Monday, February 22, 2010

Beer legally for sale in another Mississippi county

Another repugnant transaction bites the dust: A Voting Result That Faulkner Could Drink To


"NEW ALBANY, Miss. — There was a vote here last month. It was hard-fought, with dueling newspaper advertisements and yard signs, tableside debates in restaurants, a prayer rally and a fusillade of last-minute phone calls.
But only one side could win, and the victory was a historic one: in a couple of months, a person will be able to buy a beer legally here in William Faulkner's birthplace for the first time in more than 50 years.
Liquor and wine, of course, are still illegal, because the vote concerned only the sale of beer and wine coolers. But there is no shortage of bad news for teetotalers.
At a post-election meeting of the Board of Aldermen, people opposed to alcohol urged, among other things, that beer not be sold on Sundays, or in single bottles, or even refrigerated. They recommended that cases of beer be available only warm, as they are in the city of Oxford 30 miles down the road, requiring a degree of premeditation on the part of the discriminating beer buyer.
The aldermen ruled against them on all counts."
...
"Mississippi, the first state to ratify Prohibition, has a peculiar history when it comes to temperance. Liquor was banned here long after federal Prohibition was repealed in 1933, under an arrangement that pleased everyone: the Baptists, the bootleggers and the state, which, curiously enough, levied taxes on illegal alcohol. "

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