{"id":3049,"date":"2022-07-24T14:45:58","date_gmt":"2022-07-24T14:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3049"},"modified":"2022-07-25T14:56:23","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T14:56:23","slug":"carry-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3049","title":{"rendered":"Carry Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of my grandmothers truly believed that alcohol was totally<\/em> the \u201croot of all evil.\u201d I alway felt bad for my grandad \u2014 he never got to enjoy a cold beer or a glass of wine. My grandad really did like Root Beer \u2014 he was a farmer and he worked very hard and a nice cold root beer tasted pretty refreshing after a long day in the fields. But if my grandmother caught him sitting on the porch drinking a root beer she went into the riot mode. We often tried to explain to her that root beer was just a soft drink, like Pepsi, or an orange soda\u2026. but her reply was always, \u201cthen why did they choose to call it beer<\/em>?\u201d Might as well talk to a rock \u2014 her mind was made up and nothing ever changed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyhow, that brings me to today\u2019s subject \u2014Carry Nation. I heard a lot about Carry Nation from discussions between my grandmother and granddad. My grandmother thought she was sent from God, my granddad thought she was a lunatic.
In case you\u2019re interested, here\u2019s the story\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Civil War wound down, the temperance movement became more popular. (I looked up temperance \u2014 it means what I\u2019d call \u201cmoderation.\u201d But the temperance movement considered it to mean \u201czero tolerance.\u201d I\u2019ve often wondered why their movement used that name\u2026) But back to the story \u2014 the believers of \u201czero tolerance\u201d became organized and adopted the name Women\u2019s Christian Temperance Union in 1874. Their motto was something like \u201cLips that touch liquor, shall never touch mine.\u201d They hung out in schools lecturing children on the joys of water and making them sign the \u201cPledge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most famous of the WCTU group wasCarry Nation. 
Carry Amelia Moore was born in Kentucky in 1846. As a young woman, she married Charles Gloyd, whose hard-drinking soon killed him and left Nation alone to support their young child. The experience instilled in Nation a lifelong distaste for alcohol. She later married David Nation, who worked as a preacher and lawyer, and they eventually settled in Kansas. After their relocation, she stormed around Kansas, busted into bars swinging her hatchet at the bottles \u2014 and the customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure there\u2019s any medical proof, but I suspect she didn\u2019t have all her marbles. Carry\u2019s mother was convinced that she was the real Queen of England and that Queen Victoria had usurped her right to the throne. She paraded around in flowing purple robes, conferring knighthoods on the local farmers. 
Carry\u2019s only child was psychotic and confined to a lunatic asylum. Carry herself died in a Kansas hospital of what was described as \u201cnervous trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before she died, she swore that God Himself had appeared to her and told her that her mission in life was to stamp out everything alcoholic in the whole country, so she abandoned her husband and daughter and marched forth to do His bidding. When she started, she was armed only with a wagonload of bricks, rocks and chunks of wood. She marched into saloons and threw rocks at the bottles and smashed the furniture with logs. She always got people\u2019s attention \u2014 she was almost six feet tall and had a face like a bulldog \u2014 when they saw her coming, everyone bolted to safety. Somewhere along the way, she found her trusty companion that became about as famous as she was \u2014 the far more efficient hatchet. After she got the hatchet, there was no stopping her. Once you\u2019ve thrown a rock, it stays thrown and you need more rocks, but her hatchet never left her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carry didn\u2019t just smash the bottles \u2014 when she was finished with a saloon, it was rubble. The tables and chairs were in splinters and the floor was covered with whiskey. 
She wrecked havoc in Kansas, but God wasn\u2019t going to be satisfied with Kansas alone, so she moved  on to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit and Montana \u2014 scattering holy destruction all over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It appears that as long as Carry stuck to midwestern states, she didn\u2019t meet with much opposition. A lot of people thought of her like some kind of a natural disaster, like tornadoes. Some probably even thought she had a point. But when she went east to places like Philadelphia, New York, Atlantic City, etc. people weren\u2019t so forgiving and suggested that what she was doing wasn\u2019t so much a righteous crusade, but more of a destruction of private property. She was tossed into jail over and over \u2014 something she was proud of \u2014 but she never stayed locked up for long\u2026 probably because the authorities didn\u2019t want her hanging around annoying them. Her press coverage fell off, with the exception of the cartoonists, and that ridicule was something she wasn\u2019t prepared for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carry Nation died in 1911, never living to see nationwide prohibition in America, which was established with the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution and went into effect on January 16, 1920. (Prohibition, considered a failure, was repealed on December 5, 1933 by the 21st Amendment.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t deny that Carry Nation was a colorful character in our Nation\u2019s history, but I guess I\u2019d have to side with my grandad\u2019s opinion of her \u2014 not my grandmother\u2019s.
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my grandmothers truly believed that alcohol was totally the \u201croot of all evil.\u201d I alway felt bad for my grandad \u2014 he never got to enjoy a cold beer or a glass of wine. My grandad really did … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3049"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3053,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions\/3053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}