The Wandering Adventurers: May 5

May 5

We drove south today along beautiful country roads to Lynchburg, the home of the Jack Daniels Distillery and Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House Restaurant. It’s in the smallest county in TN and must be one of the smallest towns. Chris and Norm were happy to see that the charming town hadn’t changed in 20 years. Miss Mary Bobo’s lovely white house with a white picket fence is right on Main St. We had reservations for a noon time dinner. We were assigned to the lovely Jasper dining room with Dot as our hostess. Sitting around the round table with a big lazy susan in the center filled with southern dishes was warm and cozy in a delightful way. Miss Bobo began serving meals in her boarding house in 1908. Jack Daniel was one of her loyal customers. For 77 years her meals satisfied many a customer. She had a big birthday celebration on her 99^th birthday and lived to just shy of 102. The Jack Daniel company bought the home after she died and Jack Daniel great grandneice is now running it and doing an amazing job. It is no longer a boarding house and you must have made a reservation to dine there. Dot, our charming hostess, kept the conversation going and told some fun and interesting stories about Miss Mary and the area. The food was amazing!!!! The best fried chicken and meatloaf I have ever tasted, yummy fried ochre, mac and cheese, cooked apples and on and on. Everything was top notch! Each year they give out 7 scholarships to graduating high school seniors for two years at the community college. They must keep their grades up plus work at the establishment. That gives them 14 young ladies to do various jobs in the running of the restaurant. They get their college paid for, get paid, and learn about running a business with their two years. It’s a win, win situation all the way around. So, Miss Mary Bobo’s continues serving fabulous lunches to folks like us.

The distillery is in a lovely setting and has a great visitor center with an hour long tour. We found out a few things that help to make Jack Daniels #7 the biggest seller in the nation: the iron free spring water that filters through limestone, they continue to make their own charcoal by burning sugar maple wood to use for filtering our impurities in the “product,” and they make their own barrels out of white oak using each one only once. Their secret recipe using rye, corn and barley hasn’t changed since Jack Daniel became the first licensed distiller in TN in 1866 at the age of 20. The story goes that he left home when he was 7 and worked for a distiller learning the business. Jack took over the business when he was 13. He moved his business to its present location at the spring in 1866 when he got licensed at 20 years old. He traveled north with his “product” to the Worlds Fair and won first place putting Jack Daniels #7 on the map. After that he did a lot of traveling to promote his whiskey and left the running of the business to his nephew Lou Motlow. I guess he must have set a very dapper image at 5 foot 2 in his white hat and tails. There are many stories of him being quite a ladies man. Returning from a trip he came into the office and tried to open the safe. Having difficulty, he gave it a big kick breaking his toe. Gangrene set in and after a succession of amputations, sadly he died in 1911. I guess there was quite a group of women that showed up at the funeral thinking they were his one and only! He left the business to Lou Motlow who in turn left it to his four sons. The business has grown tremendously and is now part of a large corporation but the basics are still the same as they were in 1866. An added benefit for the employees is “Good Friday.” Once a month on Friday’s pay day, all the employees get a bottle of #7! I’ve never tasted it. Norm bought one of those tiny bottles at the Package store to give it a try. Great tour; Big John had a lot to say!