Oking Saloons

IT TOOK THREE attempts in 12 years, but last week Oklahomans finally got in line with the residents of the other 49 states, narrowly voting to repeal their constitution's statewide ban on saloons.

Still, don't look for bars to pop up all over the Sooner State anytime soon; the vote to give Oklahoma's 77 counties the right to decide individually whether they will allow bars was extremely close--425,155 to 396,600, according to the Daily Oklahoman. And in fact, in only 17 of the counties did a majority of voters call for amending the bar against having bars.

As happy as proponents of the rule change--who tried in vain in 1972 and 1976 to have the same referendum passed--are about their success on the third go-round, they don't see more than seven counties actually voting to permit bars.

It would take a petition signed by 10 percent of a county's voters to put the issue up to be passed by a majority vote. Oklahoma didn't actually repeal prohibition until 1959, and organizers on both side of the liquor-by-the-drink issue says most of the arid state is still very much in favor of being dry. The only exceptions noted are the counties including metropolitan Oklahoma City and Tulsa, which have grown rapidly (Oklahoma City 45,000 since 1970; Tulsa 35,000 in the same 14 years) with an influx of people--presumably alcohol fans--from the East and Midwest who came to escape unemployment and cash in on the oil boom. Soldiers at For Sill in Law ford and students at the University of Oklahoma in Norman and Oklahoma State University in Still water, might also be able to push their counties to allow one of military men's and college students' favorite activities.

WHAT THE VOTE could mean, though, is an end in some places to rampant hypocrisy about the liquor laws. When the Oklahoma Legislature turned back prohibition, they allowed for package stores, but only beer with an alcohol content of less than 3.2 percent could be served by the glass, at restaurants and taverns with appropriate licenses. At restaurants and even in the state's 1500 private clubs, patrons ostensibly had to bring their own bottles purchased elsewhere.

But, acknowledges Charles Weaver, an administrative assistant at the Oklahoma Alcohol and Beverage Commission, at almost every one of those 1500 clubs you can get an illegal glass of liquor or wine. With only 18 enforcement officers for the whole state. Weaver says the commission has all it can handle in looking after the 840 package stores which are legally licensed to sell liquor.

In pushing for the repeal, Oklahomans for Responsible Liquor Control (ORLC) hit on the themes of being honest about the reality of how much liquor is being sold by the drink--"Come on, Oklahoma, let's stop the nonsense," exhorted one television ad--and how if the illegal trade were licensed in just 15 counties, Oklahoma could net $35 million in yearly tax revenues. "We've had liquor by the drink in Oklahoma for 25 years. We just never admitted it," says ORLC President Michael Williams, "Naturally, I'm tickled to death [about the results of the referendum]. In the long run, it'll be a great boost to Oklahoma, through tourism, through conventions, through increased taxes. And it'll finally put us in step with the rest of the country."

But the Oklahoma is OK Committee charged that legalizing saloons would lead to increased consumption and would boost the state's highway fatalities from about 1000 in 1983 to as many as 1500 or 1600 because of increased drunken driving.

So why did the anti-bar provision get plastered? Largely because the popular feeling really was against changing the constitution, but OK corraled less votes than it expected to, says Richard D. McCartney, editor of the newspaper for the state's 1460-church, 1.7 million member strong Baptist General Convention, one of the biggest lobbiers against repeal. "We were behind by about 29,000 votes," says McCartney. "Thirteen votes in each precinct would have put us in the lead. We just failed to get the votes out."

THE MOVE to change the law picked up support from two unlikely sources; the Daily Oklahoman and the Oklahoma Retail, Liquor Dealers Association. In 1972 and 1976, the newspaper, the state's largest, published seething front-page, editorials against changing the saloon restriction. This year, however, with the son of the old publisher in his father's place, the paper ran a far more mild exhortation against repeal on its editorial page, a move McCartney says "was definitely significant."

Even though package store owners, who did $220 million of business in 1983, could face new competition from bars, "as a general rule, we're glad to see the change happen," says Dealers Association President Michael S. Barnum. "We were tired of the 25 years of hypocrisy. Besides, the only dealers who would be hurt are those who are selling illegally to private clubs." Barnum says he buys the argument that allowing saloons will increase tourism, which would benefiter package store owners and would provide a general shot in the arm for a state looking for business to replace shrinking gas and oil production.

While Oklahoma has finally taken the first step toward getting in touch with the 20th century and moving on from the days of the 18th Amendment and axe-wielding Carrie Nation, the decision sends a highly ambiguous message--just 15,000 switched votes would have meant a totally different story. Instead of a sentimental story about Oklahoma's fall from saloon-free innocence, 13 voters per precinct could have made it a story about Oklahoma's fall from saloon-free innocence, 13 voters per precinct could have made it a story about intransigence and the perseverance of atavistic traditions.

The vote might also be taken as a reaffirmation of a lot of things we've been hearing about the transformation of die-hard conservative attitudes in the Sunbelt by urbanization and an influx of Easterners (in Oklahoma, for example, fully two-thirds of the population of 3,025,290 lives in metropolitan areas). But more than 40 percent of Oklahoma City's 403,213 residents and 60 counties--more than 85 percent of the state's land area--turned thumbs down on changing one of the oldest traditions in the 77-year-old state.

The wind may have come sweeping down the plain in Oklahoma last week and--as far as the vote tally is concerned--scattered, this country's last official remnants of an earlier age when rum's first name was "Demon." But it's hard to tell just which way the wind really was blowing.