WITH YOUR WINE

New Orleansstyle red beans

What better way to enjoy fall’s cooler weather than with this Crescent City favorite? Serve it with plenty of white rice, some coleslaw or potato salad, and the red blend of your choice. Red beans are, of course, kidney beans, but New Orleans brands like Camellia that say “red beans” seem to provide the best results.

Serves six to eight, takes 3 to 4 hours

1 lb dry red beans

8 c water

1 ham bone or 2-3 pork neck bones or 1 lb smoked sausage, cut in 3/4-inch pieces

2 onions, chopped

1 bell pepper chopped

1/2 rib celery, chopped

2 Tbsp garlic, chopped

2 bay leaves

Red pepper, black pepper and salt to taste

1. Put everything but the salt into a heavy pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer, partially cover, and cook until the beans start to get tender, 1 to 2 hours depending on the beans.Check the beans periodically; add more water if necessary.

2. When the beans start to get tender, add salt. Carefully remove the ham bone or neck bones, carefully remove the meat, and put the meat back in the pot.

3. When the beans are done, in another hour or so, mash some of the beans against the side of the pot to make the mixture creamier and thicker.

ask the WINE GUY?

WHY ARE THERE WHITE GRAPES IN RED WINE BLENDS?

This is a common practice in France, where the white juice makes the red wines lighter in taste and mouth feel. —JEFF

SIEGEL

OUR PHYSICIANS provide comprehensive male and female urological care for:

Disorders of the prostate

Urinary tract infections

Urinary stone diseases

Bladder cancer

Kidney cancer

Male infertility

1411 N. Beckley Ave. Pavilion III Suite 464 Dallas, TX 75203 214-948-3101

Erectile dysfunction (impotence)

Incontinence

Urinary dysfunction

Vasectomy

Robotic Renal Surgery

Robotic Prostate Surgery

2705 Prince George Ave. DeSoto, TX 75115 972-780-0480

Hours: Mon–Fri 8:30–5 www.southwesturologydallas.com

Accepting most major insurance plans

What does it take to get a drink in this neighborhood?

Navigating through 100 years of complicated laws is the current answer. After November, however, that may change.

Story by Jeff Siegel & Emily Toman

Timeline of liquor laws in Texas

1843

Republic of Texas passes what may have been the first local-option measure in North America. This means each community in the state can decide its own liquor laws, setting the scene for 167 years of confusion.

1845

TEXAS LAW BANS SALOONS, BUT IS RARELY ENFORCEDAND IS REPEALED IN 1856.

1903

Local option voting takes most of North Texas dry, except for Dallas and Fort Worth.

1887 Prohibition amendment to Texas Constitution fails, and state remains “local option”: A county, city or justice of the peace precinct can vote wet or dry. This means that parts of the same county can have entirely different liquor laws.

1917 DALLAS VOTES DRY.

Illustration by Jynnette Neal

1919

TEXASADDS PROHIBITION AMENDMENTTO STATE CONSTITUTION.

1911 The only proper attitude for “any Christian man and thoughtful citizen,” said Texas Baptists, was one of ceaseless and truceless hostility against the entire liquor oligarchy, local, county, state, and national, root and branch.” it’s before Prohibition — for of has

1920 FEDERALPROHIBITION BEGINS.

— has been as much a part of Dallas as 100-degree days and the Cowboys.

In this, our wet-dry boundaries affected everyone. In dry areas, of course, residents have had to drive across town to buy a bottle of wine or a six-pack and couldn’t even order a drink in a restaurant until 1971. Even today, the private club limitations in dry areas that went into affect in 1971 make it more difficult to order liquor in Oak Cliff and North Dallas than in Lakewood. And even residents in wet areas feel the difference. If you live in a wet part of town that borders a dry area, you witness the Friday night flight to the liquor stores that guard the border.

All of this could change next month. If voters approve the two issues on the ballot, every restaurant in the city, regardless of wet-dry status, will be able to sell beer, wine and spirits without the private club paperwork, and retailers with the appropriate state licenses will be able to sell beer and wine.

In this month’s magazine, we look at the history of Dallas’ wet-dry status, our unique (and often frustrating) liquor laws, the role religion has played in keeping Dallas dry, and what it will mean to our neighborhood if voters approve both issues.

1929 Colliers magazine reports that Dallas, despite Prohibition, is wide open — reporter Owen P.White bought liquor in six places in a twoblock stretch of downtown, and there were more than a hundred others in the city.

1935 Two years after federal Prohibition is repealed, Texas voters repeal state prohibition. Local option returns; areas that were wet before Prohibition are wet again. In Dallas, only Oak Cliff, with beer sales, is wet.

1940

The town of Preston Hollow (not yet annexed by Dallas) votes dry, 97 to 49.

1944

DALLAS COUNTY VOTES WET, 47,343 TO 23,540.

2010

DALLAS’ WET-DRY ELECTION GOES TO THETEXAS SUPREME COURT, WHICH WILL DECIDE WHETHER THERE ARE VALIDENOUGH SIGNATURES TO HOLD THE REFERENDUM. IF THERE ARE, IT WILL GO TO VOTERS IN NOVEMBER.

1956 OakCliff votes dry, 17,123 to 15,403, and remains dry after elections in 1957 and 1960 fail to reverse its status.

1971

VOTERS APPROVE LIQUOR BY THE DRINK IN A TEXAS-WIDE REFERENDUM. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TEXAS HISTORY, RESTAURANT PATRONS WILL BE ALLOWED TO BUY COCKTAILS.

1976: Addison votes wet, 242-70 in one of the first successful wet-dry elections in Dallas County since Prohibition. In this, it is the beginning of the end of the dry laws that had dominated Dallas for more than century. Most of the city’s suburbs would follow suit, in some form or another, over the next two decades.

2004:

Carrollton votes wet for retail beer and wine sales (6,197 to 3,173) and for restaurant alcohol sales 6,759 to 2,595).

2007:

How long has liquor been a political debate?

Wet-dry has always beencontroversial in Texas. In 1887, a leading anti-Prohibitionist, R.Q. Mills, accused the media of bias in its reporting of the wet side during the fight over adding a Prohibition amendment to the state constitution: “The Prohibitionists had a monopoly with our reporting,” and he said the media who had criticized his position were guilty of fraud.

Andin1920,prominentDallasphysician Dr. CurticeRosserexchangedletterswithhisfriend

William Jennings Bryan, the thrice-failed Democratic presidentialcandidate,aboutthemostimportant issues in the upcoming presidential election. They agreed it would be war profiteering, the ratification of theTreaty of Versailles (that ended World War I) and Prohibition.

If Dallas goes wet, will Preston Hollow residents notice?

Sure.

But seeing beer and wine on the shelves of a store like the Whole Foods at Preston and Forest will come only as a pleasant surprise, says Vaughn Miller, president of the retail division of Henry S. Miller Realty Services. The firm owns Preston RoyalVillage,amongotherDallas commercial real estate.

“This will help retailers and restaurateurs who are normally burdened by getting a private club permit,” Vaughn says of a successful wet vote. “I think it will be unnoticeable. It will not have any effect whatsoever on the residents of Preston Hollow.”

Ourneighborhoodhascertainly thrived without it. Five years before theCity of Dallas annexed the town of Preston Hollow in 1945, residents voted 97-49 to ban alcohol sales. The Feb. 25, 1940, Dallas Morning News article quotes Ira P. DeLoache, who owned and developed much of the area during that time:

“Preston Hollow voted dry to protect the community from damage resulting from undesirable places opening up along Preston

Did Dallasites make moonshine?

Stills and corn liquor are not just hillbilly doings. In 1936, reported a Dallas newspaper, police raided a still in the “North Dallas Negro district” near what is today Cole and Lemmon. They seized 950 gallons of mash, but the still’s operators escaped — even though the newspaper reported that the police had staked out the house for most of the night.

Road,” he says. “I’m sure the vote was not against liquor as such, but to keep its sale from getting too close to our doors.”

In the wake of Prohibition, the story reassures that the vote would not outlaw the purchase of alcohol or “halt cocktail parties.”

The original Preston Hollow boundaries extend only from the Tollway to Preston and Walnut Hill to Northwest Highway.The 1940 dry vote did not affect the area known today as Preston Center, so that’s where retail business began to grow, says Tom Solender, a Preservation Dallas board member studying Preston Hollow history.

Solender says developers such as DeLoache built the neighborhood primarily as a residential area. Unlike other pockets of Dallas, such as Lake Highlands and Oak Cliff, Preston Hollow hasn’t undergone major redevelopment or even changed demographically. It remains a “country home community.”

“It was always an area that had higher income than everyone else,” he says.

Reason enough for retail giants such as Whole Foods and Tom Thumb to open at the dry intersections of PrestonRoyal and Preston-Forest — and stay.

“The real issue these days has to do with sales tax,” Solender says, referring to the argument of whether a wet Dallas would mean more city sales tax revenues. “It’s not really about alcohol anymore.”

How does getting a drink in a wet area differ from a dry area?

Is most of Dallas still dry for religious reasons?

Religious groups have traditionally taken the lead in fighting wet-dry elections in Texas, and they played a key role 50 years ago when Oak Cliff went dry. But there doesn’t seem to be much organized religious opposition to November’s two wet-dry ballot issues.

Does this mean that neighborhood churches don’t care about the issue any more? Or that Dallas is less religious than it used to be?

No on both counts, several religious leaders say. It’s not so much that alcohol isn’t important; rather, it’s that other issues have become more important, and abstinence isn’t the issue it once was. In addition, Dallas has changed significantly from the smaller, predominantly mainstream Protestant city of the 1960s and 1970s to a million-plus population urban center that includes more Catholics, Jews and non-denominational Protestants — all of whom are less concerned about alcohol.

“We’re just getting to this point later than other cities,” says George Mason, pastor at the moderate Wilshire BaptistChurch. “The city is more diverse, and we have more people who have different attitudes about this subject.”

Also, says Rev. Tim McLemore of SMU, alcohol is no longer the good vs. evil issue that it has traditionally been among the mainline Protestant groups that have been in the forefront of the U.S. temperance movement. Mason says this is even true for some conservative Baptists.

“We have knowledge about the benefits of the limited use of alcohol that we didn’t have 100 years ago,” says McLemore, who notes that the United Methodists have changed their views to allow “judicious use” of alcohol. “So we’re less inclined to take a black and white view.”

Finally,churcheshavelessinfluenceovertheir members than they did two and three decades ago. Times were, Mason says, if the church said not to drink, believers didn’t drink. These days, that veto power is largely gone.

What’s all this about “Class B retailers”?

Texas’Class B system dates to 1971, as a companion to a law allowing restaurants and bars to sell liquor by the drink. Before that, no restaurant in Texas was allowed to sell liquor — even in wet areas (although they could sell beer and wine). Customers brought their booze with them from home, and the restaurant sold them setups — mixers, juices and the like. The reason for the law? Retailers who thought liquor by the drink would cost them sales successfully lobbied state legislators, who gave them a monopoly on selling liquor to restaurants, bars and private clubs (restaurants that serve liquor in the state’s dry areas). Retailers said they would lose business because consumers would stop buying liquor at their stores to bring to restaurants. So the legislature agreed to give them the monopoly to make up for the lost sales.

Retailers who sell liquor to restaurants and private clubs are called Class B retailers, after the name of the license they obtain. They include some of the state’s best-known retailers, including Sigel’s and Goody Goody in the Dallas area. Texas is one of three states — Kansas and South Carolina are the others — with this fourth tier of distribution: manufacturer, distributor, retailer and restaurant. The other 47 just have three — manufacturer, distributor and restaurant.

According to this 1971 state law, every restaurant in Texas, whether it’s in a wet or dry area, must purchase liquor from a Class B retailer. The November election would not change this law; it would simply eliminate private clubs in Dallas and make every restaurant a restaurant, in terms of how it can purchase and sell alcohol.

The difference between private clubs and restaurants is that liquor can be delivered to restaurants in wet areas, whereas private club restaurants in dry areas must travel to a Class B retailer’s warehouse to pick up liquor — Sigel’s is near Harry Hines and Preston, and Goody Goody’s is in Addison, for example. Private clubs must also buy their beer and wine from ClassB retailers, while restaurants in wet areas can buy beer and wine dir ectly from the distributors. Class B retailers also buy their beer and wine from distributors, which translates to a markup when the retailers sell it to private clubs.

What does this mean for consumers? Typically, but not always, they’ll pay more for alcohol in a private club.The extra tier adds cost to the product, and restaurants usually pass that onto their customers. >>

Thursday,October7th

BenefittingJ.L.LongMiddleSchool

6116ReigerAvenue,Dallas,TX75214 www.JLLong.com

Registerat RunOn!

5400E.Mockingbird#114,Dallas,TX75206

Oronlineat: www.runontexas.com

Racebeginsandendsattheschoolwiththecoursethrough beautifulHollywoodHeights.Afterraceactivitiesincludefood, drinks,entertainmentandraceawardsceremony. Questions?Contactusatjllongrun@gmail.com

Ages14&under:$15

Ages15&up:$20

FamilyPack(5+):$70

RaceDayRegistrationbeginsat5:00pmattheschool

How do Texans outside of Dallas like their liquor?

Alcohol has never been especially popular with Texans. When Prohibition began in 1919, 199 of the 254 counties were dry; 43 were practically dry, including Dallas County. Even today, according to the Texas AlcoholicBeverageCommission, 29 of the 254 counties are still dry, and only 43 are completely wet.

It could be worse … what if the state owned our liquor stores?

In 18 states (and one county)intheU.S., thestateownsthe liquorstores.These arecalledcontrol states,andthough therearedifferences in how eachstate defines control (some statesallowprivate retailers to sell wine or beer, for example), the result is that what is for sale is controlled by the state.

Advocate

BENEFITS

ThisisalegacyofProhibition;the political compromise that made repeal possible allowed each state to pass its own liquor laws.

Pennsylvaniahastakencontrolone step further. Currently, grocery stores in Pennsylvania can’t sell wine. Instead, the state liquor authorities have installed wine vending machines, from which the customer can buy wine, similar to buying a soft drink or a candy bar from a vendingmachine.Similar,butwitha couple of exceptions.

The consumer puts his or her driver’slicenseintothemachine,where ageinformationonthebarcodeis processed. The photo on the driver’s license is matched with a video image of the buyer at the kiosk, and a state liquor board employee monitors each transaction to confirm that the video of the buyer matches the driver’s license.

How is it that Dallas County is dry yet parts of Dallas are wet?

DALLAS COUNTY VOTES

WET, 47,343 TO 23,540.

The basis forTexas’ wet-dry laws is local option, which does what it says: Local voters can decide whether to sell alcohol in their locality. It’s one of the cornerstones of the Texas liquor system, says Lou Bright, former general counsel for the Texas Alcoholic BeverageCommission.

“The priority is that local voters always have the final say, and can’t be forced to change their local preference by someone from outside their locality,” Bright says. “This doesn’t mean that it’s not confusing or can’t be ambiguous, but that’s always the principle.”

How confusing? Consider what happened in 2006, when a group of North DallasandLakeHighlandsresidents tried to schedule a wet-dry election for theirrespectivesectionsofthecity.

TheTexas Supreme Court ruled that thewet-dryelectioncouldn’tbeheld because the election was designated for the current Justice of the Peace precinct boundaries, when it should have been designatedfortheboundariesestablished in 1877, when the area went dry.

State law defines localities three ways and uses the principle that the larger locality, such as a city, can’t force a smaller locality, such as a JP precinct, to change its behavior: precincts are not voting precincts, but legal and administrative divisions within a county. One JP precinct can be dry, while the one next to it in the same city or county can be wet. Interestingly, Dallas’ wet-dry boundaries don’t follow the current JP lines, but older, less-welldefined JP boundaries. it sounds. A JP precinct that’s dry can’t beturnedwetinacitywideelection unless all of the precinct is within the city.This was one of the issues in the run-up to the November election, when there was some doubt as to whether the JP precinct in Oak Cliff that went dry in 1956 was contained within the city of Dallas.Turns out it was. it sounds, and for many of the same reasons. When Lubbock voted wet in 2009, the drys claimed that part of the county was dry from previous elections, and that a city-wide election couldn’t affectthoseareas—whichincluded in court.>>

What am I actually voting on?

Dallas voters will decide two issues in November’s wet-dry election:

1. Whether to eliminate the private club regulation for restaurants that sell alcohol in dry areas. The private club rule, in place since 1971, requires restaurants to admit customers into the restaurant’s club so they can buy alcohol. It also requires the restaurant to keep a paper trail of club members.

2.Whethertoallowthesaleofbeer and wine, but not spirits, at retailers throughouttheentirecity.Currently, only one-third of Dallas — roughly White Rock Lake to Irving and downtown to Walnut Hill — is wet for retail sales.

Neither issue is dependent on the other. Voters can elect to allow retail sales but keep the private club restrictions, or vice versa.

FOR INFORMATION VISITDALCOELECTIONS.ORG.

If the Texas Supreme Court decides there are enough signatures to hold the referendum, the election will be held Nov. 2. Registration to be eligible to vote in the election ends Oct. 4. Early voting runs Oct. 18-29.