Seventy-Five Years Ago: You: Celebrate. You? Back Off!

Counting Down to April 7, the Anniversary of the Return of Legal Beer

April 4, 1933: City leaders and beermakers picked up the pace. B-Day was coming up fast. Time to finalize arrangements, hire truck drivers, and track down extra bartenders.

In Chicago, brewers and hotel owners finally agreed on the terms of that city's events. Hotel owners had asked brewers to hold off on deliveries until 7 a.m. on the 7th. (What? They thought people needed a good night's sleep -- preferably at a hotel -- before they began drinking??) After considerable debate, the hotel owners finally conceded: if brewers began delivering at midnight, the hotels would start pouring.

At least people in Illinois could expect the taps to flow. A whopping 29 of the 48 states were still dithering over details and had not yet passed the legislation needed to allow local beer sales on April 7.

Maybe that was just as well. The vast majority of the states didn't have any breweries, and the few hundred beermakers who planned to have trucks rolling on the 7th didn't have enough beer even for their local markets

. (For the record, the happy states were: Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illlinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin, with the District of Columbia thrown in for good measure.)

(So if you live now in one of those other no-fun states? No parties for you come Monday! You'll have to wait for your state's "real" anniversary........)