Nashville now and then: Quenching a civic thirst

What does a fella have to do to get a drink around here? As of mid-1967, the answer was: bring your own bottle, and know the right people. But a campaign was afoot to bring "liquor by the ounce" — the clinical euphemism advocates used for "liquor by the drink" — to Metropolitan Nashville.

Amid legislative chicanery, backroom plotting by business titans and a major get-out-the-vote campaign in the city's most privileged neighborhoods, the campaign came down to a county-wide referendum on September 28, 1967. Liquor by the drink carried the day.