Hill Country Hush

Most seasons announce themselves in the Hill Country with a fistful of color. Spring barges in on bluebonnets. Autumn drapes the canyons in sweet-gum reds. Even winter, what little we get of it, carves its initials on cedar trunks with a north wind that smells like mesquite smoke and frost.

But late May? Late May slips in barefoot, y’all.

The grass turns the color of sun-bleached rope, cicadas buzz like faulty neon, and the distillery settles into a gentle hush—a hush that has nothing to do with barrel schedules or grain deliveries. It’s the same hush that rolls across small-town Main Streets, flight decks, and front porches all over America. It means Memorial Day is near.

I’m Dan Garrison, y’all, founder and chief storyteller here at Garrison Brothers. I make whiskey for a living, but for the next few paragraphs I’d rather make a case for silence, memory, and a flag at half-staff.

Decoration Day Roots

The holiday’s origin story is equal parts sorrow and stubbornness. After the Civil War, every corner of the nation sprouted burial plots—some manicured, some improvised, all overflowing. Mothers, widows, and freshly orphaned children carried flowers to the graves. They weren’t trying to launch a tradition. They were simply tending to grief the only way they knew—by doing something: cleaning a headstone, straightening a wooden cross, singing a hymn off-key, maybe even whispering a scolding (“You promised you’d be home by harvest.”).

Nobody mailed invitations. Word just spread, as grief often does. And soon Decoration Day—so named because the mourners “decorated” graves—became an annual ritual. It had no central committee, no brand guide, no official date on a federal calendar. It lived in the marrow of small gestures.

Little by little, Decoration Day shed its regional patchwork and grew into Memorial Day. Congress played its part—first picking May 30, later shifting the observance to the last Monday in May so working folks could reach distant cemeteries without begging for leave. But the core remained what it had always been: one day carved out for the fallen, not the living, not the soon-to-be deployed—just the dead.

That distinction matters. Mix up the purpose and you’ll end up thanking live soldiers on a day set aside for dead ones, or—worse yet—promoting a mattress sale because “freedom isn’t free.” (If freedom isn’t free, then the discount feels a bit…awkward, doesn’t it?)

A Book by the Bed

I keep a dog-eared copy of We Were Soldiers Once … and Young by my bed. Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore and journalist Joe Galloway didn’t airbrush the Ia Drang Valley to spare squeamish readers. They described the humidity that soaked socks in minutes, the dust that caked teeth, the sudden silences that fell when ammo ran low. They painted exhaustion in sentences so raw you could hear the clatter of an M-16 bolt slamming forward.

When I draft any Memorial Day message—social caption, blog post, email—I imagine one of Moore’s soldiers leaning over my shoulder. If I can picture him staring at my copy and frowning, I delete it. He’d frown at a discount code. He’d nod at a moment of silence. That imaginary gut check has saved me from a dozen tone-deaf sentences.

Red, White & Bourbon

Now let me tread lightly, y’all, because I’m fixin’ to mention a bottle. On Thursday, May 22, we’ll release a limited run we call Red, White & Bourbon. Volunteers—some Gold Star parents, some retirees, and even an astronaut —filled, corked, and hand-dipped every bottle in wax. If the dipper happened to be a veteran, that bottle now carries a stainless-steel dog tag stamped:

“Hand-Dipped by a Veteran.”

That’s not a gimmick. It’s a breadcrumb. Years from now, when a family uncorks that bottle for a toast at a reunion, someone will rub a thumb across the tag and remember there’s a story fused to the glass. Maybe they’ll look up the name, learn a unit, a deployment, a hometown. Memory—like good bourbon—deepens when you give it time.

We haven’t slapped a countdown timer on the website or flashed a coupon at checkout. The bourbon will be right here waiting on y’all. It always does.

What We’ll Do on the 26th

Memorial Day lands on Monday, May 26 this year. Our production team will sleep in. The stills will cool. The phones will rest. Sometime mid-morning we’ll lower the flag, hold the silence, and think about men and women who traded every tomorrow so we could have this one.

Then we’ll go home and do what Americans do: mow a lawn, smoke a brisket, chase a toddler, maybe catch the final inning of a ballgame. Living well is part of the tribute—as long as you understand why you get to live well.

Names Worth Saying

I don’t list my private roll call anymore; grief isn’t a public-relations exercise. Instead, I invite you to say a name—quietly, maybe under your breath—of someone who never made it home. If you don’t know a name, borrow one from a local memorial wall.

The Road Out of Hye

So here we are, easing into the last stretch of May. Maybe y’all will roll through Hye this week, snag a bottle of Red, White & Bourbon, and cruise home under a burnt‑orange Hill Country sunset. Maybe you’ll stay put, plant a flag in a modest cemetery, kneel until your knees ache, and say a prayer too ragged for print.

Either way, I hope you’ll leave revenue out of it and let reverence run the show. Our bourbon will wait. The marketing campaigns can loaf in draft folders. Memory—that fragile, stubborn thing—needs caretakers more than customers.

From all of us in Hye—distillers, mash cooks, tour guides, chefs and bartenders, volunteers, moms who set an extra plate, and veterans who taught us the difference between a good day and a free one:

May we honor, may we remember, and may we keep our promises.