I’d appreciate any information … anecdotes, vaguely remembered snatches read decades ago, urls… on the history of the alcohol prohibition movement after national prohibition ended in 1933. I know a few states kept their own prohibition laws in effect long after that date, but I don’t believe any of them do so now. I believe Kansas ended theirs in 1948, after a sharply contested referendum.
I saw this on a web site, but I don’t remember where it was and now can’t find it.
I’ve trolled the Web pretty thoroughly for this stuff but haven’t been able to come up with much.
Well, sort of…What Kansas instituted in '48 was a “club” system. This meant that to get a drink in the Sunflower State at that time and after, you had to join a club (a club could range from the ELKS to a regular night club-if it had a license).
Early aspects of the rules of the club system included not being able to join and drink on the same day, and a limit on how many memberships any one individual could hold in a specific geographic area, a banning of recoprical memberships, a limit on the number of guests a member could bring and even (I have heard) a limit on the number of drinks members were permitted. These rules were chipped away at a bit in the next 40 or so years but surprisingly little.
The number of club licences the state gave out were tightly controled and they were one of the most sought after pieces of paper in the state.
The state went totally “wet” in (I believe) either 1984 or 1985. Previous to that the joke in Kansas politics was that the one safe bet was that Kansans would stager blurry-eyed to the polls every year to vote “dry”.
Most of the counties in Texas are mixed, with both “wet” and “dry” areas. Texas allows this to be voted on at the justice of peace precinct level. I’m not sure if all of Houston is “wet”.
This one I do know about. They had local option, where counties could “vote themselves out from under” the statewide prohibition law. Probably by 1966 most counties had.
My home state of Pennsylvania still has dry towns, and, I believe, counties. There’s one town, within 10 miles of downtown Pittsburgh, which is dry and has some of the best restaurants in the area. The local theory is that since the restaurants can’t serve booze, they’d better have good food.
Also, Somerset County, where the plane crashed last Tuesday was in the news during the last election when there was a referendum to close ban alcohol in one of the few towns which does allow drinking – they had one bar, and a local preacher objected to that many. As a result, the next nearest bar would have been over a mountain, some 14 miles away in Maryland, as I recall (corrections welcomed).
The state’s liquor laws remain pretty restrictive. Beer can only be bought through beer distributors or in bars and restaurants; other liquor only at state stores which are not open on Sunday. The smallest amount of beer you can buy other than for immediate consumption is a six-pack (I found this out when a friend wanted to buy 1 bottle of beer to make beer bread). A few months ago, when they imploded 3 Rivers Stadium at 7 am on a Sunday morning, restaurants across the river which opened for breakfast and a view of the procedings were cited by the state Liquor Control Board for selling alcohol outside of the hours permitted by their license. The LCB later took back the citations, but there were a few howls of outrage. I’m told Utah is the only state with more restrictive laws, but I don’t have facts to back that up.
I don’t think these laws help, quite frankly. By making alcohol difficult to obtain, and not in small quantities (you can’t buy 1 bottle of beer?!), you add to the mystique, rather than making it boring and ordinary.
Mississippi did repeal State wide prohibition late. Running 'Shine and other fun hobbies was a huge pastime, needless to say. It was easy to tell where to go find it, but most people didn’t want to know that. Needless to say, the entire state repealed it, but allowed the local option, so some counties remained dry, then modified those laws to allow some sales, none on Sunday, ect…
There are a lot of dry counties in Kentucky. Most of the counties around me are dry, except for the one that the big mall and restaurants are in. Some cities around here do allow liquor by the drink sales, but not package sales.
At one point, it was possible for parts of counties to be dry. In Dallas, you had to be on one side of a certain highway (I wanna say it was Stemmons Freeway, but I could be wrong) to be able to find liquor. I recently saw a sign in Houston offering beer, wine and set-ups, set-ups being drink mixers. You brought your booze, the bar would provide the Seven-up, soda water, or whatever.
There were also towns that made their money selling alcohol to residents of dry cities. Impact, Texas, along I-20 did a thriving business selling to the people from Abilene until Abilene voted itself wet. (Abilene, being home to three Christian universities, still has an incredible love-hate relationship with alcohol. They love the revenue, they hate the fact that it comes from alcohol at all.)
In South Carolina, you cannot buy anything alcoholic on Sunday unless you’re in Charleston, Columbia, or Myrtle Beach (or maybe Hilton Head). Ever. Something to do with how much of the city’s income is from tourism.
On a side note, Lynchburg, Tennessee, the home of one of the world’s best bourbons, is in a dry county.
The SC thing revolves around permits. If an establishment won’t make enough money to buy the permit, why buy one? (scdu.org/2001ABCLicenseApplication.pdf That is the application)
And Lynchburg, home of the best sippin whiskey, can be provided as a COURTESY if you buy a barbecue at the Distillery property.
There are still many counties in NC that are dry…Davidson, as mentioned…and Saluda.
SC also is the last state (IIRC) to serve bar patrons by mini-bottle ONLY. I don’t think the airline industry counts
