Title: [Bubba-L] Literary Mint Julep Recipe Part 1
Categories: Beverages
Yield: 1 Servings

SEE DIRECTIONS

Just got some breathing room, and have been wading through about 700 Bubbagrams that piled up while I was otherwise engaged. Came across the julep discussion, and hope it's not too late to contribute some surbey data on the subject, along with what has to be the definitive literary recipe. //John Julep Time

Father and General Catchings and Captain McNeilly and Captain Wat Stone and Mr. Everman would forgather every so often on our front gallery. These meetings must habitually have taken place in summer, because I remember Mother would be in white, looking very pretty, and would immediately set about making a mint julep for the gentlemen -- no hors d'oeuvres, no sandwiches, no cocktails, just a mint julep. After the first long swallow ~- really a slow and noiseless suck, because the thick crushed ice comes against your teeth and the ice must be kept out and the liquor let in -- Cap Mac would say: "Very fine, Camille, you make the best julep in the world." She probably did.

Thus William Alexander Percy's memory of his Mississippi boyhood, long ago, from Lanterns on the Levee. Many things have changed, but the heat is still with us. As I write, it is a good deal more than 90 degrees in the shade, although, to be honest, I'm in an air-conditioned office, a recourse not available to Percy's parents and their friends. Still, the mere thought of the steamy heat outside makes me thirsty. And of course every hot and thirsty Southerner's thoughts turn to that cooling potation historically associated with Dixieland, the mint julep. Right?

No, suh.

Twice a year, our Center for the Study of the American South here in Chapel Hill conducts something called the Southern Focus Poll. We interview roughly 800 residents of the South and 400 other Americans about questions of compelling interest to Southerners -- or, anyway, to me. (I should note for the benefit of North Carolina taxpayers that these questions are not paid for by state funds.) Recently we asked folks, first, if they'd ever had a julep; second, if they knew what's in one. Brace yourself.

It turns out only one Southerner in four has ever sipped a julep. We are, if anything, less likely than other Americans to have done so: 26 percent of us, 29 percent of them.

Now, it's true that this devilishly delicious concoction isn't a drink for Christians, unless they're Episcopalians. Among the Wednesday night church-supper crowd (those who go to church more than once a week) four out of five have never tried one. But even of those aberrant Southerners who never darken the church door two-thirds are julep virgins.

Of course, Southerners are less likely than Yankees to 'fess up to drinking anything alcoholic: 39 percent of us claim to be teetotalers, only 24 percent of non-Southerners do. This means that Southerners who do drink are slightly more likely than non- Southern drinkers to have drunk juleps ~- but even most of them haven't.

Given that the julep has historically been a white man's drink, maybe it's not surprising that 95 percent of the black Southerners we spoke with had never had one. But neither had 70 percent of the Southern whites.

The julep has also been an aristocrat's drink, sipped in the shade of the veranda by folks like the General and the Captains of Percy's childhood, while the lower orders toiled in the sun, but come on, folks, it's the nineties. This ought to mean that plain folks can drink juleps, too. What seems to be happening instead, though, is that the aristocracy (or what passes for it these days) is drinking wine coolers and lite beer. Only a bare majority (52%) of those with incomes over $60,000 have even tried the julep.

From: Jim Weller Date: 06-21-98 (17:57) The Neverending Bbs (286) Fido-Natio

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