There are some great color maps of the "dry"  "wet" & "moist" (wet cities
in dry counties) in the recently published Kentucky thematic atlas.  These
patterns could fuel some interesting speculation for those of you up on
your Kentucky social and cultural geography.

Richard Ulack, Karl B. Raitz, and Gyula Pauer, _Atlas of Kentucky_
(Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1998).

I may be able to get color printouts of these maps for interested parties.
Then I suggest getting in touch with Karl Raitz in the University of
Kentucky Department of Geography for another interpretation.

Mike Dorn, Department of Geography, UK

At 07:37 AM 01/26/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>The table at the Beer Institute web site (which either my browser or the
>institute forbids me from consulting in detail) apparently lists the
>population of counties that are dry for beer sales. There are a lot more
>counties that are wet for beer but dry for spirits. The state with the most
>dry counties is Kentucky; when I wrote "Drink: a social history of America"
>(a year ago) 75 of its 121 counties were totally dry and a further 24
>prohibited the sale of spirits but allowed wine and beer. This may have
>changed, as counties all across the country are increasingly voting to go
>wet, especially as rural areas are settled by people from cities and more
>conservative southern areas are settled by northerners. I also believe that
>the ridiculous restrictions on the sale and even the tasting of bourbon by
>distillers situated in dry counties have been eased a little. In 1997 Roger
>Brashears, the promotions manager of Jack Daniels, was asked by a visiting
>British journalist, who was amazed at the number of dry counties in
>Tennessee, whether anyone drank at all in the state. "Yes, ma'am," he
>replied. "It's just that we don't do it in front of each other."
>Andrew Barr.
>
>
Mike Dorn
Department of Geography
1457 Patterson Office Tower
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506-0027
USA

Office tel: (606) 257-2931
FAX: (606) 323-1969

Home tel: (606) 233-9712
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http://www.uky.edu/AS/Geography/dept/dorn.htm