Whitney Tubman Moves In

As our dream begins to look more like a distillery and less like a construction zone, I start to envision ourselves witnessing our product flow from the still… and it truly is such a ‘dream come true’ that it’s almost as if we are onlookers in our story. Walking into the distillery on the weekends is very much like walking into another person’s shoes and sometimes seems so far away from our weekday lives. This feeling gave us the inspiration to create our own unique distiller personas.

Whitney Tubman

Whitney Tubman's Locker

I wanted to connect to a W.H.H. Murray fictional character; however it is a known fact that Murray did not include prominent female personalities in his books. In fact at a luncheon with several literary men, including Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, there was discussion about feminine characters with Mr. Emerson strongly believing that in order for a story to make the average reader laugh and cry both, it couldn’t be written without a woman appearing in it. It appears Murray and his publisher took this as a challenge, intent to prove him to be wrong.

Because of this lack of feminine characters, I chose to combine two wonderful and totally opposite ‘odd-couple’ male characters, Parson Whitney and Deacon Tubman, from the short story “How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year’s” (1888).

Parson Whitney is described as having a ‘frozen’ book-worm personality and Deacon Tubman is a jolly happy man. The Deacon goes to visit the Parson, enticing him away from his anti-social books. The two sixty year old men spend New Year’s Day visiting with the young people of the town.

They realize that it is important to spend time pursuing adventure and enjoying more of the world around them. Experiencing and exploring the outdoors leaves them feeling youthful and invigorated.

The two got so carried away in the excitement of the events of the day, they forgot themselves and entered wildly into the youthfulness of the adventures.

When I feel I am getting too engrossed in the seriousness of responsibility, I remember these two and the New Year’s Day that they let all their hesitations cut loose and follow their youthful instincts.

Whitney and Tubman remind me to relish the sweetness of life.

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Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney