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I ask you to vote no Once Upon a time, when I was a wee little girl of three, a poisonous snake bit me. Just because I was walking through his territory. Since that day (63 years ago) I stay far, far away from snakes. Doesn't matter what kind; I am terrified of any snake. And I am as scared of alcohol as lam of snakes! Thomasville is my town and has been for 48 years. Unfortunately, I live outside the city limits and cannot vote. So I'm writing this letter to ask you who do live inside the city limits to vote no on the alcohol referendum on Tuesday, August 14, 2007. I grew up in Florida, which as far as I know, has always been a "wet" state. I remember the house that Daddy bought for us. Only it wasn't really a house, but a bar that had been closed. Just two big rooms, a kitchen and two "restrooms;" one outside, one inside. The first thing Daddy did was shovel beer cans and bottles out of the way, dig a hole, rake the bottles and cans into it and cover it up. This he did for the first six months we lived there. We weren't as fortunate with the large beer sign on the east end of the building. Once people began stopping to buy beer he knew it was time to repaint. And that was at least once a year. If you stand at the intersection of Wilson Avenue and West Front Street and look to your left, you can easily see Nicol Avenue. If you stood on US 90 (the road in front of my house) and looked at my house, then to your left you could see two more houses and a "juke" joint in the same length of space. In the second house from mine, lived a very nice family. There was a mother, a daddy three boys and one girl, Wanda. And we played together every day. Except for Friday nights, all day Saturday, Saturday nights and all day Sunday. On Friday nights, the two older boys came home drunk. And they liked to come over to my house for some strange reason. We hadn't lived there long before I found a hiding place. When I heard them coming, that's where I went. It's also where I went when my drunken uncles came over. I would stand so still, almost not daring to breathe. So afraid somebody would find me. On Sunday afternoons, the mother would get a two-by-four (or some kind of big stick), they would all three get in their back yard and she would proceed to sober them up. Come Monday morning things were back to normal and Wanda and I played together. Then there was the "juke" joint. Monday through Thursday nothing happened. You knew it was open because you could hear the music, and when you walked real fast by on your way to a friend's house, the doors were open (pre-air conditioning). It was different starting around 5:00 p.m. on Friday and lasting until around that time on Sunday afternoon. The dirt parking lot was full; cars were parked on each side of the road. Some almost to my house. The music was loud. The people were louder. And you could see and hear them fighting in the back yard during the daytime. I could probably fill a book with the alcohol related things that happened in my life until I had the good fortune to move to Bashi/Thomasville, a "dry" county, and town. I just want to ask you to vote no on Tuesday, August 14. I had a safe place to hide. But what about the little girls and boys who don't? My parents didn't drink, and I know now they would never have let anything happen to me. But when you're 10 you don't necessarily know that.
What about the people who have to travel through the territory?
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