(3 of 3)
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