April 6, 2010 - fifteen years ago today...
…Burnsville voters came out and voted for or against alcohol sales. The “for” won by a comfortable margin. We were the ones who understood that - with beer and wine available in neighboring counties’ grocery stores - people were getting it there and buying their groceries as long as they were over there. Our supermarket was dying, and we didn’t have the kinds of restaurants we needed to attract visitors. Or some of us, for that matter…
Apparently, there had been prior attempts to get legal sales here, but they were not successful. What precipitated my involvement was Britt Kaufmann opining at a Carolina Mountain Literary Festival board meeting that we had no place to entertain authors. (Mostly, we invited them to hang out on the porches of my house, the NuWray Inn, and the house that now is Mountain Medical Arts.) Britt asked, “Why hasn’t anyone gotten alcohol sales here?” Because I’m an arrogant little twit, I said, “Because nobody asked ME!” As if…
So I started attending Town Council meetings (this was in 2009). The then-mayor and one councilman were against it, but the other three - Judy Buchanan, Bill Wheeler, and the newly-elected Ron Powell - said yes. I started fund-raising, and got lots of good advice from David McIntosh, Schell McCall, Amanda Martin, and others I hope will answer this letter to remind me.
A lot of people asked why we didn’t do a county-wide campaign. I said we felt we would lose, due to the great number (almost 150) Freewill Baptist churches out in the county. I had counted them years before, when I was going to write for the paper a story about church bells.
The anti-alcohol organization, headed up by a preacher who was also a bootlegger (I’m not kidding), put ads in the paper showing old newspaper articles with photos of car crashes due to drunk driving. Nuh-uh; bad move. That upset the victims’ families - forced to revisit their pain. There were letters to the editor in the paper about drunk horror stories and setting good examples for our children.
We kept our position as that of the need for a thriving economy. We got donations in the amount of $11,000, which bought us one radio ad, and paid the bills. Antis had children hanging out on the square wearing the VOTE NO shirts and carrying the signs; we had Bill Wheeler hanging out in front of the polling place, wearing a Miller High Life t-shirt. Loved that! There was one woman heading in to vote whom I met on the sidewalk. She said she had come to vote against us, but got so mad at the behavior of the anti bunch on the square that she changed her mind and was voting for all four items on the referendum.
Just for funsies after we won, I went to the elections office to examine the anti folks’ filings. They’d spent a total of $31,000, including $11,000 (our entire budget) just on yard signs, t-shirts, and what-not.
At that time, there were FIVE printing companies in Yancey County. The antis spent all their money at a printing company in Asheville! Talk about not understanding what this was all about…
We won all four referendum items - the off-premise sale of beer and wine, an ABC store, and the sale of mixed drinks in restaurants and hotels and private clubs. YIPPEE!
When the Snap Dragon opened on the square (the first full bar) a year or so later, we had a GREAT party! Now we have a brewery/restaurant (Homeplace Beer Company) and several other restaurants and joints. The NuWray Inn has been restored and has taken back its original name, NuWray Hotel. They’ve got a fabulous restaurant/bar called Sundries (which includes a courtyard). And there’s Birdfoot, where the Potato Liberation Front (I’m on the team) usually wins Wednesday night trivia.
And you can get a margarita (not up to my standards, unfortunately) at the Rio Mexican restaurant. NOTE: if you want a real margarita, before you order one ask the server how they make it. If the answer includes sour mix, don’t do it.
So, life is good. Time to go out and plant sunflower seedlings. (I’m planting only flowers for birds and pollinators, who will then pollinate my neighbor Mary’s food crops.)
Cheers! (and I really mean that)
Lucy
