Lou’s View: THE DEATH OF JOHN BARLEYCORN

By Lou Bernard

I’m having a beer as I write this one. Yes, I KNOW it’s nine-fifteen in the morning. But the column is about alcohol, and it seemed fitting to have a beer. Also, you have to remember, as you are reading this, it may be nine-fifteen AM. But when I wrote this column, it was nine-twenty-nine AM. So there. Stop judging me.

There’s been a lot of discussion of alcohol in Clinton County’s history. Some of it for, and some against, and much of it has been pretty entertaining. It got to the point where, allegedly, some anti-alcohol protestors smashed a stone beer glass out of a statue’s hand at Highland Cemetery. At one point, a local woman named Mary Coira served an anti-alcohol group meat loaf laced with bootleg whiskey.

And in July of 1919, Lock Haven passed an ordinance outlawing alcohol, which was met with some resistance. And, typically, the Clinton County Times had far too much fun with it.

“J. Barleycorn Dead, Dead, Dead,” said the front-page headline on July 4, 1919. It referred to “John Barleycorn,” which was a clever nickname for alcohol in those days. It also neatly named the two division in the community, referring to them as the “Wets” and the “Drys.” I’ll let you figure out which was which.

The Times was heavily against the consumption of alcohol, in spite of the fact that their articles tend to read as if they’d been drinking fairly heavily. They suggested that most people were celebrating the decision, and that some people were upset about it, alternately partying with alcohol while debating how to claim this was unconstitutional.

The Clinton County Times took some delight in being a very strange newspaper. The entire article was written as if John Barleycorn was an actual person, had died, and they were thrilled with it.

“It is the general belief in Lock Haven that everybody will be better off with the old monster laid in a dishonorable grave than to have him staggering around in our midst,” the article said. “This opinion not only obtains among the Drys but a very large number of men who associated with old John occasionally and took little jaunts with him on special occasions are glad he has turned his toes to the daisies and they hope he may never be disinterred.”

Wow. Okay, first, that’s really, really emphatic. Second, it’s a lot of extra words just to say you disapprove of alcohol. Even for the Clinton County Times, this whole thing was somewhat bizarre.

The newspaper went on to interview and quote people who strongly approved of the anti-alcohol laws, even though they were heavy drinkers. Many of them told similar stories—They’d been drinking since age fifteen, and had spent a lot of money on alcohol, but were delighted that it was now outlawed and had voted for that law. I’m a little dubious on the authenticity of these people, as it seems kind of strange that these lifelong drinkers were suddenly strongly anti-alcohol overnight. The Clinton County Times was not above fabricating a few things, it must be admitted—They spent literally decades running interviews with the stone soldiers on the Civil War monument, and I have to imagine that these were at best embellished.

“I voted to knock him out, and I’ll vote to keep him out forever,” said one lifelong drinker, who definitely was not made up for purposes of the article. “I am only one of thousands who feel the same way.” Yeah, that certainly sounds like something the average heavy drinker would say.

Alcohol was outlawed for a time, as anyone who paid attention in history class knows. Here in Clinton County, we had Prince Farrington successfully dragging John Barleycorn from the grave like a Frankenstein’s monster, and most people actually seemed to approve of that. I assume the Clinton County Times did not. However, when Prohibition was overturned, Clinton County went back to drinking again—John Barleycorn had risen from the grave. Have a beer.