Springfield, Kentucky, is a fine small town. Picturesque. Clean. A quaint and familiar air of Mayberry-Americana covers the place like a comfortable patchwork quilt. It's about five or six blocks long, with a solid downtown offering sturdy brick buildings, including an opera house, the Washington County municipal building, and a handful of churches. It has some history too: Abraham Lincoln's father and mother were born nearby, a fact duly noted by well-placed historical markers. A cluster of unassuming frame houses presses hard along Main Street a few feet from the road. It was in one of these houses that Frederick Booker Noe II spent his childhood.
Born to Margaret and Frederick Booker Noe in 1929 on December 7 (a day that would later be infamous), Booker was the second of four children. The fact that his mother was the daughter of Jim Beam, the prominent bourbon distiller, didn't mean all that much to the people of Springfield. Even though Jim had made a name for himself in the whiskey business and was known and respected throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Noes were like every other family in Springfield: a tight-knit clan trying to get through the hard times brought on by the Great Depression. Besides, Prohibition was in forceâGranddaddy Jim owned a rock quarry now, not a distilleryâand the Beam name didn't have quite the cachet that it used to. Booker's father, known as Pinkie to his friends, was a vice president at the local First People's Bank, and his wife, Margaret, stayed at home to raise the kids and run things.
Being a Beam and the oldest grandson of America's best-known whiskey maker didn't seem to matter much to young Booker either. He was happy being a kid in Kentucky, embracing everything his surroundings could offer. Springfield was primarily a farming town, surrounded by rolling fields of wheat, corn, and tobacco, and Booker and his friends spent their free time fishing the ponds and streams and playing with slingshot guns up at the cemetery that overlooked the town. On Sunday afternoons, after mass at St. Dominic's, where he was an altar boy, Booker would head over to the 100-seat local movie theater with his best friend and cousin Bob Noe Hayden to watch the latest Western. Gene Autry was up there singing and shooting and the boys ate it up. As they saw it, their lives weren't that all much different from those of the cowboys. In their eyes Springfield was a frontier town surrounded by the wild and teeming with adventureâand maybe even danger.
Like most of the country, Kentucky was struggling during the thirties. The Depression hit farmers and the coal industry hard, but the Noes weathered the storm. Pinkie managed to keep his job at the bank, and the familyâunlike others in the areaâstayed afloat, neither rich nor poor. There were cheese sandwiches for lunch, baloney sandwiches after school, and Margaret's famous fried chicken and mashed potatoes on Sunday. Pinkie's weekend trips to Lexington for University of Kentucky games were also a ritual, as were short family excursions to visit friends and family in Old Green, a green Pontiac that ate up miles like Booker ate chicken legs.
There was also Booker's hunting. When he was 13 he graduated from slingshots to his father's shotgun, and the boy mastered it quickly, taking deadly aim at whatever he could. âWhen you went hunting with him, you never let him shoot first,â his younger brother Jerry recalled. âBecause if you did, you wouldn't have anything to shoot at. Whatever he shot at went down and you'd be standing there with your gun in your hand and nothing left to do.â
Weekends were spent tramping over fields in search of rabbits, pigeons, and ducks. The boys usually ate what they shot, taking home their kills and cleaning them at the kitchen table. One Sunday morning Booker and a schoolmate trespassed on a horse farm that bordered the Noes' land. Booker had been warned to stay off the farmer's land many timesâwarnings that had gone unheeded. When the farmer saw Booker standing on top of a hill on this particular day, he had had enough. Grabbing his rifle, he took a shot at the young teen and grazed his pant leg. Booker stayed clear of the farm from then on. There were plenty of other places to shoot ducks.
While life seemed relatively bucolic for the Noes, 25 miles away in Bardstown, Jim Beam was scrambling, confronted by an unprecedented double whammyâProhibition and the Depression. His distillery in Clermont, which he had bought in 1922, had remained dormant for years, a dilapidated and fading relic. While some of its rack houses still contained barrels of his family's whiskey, federal law prohibited him from selling any, a fact that irked, frustrated, and saddened him. He was a distiller, and distillers make and sell whiskey.
Prohibition had decimated not only the booming Beam enterprise, but the entire bourbon industry as well. At its onset, there had been 17 distilleries operating in the Bardstown area alone. Most of them were successful family-run enterprises, turning out whiskey for a growing and appreciative audience. Almost overnight those plants closed, the doors to their rack houses padlocked forever. A fair amount of the remaining whiskey was bootlegged out, the dwindling supply more precious than ever. The Bardstown area, because its location was central to the various distilleries, became a hub of whiskey contraband. Bootleggers used it as a base of operations, loading and dividing up the liquid, then gunning the engines of their tricked-out cars and trucks before racing out of town on dark back roads to points unknown.
The pockets of a lot of local distillersâand of some local sheriffsâgot fat during those times. Envelopes full of cash were offered in return for looking the other way when the whiskey was being loaded up. Some bootleggers didn't bother with cash. They showed up at a warehouse late at night, flashed a shotgun at the watchman, then took what they wanted.
Moonshining became common in the foothills and hollers, with the âshiners making what they could with whatever ingredients they had. The result was whiskey of dubious quality. Still, it was a living and families had to get by. So Mason jars were filled.
Jim Beam had chances to sell off his remaining stock, but he opted not to. While he did take a few barrels back to Bardstown, the rest stayed under lock and key back at the plant. Old Jim was a prudent man, and he thought running whiskey wasn't worth the risk. As he told his wife, Mary, âBourbon ain't worth going to jail forâand besides, Prohibition is going to end soon and before we know it we'll be back in business and all will be right in the world.â
So while his whiskey quietly evaporated, floating out through the cracks and holes in the white oak barrels, and while other distillers shut down and walked away, Jim tried his hand at a number of businesses, all of which failed. One of his final enterprises was a rock quarry that backed up to a shuttered distillery in Clermont, about 25 miles south of Louisville. Believing that Prohibition wouldn't or couldn't last long, Jim bought the closed distillery and bided his time while operating the quarry. Even with the help of his brother Park and his nephew Carl, that too struggled. Jim Beam, the fourth-generation distiller and part of a bourbon-making family dynasty, couldn't buy a breakâand as a result almost went broke waiting for the blessed repeal.
To be sure, Jim felt the weight of the family dynasty on his shoulders. He was fourth in a family line whose name was synonymous with bourbon. Some 130 years before, his great grandfather Jacob Beam, a pioneer of German descent, had come from Maryland with his young wife, Mary, in tow and passed through the Cumberland Gap. He was looking for a fresh start and new horizons, and he found both at a place called Hardin's Creek in Washington County, near what would one day be Springfield. It was there that Jacob started a farm, raising hogs and cattle and growing tobacco. He also grew corn because the climate was conducive to itâso conducive that he soon had too much of it. So using a water-driven mill to grind the corn and a pot still he had brought with him from Maryland he began to make whiskey, experimenting with various combinations of rye, barley, and of course, corn, the main ingredient, until he had it right. Soon his whiskey was in demand. Other farmers and travelers made it a point to stop by his farm with an empty jug, which Jacob was only too happy to fill, sometimes in exchange for a nickel, sometimes in exchange for a smoked ham or beaver pelt. Soon whiskey making was his primary occupation and the farm just a sideline, and the name Beam began to spread throughout the Ohio River Valley.
Jacob eventually turned operations over to his son David, who handed things over to his son David M. in 1853. Each contributed his own talent to the business; each moved the business forward. David figured out how to ship whiskey on flatboats to New Orleans, and David M. moved the distillery to nearby Nelson County, close to the new railroad.
Proximity to the railroad was key. Trains, now equipped with steam engines, gave the Beams a fast way to ship their whiskey. The telegraph helped business, too; when barkeeps ran low on liquor, they finally had a way to reach distillers and order more. Also adding to the growth of the industry was a change in the distillery process. David M. and other distillers began getting away from the pot still and using something called a column still. These new stills increased production so that more bourbon could be made.
Thanks to trains and new production methods, bourbon became firmly established in the Ohio River Valley and beyond. It soon emerged as the drink of choice in the Old West. When cowboys bellied up to bars in Dodge City and Austin and other frontier towns and asked for a whiskey, chances are that they got bourbon. It was the drink of cowboys.
During the Civil War, troops on both the Union and Confederate sides had their share of bourbon. In addition to helping to ease pain and fortify a soldier's spirits, it served as an anesthetic to help the wounded. Kentucky was a border state. It stayed in the UnionâMary Todd Lincoln, the wife of the president, was from Kentuckyâbut you could still own slaves, so it was essentially neutral. Legend has it that when the Union troops came to the Beam distillery, David M. flew the American flag; when the Confederates marched in, up went the rebel colors. Both were good customers.
After the war, David M. launched a new product called Old Tub, which proved quite popular for years. He also increased production. The Beam enterprise was on solid footing when Jim Beam, David M.'s son, joined the business at age 16. Young Jim proved a fast learner, and aided his father on both the distilling and business end. By the time he was 30 he was in charge, and he moved things forward as fast as he could. He built more rack houses to store more whiskey and he hired more people to do more work.
This went on for years. Then Prohibition hitâand it hit hard. Even though Jim had seen it coming (the temperance movement had been growing for a long time), he didn't have much of a plan B. When the law was finally repealed, Jim and his family dusted themselves off and got the old distillery in Clermont operational as fast as they could. But making whiskey takes timeâyearsâso while Jim's whiskey was sitting in barrels aging, trying to get old fast, thirsty Americans turned to Scotch and Canadian spirits, which were already available and ready for immediate consumption. While Jim's ancestors had, no doubt, faced their own share of problems, they had never faced the challenges that confronted him, and consequently he feared that he might be the last of a line of bourbon makers, a dynasty stopped dead in its tracks.
Booker and his family were somewhat impervious to the problems of Granddaddy Jim. They were one step removed from the whiskey industry. Booker's father never joined the family business, opting instead for the steady paycheck the First People's Bank offered. Still, they remained close to the bourbon-making side of the family, frequently piling into Old Green and heading over to Bardstown to pay Jim a visit. Despite circumstances, Jim and Mary Beam still lived in a house that, while not palatial, was certainly substantive. With its wide front porch and white column pillars it was a fixture on what was called Distiller's Row on North Third Street. The house was across the street from Jack Beam's house (Jim's uncle, who ran the Early Times distillery), and right next door to the home of the Samuels, another renowned bourbon family. There were big Sunday dinners, with bridge games in the parlor and sips of bourbon and water for the menfolk in the backyard on summer evenings. Jim wore a coat and tie most everywhere, and while his collar might have been a little frayed, he kept up appearances just fine.
He also kept a keen eye on his oldest grandson as he watched him run about the yard tossing a football, amazed at his dexterity as well as his burgeoning size. Booker was growing faster than a weedâtall and wideâfueled by an appetite that could only be described as prodigious. Ham, baloney, cheese, bread, pies, cakes, chicken, and fish: no one could eat like Booker. No one.
Booker's weight become more than a curiosity, however, when after a routine check of the boy's tonsils a doctor informed Margaret that Booker was simply growing too big, too fast.
âThat boy eats like the man he'll never grow up to be,â he told Margaret. âHe needs to slow down or he'll never make it to 20.â
Try as she might, Margaret couldn't get Booker to ease up at the table. The result was a man-child, a giant who kept eating and growing, his appetite for all things insatiable.
Booker's largeness defined him. Years later he would say, âI'm big, so I've always stood out.â He was the largest child in grammar school and later in high school, and because of his sheer size he was literally and figuratively looked up to as a leader, someone to follow. Over time, his personality caught up to his size. He knew people were looking at him and knew he intimidated folks and, while never soliciting that attention, he gradually accepted it and the responsibility that went with it. He became outgoing and popular, generous to a fault, and a fixture at parties and community events. Even as a youth, nothing ever happened until Booker Noe got there.
Despite his build, he wasn't a lumbering giant. Far from it. He was quick on his feet, moving about with an athlete's grace and stamina. He didn't get winded. Rather, even as a boy he could outwork grown men. Consequently he was in demand as a field hand around Springfield, cutting tobacco, beating the seeds out of hemp, bailing hay. Farmers were willing to pay top dollar for the strong Noe boy, who could work 10 hours without breaking a sweat as long as you fed him.
When Booker reached adolescence he went to the local school, Springfield High, but that didn't work out as planned. It seems he couldn't contain his rambunctiousness: His appetite for fun had become as large as his appetite for country ham. He loved parties, especially family parties, where he was known to sneak out and retrieve empty bottles of 100-proof Old Tub from behind the shed and, according to an Esquire magazine interview he gave many years later, drink the little drops left in the corners of the bottle. He didn't like what he tasted (hot and nasty), but that would soon change.
Things came to head one day when Booker got ahold of some dead chickens from a local brood house (a brood house is where young chickens that are ready to be sold are kept) and stuffed them in his pocket. The next day he and his friend Bubba pelted his fellow classmates with the chickens while they were on their way to recess. Soon af...
