Beer News Blog

In a stunning electoral turn, Houston County, Alabama, voters just approved a referendum to legalize the sale of draft beer for the first time in the County’s history. So instead of being actually drafted, a far more pleasant opportunity awaits—locals will soon be heading to their locals for a fresh pint of frosty draft beer.

Many devout residents of this Bible Belt community surely feel that the path to perdition is not a road paved with good intentions, but rather an ice-cold river of draft beer.

So why the change?

His Honor Pat Thomas, mayor of Dothan, Houston County’s largest city, provided the impetus. “We want a minor league baseball team here in Dothan, and knew we couldn’t get one without being able to sell draft beer at the games,” he said.

Ahh, baseball, the great consensus-building pastime. Baseball and draft beer go together like…well, Alabama and Blue Laws. In fact, although the referendum passed by a 53% to 47% margin, restrictions on alcohol sales are generally strongly supported here.

A former Floridian with whom I spoke commented, “I’m from Miami where this sort of thing is no big deal. Here, I can’t even buy a beer at a supermarket on Sunday. What do you do if you run out of beer during the Super Bowl?”

I asked Mayor Thomas that question. “The Georgia border’s only miles 14 down the Interstate,” he replied, and that’s as good an excuse for a Sunday drive as I’ve heard.

So a toast to Houston County…may your landfills be smaller, your roadsides less littered (especially the ones on the way to Georgia), and your watering holes even happier places!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Lou's Neighborhood Pub. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.