Posted on 03/24/2012 8:56:57 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
These are the places in America where alcohol is still banned
The year was 1933. America's fourteen-year experiment in sobriety was over; the federally mandated ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol had been lifted. All across the U.S., people welcomed the repeal of prohibition with open arms and flowing taps.
Or rather, most of them did. Meet the counties where America's "noble experiment" never died.
When prohibition lifted almost eighty years ago, many communities (particularly in the Bible Belt) voted to keep alcohol bans in place at the local level. Today, there are still more than 200 "dry" counties nationwide with what most would consider excessively stringent liquor laws. There are even more that remain partially dry (or "moist," to those familiar with the particulars of prohibition legislation).
It's interesting to compare the effects of early 20th century prohibition against those of 2012. America's first experiment with alcohol regulation was a failure on many fronts. Alcohol consumption remained rampant. Thousands died from poorly prepared bathtub liquor. But on the other hand, it also fueled a pretty badass culture of back-alley science and innovation. Smugglers looking to bootleg booze had to come up with innovative ways of eluding the law. Sometimes this involved coming up with creative ways to hide cargo; other times all it meant was being able to outrun whoever was chasing you.
In many ways, prohibition was the catalyst for the first (and arguably biggest) large-scale Do-It-Yourself science movement in the nation's history; home-brewing became extremely popular during prohibition, with magazines like Popular Science publishing how-to guides for assembling DIY distilleries, and measuring your alcohol to keep it within the ABV standards outlined by the eighteenth amendment.
Today, however, it seems like the only real benefit to prohibition is the sense of moral superiority that it instills in those who support it — and that's a reality many of the country's driest regions are having to face up to. According to the BBC, many communities that have been dry for decades have been forced to re-evaluate their non-alcoholic standards in light of hard economic times. If you look at the map, you'll notice that many of the dry and moist counties are interspersed with wet ones. With establishments in dry communities losing business to those in counties that permit alcohol, there are many who feel that the prohibition model cannot hold.
"I hope that we can move into the 21st Century and take advantage of a lot of the things that other communities have," explained Paul Croley, a local lawyer who recently led a campaign to change the status of Williamsburg Kentucky from dry to moist. (The tiny community voted on Tuesday — by a margin of just 14 votes — to finally allow the sale of alcohol in restaurants).
"It is time to wake up and realise that our standard of living can be as good as our neighbours."
MS13, La Familia, and Sinaloa, are her grand children.
East Texas certainly is odd.
I had a friend that was a life long member of the church beside my house.
Her husband divorced her.
She met another man years later and that church refused to marry her to him.
She didn’t divorce her first hubby, he divorced her!
At any rate, she remained a member even though her marriage was not recognized by her own church.
She contracted cancer some years later and died.
The funeral was at this same church and during the eulogy they gushed and gushed over how the 2nd husband stood beside her during the cancer and what a fine husband he was to her.
Not much rhyme nor reason to the entire thing.
So.....Whats up with Georgia?
This may be of interest. Rockefeller & prohibition. http://weblog.timoregan.com/archive/2008/01/john-d-rockefeller-alcohol-prohibition/
I have lived in East Texas all my life. There are some dry counties, but I grew up in a wet county.
My hometown had a dry zoned triangle that my house was in. When I got “legal” I could not go to the corner 7-11, I had to drive a few miles into the “wet” area.
The DFW metroplex has a town called Hurst that only sells 5.0 beer maximum.
Grapevine a few miles north has imports, malt liquor and wine, but no hard liquor.
You have to go a couple miles south of Hurst into Fort Worth to buy liquor.
I guess allowing 3 different alcohol contents in one area makes sense to someone.
I see that most of South Jersey, where so many beaches are, is partially dry. I remember how nice it was to take children there for vacation, and how quiet it was at night, thanks to partial controls. Some of those beaches are really old resorts, like Cape May and Ocean City NJ and Rehoboth DE, that started out as summer religious retreats.
More accurately, they have choice between more freedom and less freedom. But if liberalism has taught us anything, it's that you should never underestimate the propensity of people to vote themselves less freedom.
This article points out that that is true not only in New York City and Massachusetts, but even so called Red States.
Someone who supports enforcing a dry county doesn't really have a philosophical problem with the government micromanaging peoples' lives and the economic interests of businesses, they just prefer that a local government do the micromanaging. They pretty much have the same basic philosophy that Obama does.
One of the few - perhaps, only - informed, thoughtful posts on this thread.
The town allowed liquor sales in the 1970s, but so far as I know it only applies to restaurants and clubs: they've kept liquor stores out of the town.
Needham is still listed as an officially dry town, as is Dunstable (next door to Groton).
The other Mass dry towns are on Martha's Vineyard or the Berkshires. Most of them are too small to support much business of any sort.
It's a kind of zoning thing nowadays, a way of keeping undesireables out: towns keep out lottery agents or make everyone live on large lots or without a public sewage system for the same reason.
A conservative should also support local freedom however, even if you recognise the authority of local governments to pass ordinances that are anti-freedom.
My great, great grandmother was Annie Durham Methvin, known as the ‘poet laureate’ of the WCTU. Here’s a sample of her poetry:
Till the World Goes Dry
Our own beloved country once made her valiant stand,
And Prohibition was the law in this our native land,
But Ah, the foe was busy, with hatred unconcealed,
And by the hand of traitors was the law repealed.
Chorus:
America, America, our own dear U.S.A.
We’ll see thee once again, dear land, victorious in the fray,
We’ll never yield our righteous cause, nor lay our armor by
And we’ll not give up the struggle till the world goes dry.
Personally, my sweetie & I make home brew. I’m afraid I’d be a terrible disappointment to old Annie.
Related story: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2863281/posts
Related story: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2863281/posts
He: I'm looking for the beer.
She: We don't sell beer here. This is a dry county.
He: Huh. Seems like we should have had a vote on that.
She: We did.
Gun Barrel City...lol... I love it.
That aint far from here.
I know a gal that lives there LoL
I live in one of the yellow counties in Ohio.No alcohol sales between 12pm Saturday night and 12 noon on Sunday for carryout.I was shocked out west when we tried to buy a 12 pack in a store and was told we’d have to drive about 20 mi away to get it as the store sat on the edge of an Indian reservation.
Yep! The single #1 reason our southern border is so violent.Take the money away and *poof* it goes too.
I thought Topsfield and/or Rockport were or are dry. Rockport had something like you could BYOB if you wanted.
An episode of History Channel’s How the States Got Their Shapes showed a restaruant/bar on the Georgia/Tenn. line.
There was a bit of a city/state boundary line dispute. As it is now, booze can be served in one side of the place but not the other since the other town is “dry” and if the boundary
dispute is settled in favor of one particular state the whole
place may go dry.
Wikipedia for Rockport:
>>Except for a period in the 1930s the town remained one of 15 Massachusetts dry towns. The town did remain dry for many years until recently, when it was voted that alcohol could be served at restaurants, but liquor stores are still illegal.
Some towns like Lincoln and Carlisle, Weston and Westwood, may be effectively dry, but don't advertise the fact. It may be a matter more of not giving out liquor licenses than of outright banning the sale of liquors. Those are the towns that use control of liquor licenses as zoning regulations to keep out the "riff raff."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.