Lookin’ for sumpin’ to do in SW Pennsylvania next month? Cousin Polly informs me that the Whiskey Rebellion Dinner is coming up July 17th in Washington, PA.

Sponsored by The Bradford House and none other than Jim Beam himself, the event will honor an early staple of the Western Pennsylvania economy… Whiskey. (Okay, okay, so Jim Beam has been dead a while, but a direct descendant, Frederic Booker Noe III, will be there in his stead.)

And now the disclaimer… this is a fund-raising event (which translates as “tickets are not cheap”). A c-note and a quarter gets you a whiskey tasting experience (not to be confused with a wine tasting experience), Rebellion-era cuisine (sit-down dinner), and whiskey stories (not to be confused with drunken dialogs) from Mr. Noe. Oh, and your very own special-label bottle of Knob Creek Whiskey. There are discounts for groups of four or more people and by all means, report back to us if you go!

For ticket information and an order form, please click here (a .pdf file will open). For more information, contact Tripp Kline, president of the Board of the Bradford House, at 412-916-0187 or, by email, at trippkline@yahoo.com.

On a slightly related note, I recently finished reading Leland Baldwin’s Whiskey Rebels: The Story of a Frontier Uprising. Now, I’m sure you native Pennsylvanians know all about the cost of stills and such (grin), but I had no idea that at the time of the Rebellion, stills cost as much as a 200 acre farm! Nor did I know the cost was usually shared among neighbors.

I read somewhere that many of the so-called “rebels” who signed various petitions were often the victims of forgery. But I had no idea how many were afraid “Tom the Tinker” would burn their homes and barns if they didn’t support the Rebellion. So how ’bout you? Read any good books lately?

And finally, on a completely unrelated note… I suffered a hard drive crash a couple of weeks ago. The good news is… nothing on this site was affected and most of my personal research was backed up. The bad news is… I lost two years worth of e-mail (backup file was corrupted).

So, if we’ve corresponded at length during that time, there’s a very good chance I’ve lost your e-mail address. Feel free to send it again.

Oh, and the title of this post? No offense intended toward women, it’s just the title of one of my favorite blues tunes by John Lee Hooker. How’s that for a non-sequitur?