1932 was a very dry year.
October 18, 2013 5:25 PM   Subscribe

The finder of this note if the 18 Amendment has bin [sic] changed have a good Drink on us. - E. Daniher
posted by R. Mutt (26 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow. This is the first time I've actually seen a Prince Albert can.
posted by pmurray63 at 5:40 PM on October 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


Well, for God's sake man, let him out already!
posted by briank at 5:54 PM on October 18, 2013 [10 favorites]


I find the phrase "it was during Probition" very strange. It's like they knew it was just a period that would be over by the time anyone found the note. And were people calling it Prohibition then? I don't know much about that period (as no doubt you can tell from this comment), but it seems like people might just think of it as the status quo rather than a time period with a name.
posted by lollusc at 5:57 PM on October 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


Fast Forward to 2094, and while renovating the dorms, someone at Farleigh Dickinson finds an 81-year-old bag of weed that a freshman stashed there to avoid being caught by an overzealous RA.
posted by not_on_display at 5:59 PM on October 18, 2013 [4 favorites]


They did use that word to describe it. See this famous poem about a report on its effectiveness:

Prohibition is an awful flop.
We like it.
It can't stop what it's meant to stop.
We like it.
It's left a trail of graft and slime,
It don't prohibit worth a dime,
It's filled our land with vice and crime.
Nevertheless, we're for it.


I'd like to know if the living descendants of these people have been located. There's just enough info that it might be possible to find descendants who either knew them or knew stories of them.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:09 PM on October 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


The Prohibition Party was founded in the mid-1800s, so the word's association with the notion of a legislative ban on alcohol was nothing new in 1932. The 18th amendment was in effect for 13 years -- its last being 1933, a year after the note was written, and so it's not surprising they might have suspected an end was possible, even probable.
posted by axiom at 6:14 PM on October 18, 2013


The finder of this note if the 18 Amendment has bin [sic] changed have a good Drink on us. - E. Daniher

Will do.
posted by Tsuga at 6:14 PM on October 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


have a good Drink on us

We all just got happy thoughts and best wishes from beyond the grave, spoken with dry throats. I think we have an obligation to reply in the same spirit.
- swig -
Cheers, mates.

Furthermore, if a reader from a future time when the prohibition of marijuana has been repealed should happen upon this post, have a toke in memory of E. Daniher.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:17 PM on October 18, 2013 [6 favorites]


"enough alcohol delivered to Florham before Prohibition ‘officially’ began in 1920 to last the full 13 years of the law's existence."

Unfortunately nobody remembered to bring ice.
posted by Hicksu at 6:18 PM on October 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


have a good Drink on us

Will do!
posted by starscream at 6:23 PM on October 18, 2013


E. Daniher

Not to be confused with "Red Will" Danaher (which is the first thing that came to mind when I saw that name).

Great post. :)
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:27 PM on October 18, 2013


> The Prohibition Party was founded in the mid-1800s, so the word's association with the notion of a legislative ban on alcohol was nothing new in 1932. The 18th amendment was in effect for 13 years -- its last being 1933, a year after the note was written, and so it's not surprising they might have suspected an end was possible, even probable.

Also 1932 was a presidential election year. Throughout Prohibition there were candidates promising to work for repeal, but this might have been a year when so many candidates supported it that it might've seemed more a matter of when than if.
posted by ardgedee at 6:32 PM on October 18, 2013


The state liquor control board approved rules this week, so it won't be too many months before I can just walk into a store and buy some marijuana. I'm not really a pot fan, but I plan to do it, just because I can.
posted by wotsac at 6:49 PM on October 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm not really a pot fan, but I plan to do it, just because I can.

I feel the same way.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:56 PM on October 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I was thinking recently that it took more than 50 years for small breweries to come back from this insane period of history since, after repeal, the big breweries like Duff came in and consolidated everything. I suppose they just bought out anyone still left standing.
posted by thelonius at 9:13 PM on October 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm in grad school just down the road from there; I'm super excited about this having been found. Even though I'm a European historian, I've always had a soft spot for local history.
posted by naturalog at 10:52 PM on October 18, 2013


The state liquor control board approved rules this week, so it won't be too many months before I can just walk into a store and buy some marijuana. I'm not really a pot fan, but I plan to do it, just because I can.

This is all good, but think of what will be lost! A lifetime of experience in evasion and concealment - all those furtive contacts and clandestine meetings - all those dodgy characters I have met in places I would otherwise never dared enter into - it's gonna make me feel like a fucking square to see a lifetime of outlaw activity made legal and all mainstream like.
posted by three blind mice at 11:09 PM on October 18, 2013


I find the phrase "it was during Probition" very strange. It's like they knew it was just a period that would be over by the time anyone found the note.

Prohibition was recognized as a massive failure -- in achieving its social goals, not to mention the basic failure to roll back widespread consumption of alcohol -- very early on.

National Prohibition went into effect on January 16, 1920. In addition to being ineffective, it created increasingly serious problems such as dangerous bootleg alcohol, organized crime, violence, law enforcement abuses, binge drinking, widespread political corruption, and an increasing disrespect for law.

As a result, organized opposition developed and included the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, the Women's National Organization for National Prohibition Reform, Labor's National Committee for the Modification of the Volstead Act, United Repeal Council, the Women's Moderation Union, and the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers.

Finally, in the 1932 election, the Democratic Party platform included a "wet" or anti-prohibition plank and Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency promising repeal. The popular vote for Repeal was 74 percent in favor and 26 percent in opposition.


Repeal, ironically, came largely from the women's vote which had influenced the passage of the 18th Amendment in the first place [the suffrage and temperance movements had a long and intertwined history], and women supported repeal largely for the same reasons they had originally supported prohibition -- the social ills surrounding illegal (and therefore unregulated) drinking.

Congress passed the bill for the 21st Amendment in a lame duck session before the inauguration of the new president and congress, and it was approved by the necessary number of states in 288 days -- the second fastest approval up to that point (giving 18-year-olds the vote took only 99 days in 1971).

By 1932, certainly, the sense that Prohibition would be a distinct era with a beginning and end was in the air.
posted by dhartung at 11:09 PM on October 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


Man, people sure liked saying [sic] back then. They said it three times in that one note.
posted by koeselitz at 11:13 PM on October 18, 2013 [3 favorites]


[totally radical] hadn't caught on yet.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:49 PM on October 18, 2013 [5 favorites]


Was there by chance a creaky old typewriter and a cockroach corpse near to this note?

i have been lying here
and there
for four thousand years
with silicon in my esophagus
as gravel in my gizzard
thinking
thinking
thinking
of beer

posted by 1f2frfbf at 12:00 AM on October 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


Here's a photo of the "Stamp out Prohibition" car urging you to "vote for wet candidates" in the early 1930s.
posted by interplanetjanet at 6:58 AM on October 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Man, people sure liked saying [sic] back then. They said it three times in that one note.

For all the good Prohibition did at, well, prohibiting drinking, they were probably just trying to conceal saying [hic]! constantly.
posted by Celsius1414 at 7:17 AM on October 19, 2013


Wait wait wait. That have Prince Albert in a can?!
posted by clvrmnky at 11:31 AM on October 19, 2013


Well, not so much anymore...

turns out he'd suffocate.

Thankyooverymuch.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 12:04 PM on October 19, 2013


Furthermore, if a reader from a future time when the prohibition of marijuana has been repealed should happen upon this post, have a toke in memory of E. Daniher.

You know, i think about this a lot. How likely is it that a significant portion of this site, or most sites from around now will still be around in 50 or 100 years? I recently noticed that archive.org will retroactively delete any archives of a site if at any point in the future the robots.txt is changed to prevent indexing or anything. As a result of this, i've seen a lot of old stuff disappear when some domain squatter or anyone else takes over the old site and changes that.

I especially expect the 2003-2013 era to be an absolute dead zone when it comes to finding a lot of photographs, writing, or really much of anything. So many sites have started up and died, and so many sites that are still around which hold that info will expire within the next ten years or so.

It'll all just become some video series on the future holographic version of youtube where some college kid goes around interviewing 90-100 year olds about what the "early internet" was like in the 90s and 2000s, because none of that shit that isn't already 100% locked away in archives vaults is going to survive. And fuck, i really wish they could put some kind of lock on stuff older than a year or two that updates to the current site couldn't wipe it out.

No notes like this will be found about ganja unless they're on paper, is all i can think.
posted by emptythought at 4:31 PM on October 19, 2013


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