KENTUCKY: Mint-Flavored Mickey

KENTUCKY Mint-Flavored Mickey Kentucky's Governor Lawrence W. Wetherby exhibited truly remarkable restraint last week in the face of provocation calculated to send him and his state's entire electorate into at least the milder manifestations of apoplexy: the Vicksburg Chamber of Commerce not only claimed that the mint julep was originated in Mississippi, but that Kentuckians never heard of it until both the recipe and the mint had been transplanted there by a bourbon-drinking boatman. But though Kentucky's governor spoke softly, he did not fail to slip Mississippi a mickey.

"I thought," said he, "that we were at peace, Kentucky with the mint julep and Mississippi with the planter's punch. Kentucky has never questioned Mississippi's glorious heritage as the originator of planter's punch. That drink is not without merits, either. It is made of rum, and rum is made of molasses from the sorghum cane that Mississippians revere as we Kentuckians love the billowing blue-grass." He paused. "It is," he concluded, "highly palatable in emergencies and an excellent mosquito repellent at all times."