I ran across a small item on student drinking and alcohol
sales in the 1938 Davis Enterprise that
prompts a number of observations and questions.
The item, reproduced here, concerns two students allegedly
purchasing too-strong beer from a retailer in Davis and Dean Knowles Ryerson
complaining to the Chamber of Commerce directors about it.
First, the implied alcohol
consumption scene in Davis is certainly light years away from Davis today. A
mere two students make a “brawl” and get themselves dismissed from the college.
Talk about “things have changed.”
Second, drunken behavior
among students was an on-going reason for dismissal? What would we do for
students if we applied that standard today?
Third, notice that Ryerson’s
seeming first line of response is to go to the directors of the Chamber of
Commerce rather than to the police or the City Council. I take this to mean
that Ryerson was a rational actor and accurately targeted people with the most
power to do something about a student-drinking problem. In a number of ways,
the Chamber of Commerce was pretty much the government of Davis in the 1930s.
Fourth, selling a mild form
of beer was apparently legal in Davis in 1938. This seeming fact brings to my
attention my own lack of knowledge of exactly what sorts of alcohol were banned
in what form in what years in Davis.
I am not aware of any account that gives us the years in
which it was legal or not legal to purchase what form of alcohol in a bar or
eating place or for retail-take-away. Does anyone know of such an account?
Fifth, the topic of booze
makes me notice how little attention is given the topic of alcohol in the Davis Enterprise or in other reports on
Davis doings.
More precisely, there was a fair amount of reporting on it
before the 1911 three-mile ban, but not so much after that. I think this is one
of the reasons this little story from 1938 caught my attention.
