Super Amputee Cat
Cyburbian
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As a child, when we camped in certain parts of the south in the late 1970s, dry counties were a constant thorn in my dad's side. We either had to make sure we were camped in a wet county, or buy alcohol in a wet county before sneaking it in to a dry county where the campground was located. I still remember him drinking his Reingold disguised in a fake Pepsi can shell.
My dad was not an alcoholic. He just loved sitting around the campground, relaxing with a beer or two. I didn't get it at the time, but as I got older, I realized his being relegated like that was the direct result, at least in part, from deep religious hypocrisy and the resulting effort to legislate morality: Restrictive laws, based on deep seated religions convictions, whose enactment began in earnest at the end of prohibition and continues to this very day. Other's, while not necessarity religious, were two-faced in condemning the legal sale of alcohol, yet having illegal moonshine stills in the backwoods of Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia. Or perhaps it was a little of both, with many residents looking the other way when their backwoods relatives were setting up stills, yet not allowing the regulated sale of alcohol within their borders.
Flash forward almost ten years later to 1987. I was in a dry county in Kentucky (Grant) myself and some of the young people I met vowed that they would make Grant county wet once enough of them reached voting age. Yet almost thirty years on, there appears to have been only limited success in Grant County, because only the communities of Dry Ridge and two others are now "wet" but the rest of the county is still dry. And this allowance is limited to only certain restaurants, not groceries stores, beverage centers, etc.
Other counties in Kentucky only allow consumption at golf courses, wineries, etc, Or a town within a county may be completely wet but the rest of the county is dry. Such counties are known as "moist counties" which is better than being completely dry, but still restrictive. Carter County, in the northeast part of the state only allows alcohol consumption at a local winery. When I was there in 1986, I was at a pool hall in Grayson where a couple of players hid their beers inside an empty Mountain Dew carton. At first, I thought it was because they weren't old enough to drink, but now that I think about it, its because Carter County was dry. And how could a bunch of young 20s-somethings ever afford to go to the golf course or winery?
Concerning the continued existence Grant County's dryness, what one has to wonder, is that once they did reach drinking age, why wasn't any thing really done? As the article states, almost half of Kentucky's counties still have some kind of restriction on alcohol, with 31 of them still completely dry. In the end did they really want to change things after all or, perhaps due to religious intolerance, just continue on with the status quo?
Most of these people I met way back in the 1980s would now be in their mid 40s or older, and a whole generation of new voters could have come along in the late 1980s and 1990s and vowed to put and end to the intolerance and hypocrisy of their parents' and grandparents' laws once and for all. Furthermore, a lot of the old fogies and religious hypocrites would have died off during that time, thereby turning the tide even more. Yet none of this came to fruition.
So prohibition lives on in many parts Kentucky and other parts of the of the south, much to the delight of the local meth dealers and the violent cartels. The young people I met so long ago, appear to have acquired their parent's intolerance and ability to except change, and now with a meth-habit to boot.
What experiences have you had in a dry county?
-The Economist, October 3-9, 2015
My dad was not an alcoholic. He just loved sitting around the campground, relaxing with a beer or two. I didn't get it at the time, but as I got older, I realized his being relegated like that was the direct result, at least in part, from deep religious hypocrisy and the resulting effort to legislate morality: Restrictive laws, based on deep seated religions convictions, whose enactment began in earnest at the end of prohibition and continues to this very day. Other's, while not necessarity religious, were two-faced in condemning the legal sale of alcohol, yet having illegal moonshine stills in the backwoods of Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia. Or perhaps it was a little of both, with many residents looking the other way when their backwoods relatives were setting up stills, yet not allowing the regulated sale of alcohol within their borders.
Flash forward almost ten years later to 1987. I was in a dry county in Kentucky (Grant) myself and some of the young people I met vowed that they would make Grant county wet once enough of them reached voting age. Yet almost thirty years on, there appears to have been only limited success in Grant County, because only the communities of Dry Ridge and two others are now "wet" but the rest of the county is still dry. And this allowance is limited to only certain restaurants, not groceries stores, beverage centers, etc.
Other counties in Kentucky only allow consumption at golf courses, wineries, etc, Or a town within a county may be completely wet but the rest of the county is dry. Such counties are known as "moist counties" which is better than being completely dry, but still restrictive. Carter County, in the northeast part of the state only allows alcohol consumption at a local winery. When I was there in 1986, I was at a pool hall in Grayson where a couple of players hid their beers inside an empty Mountain Dew carton. At first, I thought it was because they weren't old enough to drink, but now that I think about it, its because Carter County was dry. And how could a bunch of young 20s-somethings ever afford to go to the golf course or winery?
Concerning the continued existence Grant County's dryness, what one has to wonder, is that once they did reach drinking age, why wasn't any thing really done? As the article states, almost half of Kentucky's counties still have some kind of restriction on alcohol, with 31 of them still completely dry. In the end did they really want to change things after all or, perhaps due to religious intolerance, just continue on with the status quo?
Most of these people I met way back in the 1980s would now be in their mid 40s or older, and a whole generation of new voters could have come along in the late 1980s and 1990s and vowed to put and end to the intolerance and hypocrisy of their parents' and grandparents' laws once and for all. Furthermore, a lot of the old fogies and religious hypocrites would have died off during that time, thereby turning the tide even more. Yet none of this came to fruition.
So prohibition lives on in many parts Kentucky and other parts of the of the south, much to the delight of the local meth dealers and the violent cartels. The young people I met so long ago, appear to have acquired their parent's intolerance and ability to except change, and now with a meth-habit to boot.
What experiences have you had in a dry county?
-The Economist, October 3-9, 2015
