Prohibition is not dead, the New York Times reported last week. Some states (uh, one state? Kansas?) have yet to ratify the 21st amendment, the one that overturned years of officially dry legal positions.
“Officially” is the key word.
Pockets of “dry” counties exist over the landscape, probably mainly in the South.
Southern states have been tentative in legalizing sale of alcohol although drinking is very, very Southern. In the old days under our folksy old laws it worked like this:
In a dry state or county there were no liquor stores nor could beer be sold in supermarkets or anywhere else. So people didn’t drink, right? Heh-heh. No, guys like me drank right along.
The law had to take care of the country club set so it loop-holed private clubs, pumping new life into Legion posts and Elks clubs everywhere. We all brought bottles of wine or bourbon to restaurants, some of which charged “corkage” fees. A classic win-win.
So the movers and shakers had no reason to want to democratize alcohol sales. They drank with impunity. Actually, in many states bringing a bottle into an eatery was against the law. But we did it anyway.
One night the dining clientele of a nice restaurant was surprised when state troopers (boy, these guys are big) come through the doors and begin writing arrest reports. The governor had decided to enforce the law. Good, church-going, hard-drinking men were hauled into court and fined for their dalliance with the dark side of the law.
The laws soon were changed.
The governor was a leader in the South Shall Rise Again League, and it was evident that whatever was thought of Yankee industrialists they were the men with the money and they wanted a drink or five when day was done. Visitors found our quaint liquor laws repugnant.
One day at dusk, two men, suited and tie-ed, came into a Memphis Holiday Inn “lounge” and ordered drinks. Told that only beer was served (representing a liberalized local law) they were unbelieving. A restaurateur in Wisconsin asked a Southerner about a locale in Dixie he was considering for another restaurant. He was interested until told of the drink law.
Prohibition is a good idea that doesn’t work. If it did one would be heartless to oppose it. Favoring it in the small community where I served time were but two groups---rock solid, pulpit-thumping preachers and the bootleggers whose purses were opened for any group that wanted to mount a campaign against demon rum.
Alcohol never disappears. During War II on a Pacific island there was no potable alcohol and then one day the word came: two guys down on the flight line are making it out of some of the liquids that go into airplanes. Most of the GI’s didn’t buy, but some did and the air mechanics made money until beer became as common as crabgrass.
When federal prohibition ended in 1933, that archetypal curmudgeon H. L. Mencken remarked that he celebrated with a glass of water. “My first in 13 years.” Prohibition succeeded in putting the Mafia in business. That was its only success.
(You are free to draw any parallels between the prohibition of alcohol and our marijuana laws.)
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