it's a cheese dip. Big down in Texas, in the Southwest, right? People really love it. But the other thing that came on that platter was guacamole. And I can remember as kids, I didn't like avocados at all. I really didn't like guacamole. It looked gross to me, actually. I was like, oh, it was probably too old at the time, you know, because avocados will turn really brown if you let it set out for too long. And but as I got older and I somebody said, hey, retaste this, you know, I was like, I don't like guacamole. I was like, I don't know. I'm not particular to that. It's not sickening to me as some other foods are, but I gave it a taste and now I love it. It's guacamole is addictive. Now I'll eat it any way I can find it. There is a food we won't eat though, right? That our sisters will eat it, but we won't eat. Neither one of us will eat chicken and dumplings. If we got invited to somebody's house, I don't know about you, but I'd be like, I'll have a big glass of water.

Yeah, that's a bad experience there. We went over, we were little. Our mom took us up to Arkansas and I believe it was summertime and it snowed that summer. We have pictures of it where there's corn stalks out and there's snow on the ground. But she was whipping up some chicken and dumplings. And I was a little bitty guy. I was probably four year, maybe three or four years old. And I do recall it looked like mashed potatoes to me. And most kids, you see mashed potatoes with a couple speckles of pepper in it. You're like, you get excited. So we asked grandma for two scoops. And then I took a bite of that juicy, soggy bread dumpling and I decided I didn't want to eat it. And my grandmother decided otherwise, so I sat there and cried and stared at that chicken and dumplings and eventually she let me go from the table. But yeah, ever since then, I won't eat that. And of course, Mike loves something. I wanted to kind of liken this to something he was talking about guacamole a while ago. If somebody tried to do that with me with sushi and it didn't work. So it's not for everybody. Sushi, they tried to get me to have a different approach with it and I tried it and I just couldn't stomach it or palate it. Even when you were over in Japan? Yeah. I find I love it. Yeah, they had a lot of sushi bars in mainland Japan. And the kids would eat fish eyes and they'll eat all kinds of sushi. And I would let the grapefruit and all of the fruits come around and I'd eat the fruits. I just couldn't stomach the sushi. I can look at it all day, but I just can't palette it.

Yeah, I think I found a love for sushi actually when I was in Korea. It may have a different kind of role over there called kimbap. And I love that. It's more of rolled up. and seaweed and rice and like vegetables and some egg in there and you dip it in the sauce over there and I started eating that. I was like, man, I try this sushi stuff too and started eating that and I have a love for it. It's kind of like whiskey to me. You're right. There's every person on the face of earth has a different palette. And what I might like is not necessarily what somebody else would like. All I can do is give my recommendation off of what I like myself. And if you don't like it, sorry, I can't pay you back for that bottle of whiskey that I suggested to you. But usually when I'm drinking with somebody else, both people will like it and we have different palates. And me and you obviously have a different palette because there are certain things you'll eat that I want to eat. Not many things. I probably have a more open mind to food than you do, I would think. I actually have a more open mind than all three of my siblings. I'm pretty positive because my older sister's a little picky, Monica's a little picky. Yesterday she said she wouldn't eat any fish. And I think you have a little bit more worldly view because of being in the military, eating different stuff. But my eyes are just like, oh, you did the damn near anything.

Yeah.

Maybe that's why. four or five inches taller than everybody else.

That's why they call you Big Chief and not Slim Jim. I would share with the folks that are familiar with Big Chief that when we were younger, we were pretty destitute when it came to finances, so food was scarce. So a lot of times I had to share a room with Mike and what we would find is mom would come home from the store and she would have pie filling and all this stuff and we'd get excited, you know, whenever there was a payday and all of a sudden that stuff would disappear. I'm like, where is all that stuff? And then lo and behold, whenever we finally did clean our room, we'd find the empty pie filling cans and everything inside of Mike's closet. So he would snack up that stuff. I shared a story with you in an earlier segment about getting that Coke and that soda pop. Well, there were times where sometimes we had to share a candy bar. And what Mike would do is he would lick the whole candy bar and then offer me some like I was going to take it. So, nobody wants a kerosene covered candy bar. So, you just kind of go without and you pout and walk away like, you licked that candy bar and it was supposed to be shared with me. So, yeah, I would say that Mike doesn't shy away from too much food. But if you're rounding with food that he likes, just be wary.

I would say that. I remember that time with the candy bar that we had to share. Both girls got a candy bar. They got their own candy bars. Our mom just had enough money for one candy bar. Now, a lot of people think, oh, that's horrible, right? But you're right. We were just dirt poor. Some people might look at us today and say, oh, you came from money or you came from this or you came from that. And that's the one thing I'm so proud of you about is, you know, we could have easily been in different situations in our life, both of us. But we picked ourselves up from our bootstraps. We both joined the military and people were like, oh, you had it so easy to join the military. And I was actually talking to you about this. It's not like an inner city kid where there's a recruiting office that's right around the corner from you. We had to actually make an effort to find a recruiter, drive like 90 miles to the recruiting office, right? Yeah. And we never look back. Sometimes it's like being in prison. I think, you know, you stay in the military 23, 24 years and you just keep looking and think, man, here's my release date. Here's my release date. I can make it another year. You get 20 years and you're like, I can make a couple more years of this. I did this long. But we made our, we made it ourselves, came from dirt and nothing. And actually you have a photo that I gave you in your spare bedroom of me and you as little kids. And you can almost see how poor we were in that photo. Like just skinny as rails, a little bitty guys. I think we were probably 10, 11 years old in that photo. and neither one of us are small men today. I would say the military gave us that. They gave us that work ethic. Not so much because we also talked about our stepdad and something good that he gave us. I think it was just that we had to work. We didn't have any choice.

So yeah. I always liken it to that movie Holes. Those kids had to go out there and they had to dig them holes. And what he said is that the kid asked, what does it do? And he said, it builds character. And I think what it did for us Even though we did a lot of free labor, we learned a lot of trades. We learned Mike was an extremely good welder. I know that he's probably out of touch with that now, but he was in high school. I mean, I bragged about it, you know, and wasn't all with it. But we also had, I mean, building fence, building barns. We had that craft, you know, working around the house. and helping people, you know. Hall and Hay, we knew some of those things, you know, as far as when it came to farming and stuff. But one of the things that we kept in mind, because a lot of kids will say, well, here's that security, is I'll just stay here the rest of my life and I'll do this hard labor. Well, what you've seen these two farm kids, we've seen, we realized that life exists beyond the city limits of this town. And we picked up and said, you know what, I'm going to take a chance on this and go out into the military and see the world and have an experience. And we took advantage of that. Now, whenever you get to past 20 years in the military and you keep pushing and pushing and pushing, I did get advice from somebody one day that she told me, a retired colonel, Um, she said, you'll know when it's time, your body will let you know when it's time. And I think about that third year in the wheel started coming off and the tread that whenever your knees start wearing out and your shoulders start wearing out, you say, you know what? Okay. It's time to find a career that isn't so dawning on your system.

So yeah, I agree with you on that. I, I think at that 20 year mark, the wheels had already came off. I was probably running on four, four flat tires. Um, you know, I just, your body does wear down after that many years, especially if you're doing a, not everybody in the military has to do a harder job, but if you've ran for 20 years, kind of been forced to do them kind of hard things, driving a boat for 20 years, my hands are extremely sore all the time from arthritis and my back sore. I'd say I six foot five at one time, but I've never been six foot five. Six, three, but still, I still hurt every day when you wake up and stuff. But I'm still proud as I can be of you and your military service. And it's just a joy to come down here to Oklahoma, sit down, drink some whiskey with you. We drank just a little bit of beer, too, though, didn't we? Yeah. Just a tad bit of beer. We had a good time down here. Got some great whiskeys to bring back with me. Just a follow up on the two whiskeys drink, one from in here in Oklahoma. Hoochytown, I think that's how you say it. I don't know. I called the lady. She kind of explained it to me a little bit. The owners are supposed to call me back. Hoochytown, I think that's how you say it. Uh, 90 proof, $50 for the bottle. Probably more of a mixer for me right there at 50 bucks. That's hard to do. But if you from Oklahoma or come to Oklahoma, you want to get Oklahoma whiskey. I'd say pick that bottle up. Um, you're not going to go wrong. Um, the second whiskey we drank, second bourbon out of Texas, Taiwan Cairo. Um, man, what a great bottle for 50 bucks. I say grab it all day long. They actually have a. cast strength, and I'm going to be bringing that back to Kentucky. Me and Jim will be doing a review on that. So make sure you look for that. Mitch, you don't have any social media, do you? You're just a private fellow.

I don't. I'm really private. So you'll know whenever I do.

Well, you can find the Bourbon Road on all social medias. You can find us on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Make sure you give us a follow there. You can go to our website, theburbanroad.com. On our website, you can see our articles, our reviews. You can buy our swag. Make sure you go on there, check it out. If you have any great ideas for shows, you can leave us a comment on there about what would be good for a show. Or maybe, hey, what we're doing wrong and what you want to see is correct. I do know say, I say, oh, my lot. So I've tried to correct it. I can't just let you know. Check out that website. Our swag's on there. The Bourbon Bullshitter t-shirt, our Bourbon Road shirt. cap and our glasses that we're drinking out of today. Make sure you check out those. On Facebook, we also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. 1600 people strong in there. They're like a family to us. You got to answer three questions to get into that group. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon and do you agree to play nice because we don't tolerate any rudeness? That saying comes from what movie, Mitch?

Nelson Duff. I don't know.

Yeah, you're right. Woodrow McCall said that in Nelson Duff. We just want everybody else to be able to drink something in there, post photos of something. If they have a starter whiskey they've just started with, that's their first bottle they're proud of, if they're going to a craft distillery. If you don't like that craft distillery, say, hey, it's just not for me. That's all you have to say. You don't have to bring them down for what they're drinking. If they want to mix it with Coke like Mitch does, We want them to be able to do that. We want them to be part of our family. We want to raise everybody up. Me and Jim always says, rising tides raise all ships. That's what our group does. Go in there, become a member. You also get 10% off any of our swag if you're a member in there for 2021. So you want to do that. You can find us on social media. Jim can be found at jshannon63. I'm One Big Chief and we'll see you going down.

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