We went into a bar where there wasn't much happening and started
> playing pool. There was a sign on the wall that said something like:
> 'In order to play pool you must show your draft card" -- the draft card,
> of course, being required in those days when a male turned 18.
> Well, we shot pool for a while and nobody seemed bothered -- nobody
> asked to see the cards, anyway -- so we started to wonder: If they
> think we're 18, maybe we can get a beer? I still had some growing to
> do at that point; I was about 5'3" and I wrestled in the 112-pound
> class. My friend was taller, heavier and shaving every day, so he went
> up to the bar while I sat at the table. By golly, a minute later there
> he was, coming back with two bottles of Coors.
> Cheers,
> Henry
And it was 3.2% beer in Kansas 40 years ago. Anything stronger was illegal then, in both Kansas and Oklahoma.
As Pat says, Kansas, like other places, has changed over the past
40 years. Especially towns like Wellington, on the Kansas Turnpike with its volume of travelers the towns want to lure, and with a very viable supermarket (Dillon's, the Kansas operation of Kroger's), which Independence seems to lack. Wellington has a WalMart supercenter, too, near the Dillon's store.
The county of which Wellington is the county seat produces more wheat than any other county in the United States, and with the wheat and tourist traffic and a crew change point on the BNSF (formerly Santa Fe) Chicago-Los Angeles main line, it's a pretty prosperous place. (The county history museum has a great deal of local Santa Fe history.)
Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com