LCV Winter 2013-14 - (Page 52)

New Orleans had become New Sahara because Prohibition had taken the "leans" out of Orleans, "since no one cares any longer to lean against the vapid and unresponsive bar." There were nine surviving breweries left in New Orleans, and they all made "near beer," the only legal alcoholic drink, which, sure enough, contained 0.5 percent alcohol content. To most, near beer was nowhere close to the beloved beverage. It was "Hamlet minus the melancholy Dane, a honeymoon without a bride, an empty, angelless heaven. It is a mocking counterfeit, a fair-seeming fraud, an insult to the palate and an abomination in the mouth." To add insult to injury, the imposter beer cost the same as its predecessor. For centuries, New Orleans built its reputation on dining and drinks: fizzes, Sazeracs and juleps. Now its table had been cleared of glasses, leaving the meals incomplete and patrons thirsty. The camel joined the pelican as the state's national emblem. The city enjoyed a brief rain on the dry law when in November 1919 Judge Rufus Foster did a bit of a legal Cajun two-step and declared the Wartime Prohibition Act invalid, granting an injunction on its enforcement. Within an hour barrooms were left: A color advertisement-a rarity in its day-appeared in the May 14, 1932, Times-Picayune to coincide with a "beer parade" protesting Prohibition. Employing a quotation from Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote and a frothy goblet of Jax, the ad equates liberty with drinking beer. Readers could clip and mail a short message to their representatives in Washington, then hang the remaining image up as a public expression of their thirst for freedom. COURTESY OF SALLY ASHER Breweries provided a major source of employment in New Orleans prior to Prohibition. 52 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES * Winter 2013-14 

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of LCV Winter 2013-14

LCV Winter 2013-14

https://www.nxtbook.com/leh/lcvwinter13/lcvwinter13
https://www.nxtbook.com/leh/lcvspring2013/lcvspring2013
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com