Blue Laws II: Electric Boogaloo

As opposed to Minnesota liquor law, Texas is just as puritanical but much more confusing.

Alcohol sales are determined by both county and city ordinance. This determines whether or not you are legally allowed to quench your thirst at any given spot on the map.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Of Texas' 254 counties, 44 are completely dry and 169 are partially dry or "moist". The patchwork of laws can be confusing, even to residents. In some counties, only 4% beer is legal. In others, beverages that are 14% or less alcohol are legal. In some "dry" areas, a customer can get a mixed drink by paying to join a "private club," and in some "wet" areas a customer needs a club membership to get liquor-by-the-drink, reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The newspaper demonstrates how variable the alcohol laws can be, even within small geographic areas. "Move from Fort Worth to Arlington and you’ll be surprised that you can buy beer but not wine at the grocery store. Move to Grand Prairie and you can’t even find beer there, but you can buy alcoholic drinks at restaurants in both towns. Then move to Burleson, which has alcohol sales in the Tarrant County portion of the city but not in the Johnson County side of town."
This meant that in grad school, we had to leave the city of Denton to buy our tequila, Southern Comfort, vodka, and some cinnamon liquer called Hot Damn! that my roommate Elly quite enjoyed one evening in the Fall of 1994.

It also meant that when we moved to Frisco, which is mostly in Colin County--the county was wet, the city was dry, so I'd have to cross highway 121 (which was Plano, which was moist) to buy beer. Since my daughter was a baby, this required that I shop somewhere that I could bring her into without feeling like a horrible mom. So I shopped at the grocery store in Plano and bought beer while I was there.

At the time there were lobbyists camped in the parking lot, looking for people buying beer. They'd ask if the person was a Frisco resident, if they were a registered voter, and if so, they asked them to sign a petition to make beer and wine sales legal in Frisco, to be voted on in the next election.

I quickly changed my voter registration to Frisco. It was easy because the lobbyists gave me a voter registration card. Pre-stamped.

The law changed in 2002. One month later, the grocery store I used to shop at in Plano closed for business. Shortly after that, the crime rate went up in Frisco, but the tax money from beer and wine more than offset it.

And now I don't have to cross Highway 121 to buy beer, which is a huge relief because the route of Highway 121 forms the sigil odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around. It has taken years to achieve, and has involved three computer hacks, two break-ins, one minor bribery and, on one wet night when all else failed, two hours in a squelchy field shifting the marker pegs a few but occultly incridibly significant meters.

So we've got that to combat the puritans with, which is nice.