Word: wet
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
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...
...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...
...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...
...life is out of reach. In "A Room Forever," a man who works on Ohio River tugboats begins to tire of life passed in hotel rooms and pool halls and in the company of prostitutes and winos. He knows that his job. "to watch barge rats and walk the wet steel edges," is dangerous, and the casualties of river accidents haunt him. But he resigns himself to an existence like the other river workers, who "are on for a month, off for a month and if they are lucky...can live that way for the rest of their days...