The B’s of Lexington: Burley Tobacco, Bluegrass, Booze, Breeding, Basketball

If you have ever drunk whiskey, smoked cigarettes and/or lost your rent money betting on a horse race, not only do you have a head start on a career in the country music song-writing business, but you also will feel a spiritual affinity for this fine city.

Welcome to Lexington, home of this year’s college basketball Final Four. This here is your unofficial, unauthorized, pseudo-authoritative tour of the town that was once known as the Athens of the West.

Lexington has held up somewhat better than the Athens of the East, which is in Greece. Heck, the arena there, the Acropolis, is in such bad repair it’s not fit to host a Mideast Regional, let alone a Final Four.

Now, on your left and right as we motor along, you’ll see rolling fields of green grass that will sprout purple blossoms and therefore is called bluegrass.

When folks here speak of bluegrass, they’re referring to either the grass, the style of country music that is also rooted here or the Bluegrass Steam Cleaners on North Lime Street, where they’ll cheerfully steam the grass stains out of your mandolin.

The bluegrass grass is for grazing. Lexington is the race-horse breeding capital of the world, hands down. The great nags run in nearby Louisville, but they get their mail right here in Lexington.

Man o’ War, Whirlaway, Swaps and Citation were born here. Seattle Slew and Alydar live here, but you can’t visit them right now because it’s breeding season, and, well, studs will be studs.

Along with grass and horses, they also grow tobacco here. Lexington is the world’s leading producer of burley tobacco, which is not to be confused with puny tobacco, used to make those thin cigarettes.

I’m not going to bore you with a lot of numbers, but on an average day during the tobacco auction season, 5- to 6-million pounds of tobacco is sold here by auctioneers who talk so fast that they can deliver the surgeon general’s cigarette warning message in 1.3 seconds.

Since people need something to hold in their other hand when they smoke, folks here also make world famous bourbon whiskey, such as Wild Turkey and Ancient Age.

Incidentally, hoop fans, bourbon was created in 1789 by Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister and president of Georgetown College.

Coming up on our right is the famous Lexington opera house. About 150 years ago, this city was the cultural center of the United States west of the Alleghenies, a title it later relinquished to Las Vegas.

Along with the opera house, they had paved streets, modern hotels, the west’s first college (Transylvania, which has produced many doctors, lawyers, and one Count), stately mansions, and Belle Brezing’s bordello, the most lavish in the South.

Lexington was, as my tourist pamphlet here says, a center for culture, learning and genteel, affluent living.

The genteelness came to a screeching halt in 1930, when the University of Kentucky hired a basketball coach named Adolph F. Rupp and turned Lexington citizens into drooling, whooping basketball maniacs.

Until then, Kentucky basketball had roughly the same fan appeal and national impact as Kentucky croquet.

Rupp introduced his players to something new in the South--running with the basketball. For 38 years, they ran and they ungenteelly kicked butt, winning 83% of their conference games and five national championships.

All that winning didn’t do much to improve Rupp’s personality. He was a tough, grouchy, cagey egomaniac. Inside that gruff exterior beat a heart of synthetic pebble-grain basketball hide.

Just the other day, A.B. (Happy) Chandler, who was an assistant coach under Rupp and later governor of the state, presented an award in the old man’s name and described Rupp this way:

“He didn’t like many folks and not many liked him, but he didn’t give a damn. He was bent on perfection in basketball.”

I think that’s how we’d all like to be remembered.

Anyway, Rupp’s teams terrorized the South. When other schools started catching up with KU, he even went so far as to recruit black players, starting in 1970. There is evidence that Rupp wasn’t fond of blacks, but then, he didn’t care much for whites, either.

Under Rupp, basketball became a religion in Lexington. Looming up ahead of us, you’ll see the Sistine Chapel, otherwise known as Rupp Arena.

It’s large enough to hold the entire population of Lexington, 23,000. Actually there are 200,000 people in Lexington, but if you don’t have basketball season tickets, you’re not considered to be among the living.

That concludes our tour, folks. Sorry I didn’t have time to take you by such cultural landmarks as the Mary Todd Lincoln home, the 10 Kentucky Fried Chicken stands or the Conoco station where pump jockey Red Greb talked Rupp into taking the Kentucky job back in 1930.

Goodby, and as they say in Lexington: May your whiskey be smooth, your cigarette mild, your horse fast and your Rupp Arena ticket close enough to the court that you can make out individual players.