The driest state in the country...
The driest state in the country...Why is Arkansas the driest state in America? Where do morality and geography crystalize?
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In Arkansas, 34 of 75 counties are dry. The morality of a dry county, given how many people drive down the road drinking and tossing empty beer cans out the window, is lost on me. I wondered why dry counties continued to exist and why Arkansas has the most in the country.
When I started writing this essay a year ago, I wanted it to be about alcohol as a territory for exploration, about geography, soil, history, and the poetic language of wine and spirits. I wanted it to be about all the things I never learned growing up in a dry county where alcohol is sin. But my research took me in another direction. It led me to the Ku Klux Klan, to crystal collectors and anti-vaxxers. It left me even more puzzled about the spirit of this place.
I called Jake Lewis, a native of Texas and a sommelier, to get his perspective on dry counties. Lewis, who works as the beverage director for Momofuku, said of dry counties, “Our experience was, my grandparents lived in Lufkin, and it was, at the time, a dry county. It was a big Southern Baptist community, not a lot of drinking, temperance-forward-thinking people. When visitors came, they would all drive across the county, and there were three liquor stores on the line, and they would stock up. It never really deterred drinking.” Studies have found that dry counties in places like Arkansas and Kentucky have higher rates of alcohol-related fatalities than wet counties. For Lewis, “The history of all of this from Prohibition is wild and outdated. A lot of the blue laws left over from Prohibition make it difficult to sell alcohol in the United States because every state and every county has its own law.” He added, “It is weird and nonsensical.”
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Originally Posted by Peter1469
