One thing that the proliferation of the internet into our daily lives has shown for sure is that people will argue over anything. You can say it’s a nice day outside, and like as not someone comes along to say it surely is not. My husband was reading out loud a few nights ago about the prohibition movement, and it struck me that this was once a massive statewide and national argument, spanning decades. It seems everyone had an opinion on this one, and shoving it down the throats of their opposition was as commonplace then as it is today. Prohibition was a hot topic, and it was hotter than a Brownwood summer out here during its heyday.
“The prohibition had a devastating effect on the town of Brownwood. People of differing opinions gradually changed from friends to enemies. Gone was the old time joviality, replaced by ill will created by the prohibition elections, as a town headed toward prosperity, about-faced, and started the other way. Drouths, panics, and depression came too, as an aftermath to the bickering, reads a paragraph in the book Pecan Valley Days by T. C. Smith, JR.
“There was a famous evangelist, a redeemed drunkard, who held many revivals in our city. He was a man my father had known before coming to Texas. As a young man, this preacher had poured it down, but as a preacher, he poured it on, and he did his part in making Brownwood dry. Prohibition came in for Sept 1903. We were given eighteen months to dispose of our stock,” recounts Smith.
The prohibition movement in Brown County caught fire in the late 1880s. After several unsuccessful attempts to pass the law, the movement culminated in the successful 1903 vote to ban the sale of alcohol. “In the last days before the August 4, 1887 vote, Texas was ablaze with torchlight processions, bonfires, and barbecues as both sides in the campaign worked to get out the vote. At Fort Worth partisans held meetings at three different locations on August 2; at Brownwood, both the antis and the pros held barbecues and torchlight parades in the last two days of the campaign,” we learn from the book, No Saloon in the Valley: The Southern Strategy of Texas by James D. Ivy.
“Prohibition became popular in the town in the 1890s, and in 1903, after a series of violent incidents, the town’s saloons were closed,” the TSHA website says. “Equally rowdy drinking clubs sprang up in response to the saloon closings, and a stretch of one street became known as ‘Battle Row’.” The local prohibition laws segued into the national ban, passed in 1920.
Making rules often sets a certain amount of folks busy breaking them, and some Brownwood citizens did just that. Bootleggers and speakeasies popped up, were raided, and popped back up again in various places. The Brownwood Bulletin, in December 1938 tells a fairly amusing story entitled “Officers Capture Real Bootlegger”, about the apprehension of a Brownwood contraband runner. “Officers have discovered a new wrinkle that, they say, confirms the term ‘legger’ applied to bootleggers in Brownwood. J. D. Pelphrey, state liquor board agent, said he and Constable W. O. Weems and Deputy Constable O. M. Smith chased a suspect at 64 miles an hour. When halted, the man invited the officers to search his car. Nothing was found. He then raised his arms and submitted to a search of his person. Underneath extensions of automobile inner tube on each of the man’s ankles was strapped a pint of whiskey, Pelphrey said. The inner tube held the bottles tightly against the legs. Search of another suspect revealed sections of inner tubes about the legs, but they were empty.”
Although the national prohibition movement staggered to an infamously unsuccessful halt in 1933, Brown County continued to enforce such laws for several decades afterward. In other words, people argued about it for the better part of a century. It’s interesting that this argument has all but died out today. We have other things to argue about, but what was back in the day a divisive and at times violent dispute, has sort of just passed along and been forgotten, the way most arguments eventually do. Maybe a lot of disputes aren’t, in the end, really worth the dust ups that ensue.
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com. Comments regarding her columns can be emailed to littleadams@gmail.com.
