As a kid, I grew up in a dry county. This meant....for any adult to consume booze or beer....you drove to the state line. Naturally, this also meant that small-town police built a business enterprise on being active Friday and Saturday night.
As the years passed in Alabama.....a generation passes, and a generation arrives. Things change.
The state eventually made up the rule that if you held a municipal election in your town or city.....you could opt-out of being dry. So, town by town....they voted, and moved on....getting 'wet'.
The nearest town (up until this point) to the old family farm with 'wet tendencies'....was 9.4 miles away (yes, we can get it down to the .1-level).
My brother brought this up in the AM today. The town that we generally claimed as our address? 5.9 miles away, and had remained dry....until yesterday (25 Aug 2020). A vote was carried out....254 people showing up and 148 folks voting in favor of 'wet'.
There's some paperwork required, and licenses would have to be issued. One can figure the arrival of 'wet' not to occur until mid-January probably.
The 106 people disappointed? Well....they likely sat there with a Tab or Dr Pepper, tearing up a bit that devilish things are about to occur in the town.
A full-up liquor shop opening? There might be two or three folks with crazy ideas in their head about opening a shop. The chief problem here....folks kinda expect a real four-star shop, and the tendency in these cases is to open up a 600 square foot shop with ten typical beers, twenty typical wines, and maybe thirty types of booze. Yeah.....going 2-star status.
Upon arriving at my first real Air Force base (in Germany)....I went to the local Class-6 beverage shop....run by the recreation folks on the base. It was an aluminum building....probably 9k square feet of space. Just on wines alone, there were probably 250 types. They had at least thirty American beer types, and probably near forty German beers. You could have spent two hours walking around and debating what to buy for the weekend.
As for a real bar, or lounge opening up? I'd have my doubts that a bar appears over the next two or three years. Some guy will eventually get some creative idea and open up some lounge called 'Satan's Inn' or 'Beer-Hall #9'. As for clients? It'll be mostly farmers, school-teachers, and retired guys.
The old commentary that hell would have to freeze over before such-and-such town goes 'wet'? Well....yeah, it's been more chilly than usual.
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