In Alabama: Voting Dry and Practicing Wet

By Gregory Jaynes

The international traveler, touching down in some parts of the Muslim world, knows from experience not to expect a belt or two before bed--or before leaving, for that matter. Thus, at the cocktail hour, glumly clutching a glass brimming with the essence of a prune, the businessman is cross but not shocked. The domestic drummer, however, always appears to be caught short--and made bewildered--when the journey pauses for an evening in an American anachronism, the dry county. After all, this year will mark the 50th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, and yet here and there across the country (and particularly in the South), pockets remain where the law does not allow the sale of alcohol. Lauderdale County, Ala., is a patch in point.

After the Volstead Act was repealed, Lauderdale mounted a referendum and voted itself dry so swiftly, it is said, there was scarcely time to order a second round. To understand the reason for the ban, a familiarity with bedrock religion would be handy--that and oldtime values. And to understand its effect is to appreciate paradox. The contradiction, in the words of Circuit Court Judge J. Edward Tease, has been "institutionalized bootlegging." Too, as Architect Gerald Wade was instructing an inquisitor the other day, "Your question is phrased wrong. The question isn't how long the county has been dry, but, rather, whether it's ever been dry." One must call upon a distant memory to catch the root of this observance, and that would be the memory of one's response to a parental order to cease a pleasant but pagan dalliance. The result is defiance, brashly executed.

Down through the years the people here have lived with conflicting standards. This side of a preacher, for example, it is hard to find a teetotaler. Yet for half a century and through a dozen or so elections, the electorate has denied itself a legal drink. One big reason may be that one does not grow up here a Republican or a Democrat so much as one comes of age a "wet" or a "dry"--and more often than not one comes of age a practicing wet and a voting dry, a schizophrenia that is made known each time going wet is proposed at the polls. Some might call this hypocrisy.

"I'm ashamed to say it," said Wade, "but my own wife voted dry the last time around, and we have a little wine nearly every night. She said she thought voting dry was the Christian thing to do. You see, it's a Bible Belt problem. It's spiritual. You need something to flay like a horse. You need a devil you can identify, say you've seen, and call by name. We call the devil whisky. I wish somebody would do a psychological study."

Such a study would surely want to examine the slapstick events that occurred last winter next door in Colbert County. After seven referendums in 25 years, Colbert County (pop. 54,519) voted itself wet, 10,576 to 9,411, while Lauderdale County (pop. 80,546) watched in disbelief. The first liquor store opened in the municipality of Tuscumbia. On a single day, it handled 6,500 transactions. In its first week, it took in $152,000. Cars with Lauderdale plates filled the square. Three policemen worked the traffic jams, and the lines were so long only ten people at a time were allowed in the store. The first holiday the store closed, the manager came in to square his accounts and reported that customers practically "beat down the door all day."

Herrold Henson, a Linotype operator in Florence, seat of Lauderdale, and a former bootlegger ("I used to haul a little"), recalled driving across the Tennessee River to Colbert County, standing outside in line for 45 minutes, buying his fill and sharing with friends a half pint of bourbon in the car on the way home, such was the giddiness here. Before Colbert went wet, people in Florence had to drive 65 miles to the east, to Madison County, to buy a legal drink. In fact, of the 18 counties that constitute north Alabama, only that one was wet. Bringing out-of-state spirits into Alabama has always been as illegal as trying to smuggle a Cuban cigar past customs, and law enforcement along the border has for years tested the elasticity of search-and-seizure laws.

In the past year, about 120 establishments that serve alcohol have opened in Colbert County, and the availability of hooch has profoundly changed the region. Just one example: in the old days, it was a matter of honor for the people of a dry county, when traveling to a wet county, to offer to haul liquor back home to their friends. "Now the whole nature of our hospitality has been altered," said Wade. With booze so close, he observed, "if you have to go to Georgia, all you can offer is to bring back some peaches."

That is but the short of it. Economically, said one elected Colbert County official who asked, understandably, to keep his name to himself, "liquor has been our salvation." F.E. Draper, the former mayor of Sheffield and the head of the campaign for strong drink, claimed, "We're bringing 2,000 people a day into Colbert County who didn't use to come here, and one of the distributors estimates they're spending $50 each. That's $100,000 a day."

For the city of Sheffield alone, according to City Commissioner David Johnson, liquor has meant "the difference between bankruptcy and not. Out of a budget of $2.5 million, we had a deficit of $500,000 going into 1982. We didn't know where to cut--to stop collecting garbage or what. In the first nine months of 1982 Sheffield got $600,000 from liquor." Johnson reported this calculus over a Manhattan at the Holiday Inn. The manager of that inn, Bob Gore, said his lounge is taking in $90,000 a month and, since liquor became legal, he has booked conventions through 1989, nearly all of them thirsty gatherings that never convene in a dry county and thus have never met here. "Without the lounge we would show a small profit," said Gore, "but we make big money now." Ramada Inns and the Hilton chain are talking with Colbert boosters about building in the county, and the boosters themselves are talking about a civic center.

Meanwhile, back across the river in Lauderdale, the Church of Christ preacher who led the opposition to alcohol in Colbert, Lamar Plunket, said the county was in sorry shape. "Alcoholism has increased," he said over a plate of barbecue, turnip greens, pinto beans and sweet potatoes. "Our churches are getting more calls for clothing, for food, because people, once they get on this thing, they're going to have it even if the family goes hungry. And I can't verify this personally, but I've had reports of nude-type dancing in some of the bars."

Plunket said the economy in Colbert beat his campaign there, that people in the area really had not had a change of heart. Unemployment in Colbert County stood at 20.9% at the beginning of last year and had fallen to 17.3% toward the end, much of the drop attributable to alcohol. The retail-sales growth rate in Colbert County for the first nine months of 1982, the latest available figure, nearly doubled the 1.81% growth rate of the state, while Lauderdale County next door fell to less than half the state average.

All the same, old ways die hard, and the preacher was probably right when he said the people had not really changed down deep. There are two fresh indicators that double-mindedness is alive and hale around here. One is F.E. Draper, who successfully brought liquor to Colbert and then, feeling muscular, ran for county commission chairman. Soundly defeated, he said, "I committed political suicide in heading up that drive." Another is the Chamber of Commerce in still dry Florence, a town that has forever looked down a patrician nose at Colbert County. The view has always been that field hands and factory workers live over there in Colbert, while management lives back across the river here in Lauderdale. Now, however, the dry Chamber is talking with the wet Chamber over yonder about a merger. The view behind this turn seems to be that while the American economy may be on the mend, it will not be a fast mend, like darning a sock, and, rather than wait, well, liquor is quicker. -- By Gregory Jaynes This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.