My parents were born two years after Prohibition started in the United States. The 18th Amendment started it all. My Mom never spoke a word of it, as I think she had little exposure to the world of illegal alcohol. But my Dad sure did. His father was an alcoholic, so the whole stopping the flow of liquor was problematic for Grandpa Frank. But, like everyone else in the country, the drinkers found ways to drink.
I am reminded of this because it was on this date, December 27, 1900, when Carry Nation first went into a bar and smashed the living daylights out of it. This, in Carey Hotel, Wichita, Kansas.
She was way ahead of the actual ban. Prohibition started on January 17, 1920, and ended on December 5, 1933.
Although the Constitution has been formally amended 27 times, the Twenty-First Amendment (ratified in 1933) is the only one that repeals a previous amendment. That Prohibition.
But let’s get back to Carry Nation. She was born on November 25, 1846. I’m not sure how big she was as a baby, but grown-up, she stood almost six feet tall and weighed about 175 pounds. So. Big Carry was a very imposing presence.
She is most often remembered for the violent manner in which she opposed drinking. A lot of times, she would take a hatchet right into the saloons and bars and pulverize them. As a note. Carry Nation was arrested 30 times for these acts of vandalism. But that didn’t seem to stop her.
Yet, Carry believed she did not work alone. On June 5, 1899, Nation said she received a vision from God, telling her to smash saloons in Kiowa, Kansas. God must have had an ax to grind with Kiowa. No pun intended.
The original momentum behind the U.S. temperance movement was concerned with a social change. They sought to better the lives of the poor and women and children. And while she was a radical member of the group, she pushed for those same things.
Not only was drinking on her list, but Carry was also vehemently against smoking. It went further. She had concerns about women’s clothing and encouraged women not to wear corsets due to the pain they inflicted and the physical damage they could do to a woman. Go, Carry. Go.
I could probably tell you a lot more about her, but the beginnings may explain a lot. She was born Carrie Amelia Moore in Garrard County, Kentucky. As a child, she experienced poverty. Her mother had mental health issues, believing she was Queen Victoria. Carry’s Mom ended up in an institution.
At 21 years of age, she married a young physician, Charles Gloyd. She left him after a few months because of his alcoholism. Ten years later, in 1877, she married David Nation, a lawyer, journalist, and minister. He divorced her in 1901 on the grounds of desertion.
So, she did what she did. It was her passion. Nation’s final speaking engagement was in Eureka Springs, AR. That is where she lived and where she founded the home known as “Hatchet Hall.” In January 1911, she was giving a public speech. She collapsed during this engagement, and her final words to the public were, “I have done what I could.” She died six months later.
It would be nine years after that when Prohibition was passed as an amendment to the Constitution. I can only imagine her glee, sitting there with God and heaven, still chuckling about the whole Kiowa, Kansas thing.
But, my Dad, lived through it, his father bound by alcoholism. Grandpa got involved with some bootlegging and such. And every so often, my Dad was asked to help. You know, carry a bottle here, carry a bottle there.
And so he did a different kind of Carry.
But. What a man he turned out to be, in spite of it all.
And so we see again. We all have our own paths to follow.
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I tell you ladies, there is nothing as exciting as smash, smash, smash.
— Carry Nation
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“Prohibition has made nothing but trouble.”
— Al Capone
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“Prohibition only drives drunkeness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it or even diminish it.”
— Mark Twain
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We carry things. And. All of us carry differently.
