Beech Tree News Network

My name is Clark Porter Hammers.  I too am a native son whose roots go back to Col. John Porter, one of the founding fathers of Butler County. I graduated from Butler County High School in 1980 and Western Kentucky University in 1984. I have lived in Dana, IN; Dayton, TN; Buffalo ,IN; and Princeton, KY before returning to Butler County with my wife and son in 2000.

Two of these communities were much smaller than Morgantown and two were four times larger. Each place had its own charm, as well as it own set of problems. Both small towns were dying a slow death due to the loss of jobs.  One city was growing with the influx of jobs and people moving to "the country" from the big city. The other seemed to be stuck in time from a "Leave it to Beaver" from the 1950s. Walmart had not been able to put the downtown merchants out of business and they had re-opened the local cinema with Saturday matinees.

All four towns were good safe places to raise a family.  Amazingly, the two small towns both had a bar and grill on Main Street. If you were new to town and wanted to get to know people, you could either attend one of three churches or show up for supper on Saturday night and meet almost everybody from all three churches. There was no place else to go. This was before cell phones and the Internet.

Dayton, TN sold beer at the Minit-Mart.  They were working on alcohol sales for restaurants in order to attract national chains so they wouldn't have to drive 45 minutes to eat at Red Lobster in Chattanooga. Princeton, KY voted in 2012 to allow sales of alcohol. This is one of the more "conservative" cities in the state, voting 70% Republican with 91% of the population attending church with less than 6% unemployment. Princeton has voted for alcohol sales not because they needed the tax revenue, rather to promote new business for the future.                                      

The facts are alcohol can be abused by anyone anywhere at anytime. This abuse is not predicated on whether they buy their alcohol legally or illegally. Nor does it matter whether they have to drive five miles or fifty miles to get it. The farther you drive to get your drink the greater the chance you will do harm to yourself and others.     

The history of Butler County has been one of alcohol being sold in the county illegally for over 100 years. My grandfather, Herman Hammers, was sheriff in 1921 during a thing called Prohibition. If you're not sure what that was, spend 60 seconds at  http://www.history.com/topics/prohibition. That site will educate those people that believe you can legislate morality from the courthouse or the White House. It's a noble idea that not only failed but made matters worse. "Bootlegging" got its start during that time and the truth that no one seems tore up about is that it has never stopped. Anyone young or old can buy alcohol in Butler County any day of the week illegally.

Legal sales of alcohol would do the same thing to our bootleggers as it did to Al Capone - put-'em out of business.

Alcohol by itself does not make a place good or bad. Just like selling cigarettes by itself doesn't make a place good or bad. The facts are over 50,000 people a year die due to alcohol. Over 470,000 people die due to smoking cigarettes. But yet we sell cigarettes everywhere everyday. If we called people "smokeaholics," would that make us write letters to the editor in order to save lives and families of the poor people who are spending over $4,000 a year to kill themselves?                           

I believe the good Lord loved us so much he gave us free will. With that freedom comes the responsibility to choose the things in life that are good. Love is letting others exercise their own free will even if we don't agree with it. My hope for Butler County is to grow into a place that offers many choices for its citizens. Choices in where to work, where to shop, where to eat, where to relax, where to gather, where to worship, and where to live. In order to grow I believe those of us who have lived here the longest must be willing to allow some changes for those who will live here after we're gone.

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Letter sumbitted by Clark Porter Hammers