I've never had a mint julep
In 1971, when I was on the Miami University Library staff, I had a great student assistant, Bob Kirby, who stood about 5'9" or so, weighed around 140 lbs, and had a huge, enormous afro, so from a distance he looked like a walking mushroom. He lived in a tri-level house with 5 or 6 other students, including a married couple, and a very pretty theatre student, Betty Something, whose last name I've now forgotten. It's too bad because Betty was a very free spirit of limited intellect who was constantly in hot water, especially in class or at work, for her outrageous public displays of untainted natural ignorance. Each student had a room, and it's my memory that Betty's room was the entire basement.
Kirby and I pondered for several months about the nature of the mint julep; they seemed a staple of southern gothic literature and a cliche of lazy rich southern life and we wanted to know what a julep was like: how it was made, how it tasted, when it was served, etc. So on a Friday evening, Spring 1971, Kirby and Betty invited me to dinner. When I got there, Kirby told me Betty was out roaming neighborhood gardens in search of mint to "borrow" for the juleps and had no idea when she would be back. She soon arrived with lots of fresh mint, much more than we'd ever need, and spent some time pounding much of it to a pulp. The other roommates were there, except for the husband of the wife who was doing most of the cooking with Kirby (pork, as I recall).
As the wife was setting the table, she said to me, "when my husband gets here, we'll have fresh flowers for the table." And I said, "That's nice. Does he work for a florist?"
She answered, "He's a gravedigger."
I have no memory of the juleps now, so I'm sure they were quite uneventful, as was the dinner. I believe Kirby now lives in the Seattle area and I have no idea if Betty ever graduated from college. My last memory is that she worked box office for a summer theatre and was finally sent to work in the shop because the tickets were so screwed up.
