Canyon, Texas, is a lovely college community. It’s the Randall County seat, where my wife and I live, although our house is about 12 miles north of Canyon’s city limits.
It also engenders this perception among outsiders of being a place that’s a bit old-fashioned. Its residents seemingly adhere to some archaic social mores, such as its time-honored ban on selling alcoholic beverages.
Well, on Nov. 4, voters have a chance to drag Canyon into the 21st century by allowing the sale of alcohol, as in beer and wine.
It’s time for the city to let its municipal hair down just a bit and allow the sale of these products.
I do take seriously the opposition to this idea, which has been — pardon the pun — brewing for some time. A lot of hardened opponents think the sale of beer and wine at grocery stores is going to open the door to — gasp! — liquor by the drink, sold in bars and taverns.
I read a letter to the editor opposing the idea in today’s Amarillo Globe-News. The author of the letter is a gentleman with whom I’m acquainted and based on my knowledge of his political leanings, he no doubt would like to see a return of Prohibition.
Glen Stocker refers to the “Canyon crooks” who are “trying to push booze down our throats. “The lack of alcohol sales may not stop all drunken pregnant women,” he states, “but why make it easy for them?”
Sheesh! Let’s get a grip here.
The sale of this stuff doesn’t create a society of drunks. Nor does it promote alcohol abuse. It’s a realization that in our mobile society it makes no sense to ban the sale of such products when all one has to do is drive a few minutes (in this case, north to Amarillo) to purchase the stuff, bring it back home and swill it to their hearts’ content.
The very idea of dry cities and dry counties in this era of extreme mobility no longer makes sense. It might have at one time, when we traveled by horseback.
Those days are long gone.