A friend and I have a saying -- "No, no, no, I am the stupid one!" -- whenever one of us wants to admit a gaffe. Yesterday, that was me. After weeks of being consumed by the minutia of the election, I almost lost sight of, shall we say, the big picture. I intended to swing by to vote on the way home for lunch. About 4:30, though, I realized, "I forgot!" So I trudged out and hit the polling place about 5 p.m. Guess who else was there? Everybody else who waited until the last minute. Since my polling place has three precincts, that means there were about 40 people ahead of me, so I had to spend about 50 minutes in line instead of getting in and out in the usual five. My friend says this is my best stupid moment since I went through the hamburger drive-up, paid my money, and finally realized about halfway home that I had sped away before they gave me my food.
At least when I was done, it was only a few minutes until I could have gone to a bar to drink the whole nightmare into oblivion, had I chosen. If the Indiana Licensed Beverage Association and the Restaurant and Hospitality Association of Indiana have their way, we'll have an easier time not waiting until we vote to get roaring drunk:
Both the Indiana Licensed Beverage Association and the Restaurant and Hospitality Association of Indiana will be urging legislators to repeal this prohibition on Election Day alcohol sales. Seeing that this archaic law dates to the days when bars and taverns were the common polling places in many communities, both associations would like to point out that now this law not only hurts Hoosier small businesses that are not allowed to operate a large part of their business for a majority of the day, but it also hurts the State of Indiana which is losing a sizable tax collection that could help balance tight budgets.
We're losing that much tax money because people have to wait until 6 p.m. to get a drink? Perhaps the three-martini lunch isn't as passe here as elsewhere? Indiana always has been kind of slow to pick up on things, then even slower to let them go.
