Voters in 'wettest dry county' in Mississippi end beer ban

NEW ALBANY, Miss. — There was a vote in New Albany 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.

The victory was a historic one: In a few months, a person will be able to buy a beer legally in William Faulkner's birthplace for the first time in more than 50 years.

Liquor and wine, of course, remain 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 postelection 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 Oxford 30 miles away, requiring a degree of premeditation on the part of the discriminating beer buyer.

The aldermen ruled against them on all counts.

Town of churchgoers

In a town of churchgoers, where Communion is generally celebrated with grape juice, the Jan. 12 vote has prompted some reflection.

"The thing that bothers me, this was voted on back in 1977 and was defeated 2-to-1," said the Rev. Rickey Blythe of First Baptist Church, who led the opposition.

This time, beer won 54 percent to 46 percent.

"For that to happen, there had to be a lot of church folk to have voted for it," Blythe said, talking of the changing values of the younger generation.

Mississippi, the first state to ratify Prohibition, has a peculiar history when it comes to temperance. Liquor was banned long after federal Prohibition was repealed in 1933, under an arrangement that pleased everyone: the Baptists, the bootleggers and the state, which levied taxes on illegal alcohol.

That ended in 1966, not long after the sheriff in the state capital, Jackson, raided the annual Junior League Mardi Gras ball at the Jackson Country Club, breaking open the liquor cabinet and carting off the Champagne before a startled crowd of blue bloods and high-ranking state officials.

A few months later, the Legislature passed a bill allowing counties and municipalities to opt out of the ban. More than one-third of the state remains dry.

Beer is not considered in the same category as liquor or wine, and was allowed in some places long before the mid-1960s. But it is banned in about one-third of the state, even in a few areas where liquor is permitted.

Faulkner lobbied hard

In summer 1950, Faulkner, who was born in New Albany in a house that sat on the corner of Cleveland and Jefferson streets, lobbied hard for an ordinance allowing beer in Oxford, in the next county. The Faulkner family had moved there when he was young.

According to Joseph Blotner's "Faulkner: A Biography," Faulkner distributed a broadside around town criticizing the ministers who had lined up in opposition, condemning them as meddling in civic affairs.

"Yours for a freer Oxford," wrote Faulkner, who had a long history of drinking binges, "where publicans can be law-abiding publicans six days a week and ministers of God can be ministers of God all seven days in the week."

The attack made its way to The New Yorker, where it was published and described by editors as "the clearest and most concise prose" Faulkner had ever written. The ordinance failed.

Busy across county line

In New Albany, the seat of Union County, previous efforts to change the liquor and beer laws met defeat, not that the results have made much of a difference, as anyone with a car knows.

There are many Union County license plates in the parking lots at Tri County Wine and Spirits, over the county line in Sherman, or at Spider's One Stop up in Potts Camp. Beer and whiskey flow at golf tournaments at the country club and at private parties and weddings.

"Union County has always pretty much had the reputation of being the wettest dry county in the state," said William Rutledge III, a lawyer who tried to overturn the liquor ban more than three decades ago, when he owned one of New Albany's newspapers.

It was Rutledge's 25-year-old son, Logan, a hospitality-management major from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, who led the fight for the beer ordinance.

The main argument for the pro-beer forces, New Albany Citizens for Progress, was along the maxim attributed to Faulkner that civilization begins with distillation: The city, whose population is about 8,000, would never grow without nice restaurants, and nice restaurants would never arrive if they could not serve alcohol.

To the members of New Albany Citizens United for Families, that reasoning is specious.

"That's a bunch of baloney," said Alan Cousar, 63, sitting in the cluttered office of his used-car lot. Look at Baldwyn and Potts Camp, he said. They have alcohol and are not exactly flourishing.

Beer opponents said driving-while-intoxicated deaths would increase. Beer supporters pointed to statistics that such deaths are higher in dry counties, where people have to drive farther for their alcohol.

Possible vote on wine

For now the debate is stilled until 2015, when beer can be voted on again, or until later this year, when there could be another effort at a vote on liquor and wine.

That's fine with Marjorie Livingston, 85, a retired teacher who volunteers at the Union County museum. She says she knows that quite a few churchgoers drink, that some of the people who are going on and on about protecting the children enjoy going to Tupelo, for a margarita every now and then.

"It's a mixture of hypocrisy and ignorance, with maybe a little stupidity thrown in," Livingston said.

"Will Rogers said Prohibition and Communism were two good ideas that don't work," she said. "I've quoted him often. And I've even added a few things to that list."