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After the Volstead Act was repealed, Lauderdale mounted a referendum and voted itself dry so swiftly, it is said, there was scarcely time to order a second round.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."