American Dreams (The Idea Book)

by John T. Butler

  Chapter 13: Three Point Two Redux and Redo

  When I grew up in New York, a half century ago, you could go to a bar or liquor store and legally buy alcoholic beverages, for your own consumption, once you reached the age of 18. Then the Baby Boomers came along and of course, they couldn’t handle their liquor so the federal government changed the laws. Damn Baby Boomers, ruin everything! And right in character they banned together and embraced recreational drug abuse, denouncing their elders as hypocrites for abusing alcohol while condemning pot and LSD. Everything had to be some kind of generational war to the Baby Boom/Me Generation. As Baby Boomer, Bill Maher might say: “Oh, I kid the Baby Boomers” but face it, they are a big pain in the ass.

  Thanks! I needed to get that off my chest for some time now. But this isn’t really about the Baby Boomers, this is about all the generations who followed and have lost their legal access to alcoholic beverages at local drinking establishments. This is about today’s youth and tomorrow’s who will have to wait to age 21 to legally have a beer at a bar. That’s just not right. It’s pure overkill and it hasn’t prevented teenage drinking or drug abuse or drunk driving by teen’s and twenty year olds.

  I suppose there are statistics, that show the law that banned legal sale of alcohol to those in this age cohort, has reduced the incidence of drunk driving deaths involving them. There are also statistics that show that a national speed limit of 55 mph reduced the incidence of highway traffic deaths. But the latter law has been repealed as too repressive while the former goes virtually unchallenged. Well, it’s time the law was challenged, as the sub-rosa culture of alcohol indulgence by eighteen - twenty year olds is the unhealthy byproduct of a law with limited effectiveness.

  In 1961, I left New York to attend college at Dakota Wesleyan University located in Mitchell, South Dakota. In those times, several Midwestern States (South Dakota included) had laws that prohibited teens and 20 year olds from drinking all alcoholic beverages but 3.2 beer (some called it “Prohibition Beer”). At first blush it seems rather quaint, as many (if not most) Midwest customs do, but it produced a legal social culture for alcohol consumption far superior to a sub-rosa drinking culture, as well as a whole new retail industry of 3.2 beer bars for the eighteen-twenty age group.

  Never, in my lifetime has this nation ever had a greater need for a whole new retail industry than it has now and one with the potential of raising local revenues not only with taxes on alcohol sales but on licenses for sales of 3.2 beer. This is easily a billion dollar industry. A 3.2 beer bar provides a gathering spot that is exclusively tailored for the 18-20 year old cohort. As one of the age group, you find yourself surrounded by people your own age having a good time. It doesn’t get any better than that when you’re college age. I know, I lived it.

  Can you get drunk on 3.2 beer? Sure you can, if you drink it fast enough. But the volume required to get blotto normally ensures that you will make yourself sick in the process, if not before you’re blotto. If you don’t care to drink but like to be in the company of those who are drinking then you’ll feel less social pressure to drink at 3.2 bar. At a regular bar there are a wide variety of alcoholic beverages to choose with different flavors that disguise the taste of alcohol while in a 3.2 bar the only alcoholic beverage is beer. Ergo, all an abstainer needs to say is that they hate beer or the taste of it. I saw lots of my peers comfortably drinking Coke or some other soft drink, which had a lower price than beer.

  Unlike regular bars, at a 3.2 bar it is important to ban those under the age of 18 as it would be too tempting to most patrons to slip the underage a beer. And it would be nearly impossible to police. Anyway who age 18-20 wants families with kids in tow coming to their watering hole. And you get few customers over 21 years of age as it gets uncool the older you get to be at a 3.2 bar instead of a regular bar.

  Three point two bars should be legalized nationally to avoid revisiting yesteryears problems of youth driving to a neighboring State to legally drink and then getting in an accident driving back home across the State line. New York’s neighboring States heatedly complained about that New York's law was an inducement to teen drunk driving fatalities. Even though they are less likely to be too drunk to drive from a 3.2 bar, the extra distance driven increases the risk unnecessarily.

  Also included in the law should be a requirement that food is for sale, for on premise consumption and that soft drinks must be readily available at half the price or less than that charged for beer. Food consumed slows the absorption of alcohol and cheaper soft drinks encourage nonalcoholic consumption. It’s not the object of 3.2 bars to push alcohol consumption but to make it available legally to 18-20 year olds, in a place with attractive nonalcoholic alternatives in terms of eating and drinking.

  The 3.2 bar was a thing of Midwestern genius that deserves to be gloriously resurrected and spread from Coast to Coast to provide a better alternative to our youth for alcohol consumption (better that is than private parties or raves where the booze flows free and recreational drugs abound). It’s overdue and in terms of the economy could not be timelier.

  Chapter 14: World Without Wednesdays, Amen

  Family values and fuller employment are the impetus for a six-day calendar week. But before you raise religious objections you should be mindful that if you eliminate a weekday as I recommend it yields eight additional weekends per year or eight additional Sabbath days to celebrate each and every year thereafter. Unless you are a lazy priest, minister, rabbi or mullah how in Heavens name could you object to the celebration of eight additional Sabbaths per year.

  The efficiencies of computers and robots, in a cyber world have permanently reduced the worlds manpower needs as reflected in stubbornly high unemployment rates. The obvious solution is to reduce the workweek so both the private and public sectors are forced to hire the unemployed to make up for the loss in productivity a shorter workweek incurs. In 1938, during the Depression, the 40-hour workweek was made into law for that exact reason (to create jobs). Though the 40-hour workweek is less than 100 years old, most people take it as an immutable fact of life, (much as they do the seven day calendar week).

  A loss in productivity brought about by a decrease in the workweek can have an inflationary impact so it’s important to minimize any such increase and that is part of the beauty of a six day calendar week. On a seven-day calendar week, a reduction of the workweek to four days, while yielding a 50% increase in weekend days also yields a 20% loss in weekdays ergo a 20% loss in productivity. A six-day calendar week with a four-day workweek (a week without Wednesdays) only decreases productivity by 7.7 % (although it also yields a less substantial increase in weekend days of 15.4%). The reason for the dramatic difference is that eight extra weeks yields eight extra workweeks to offset the eight extra weekends reducing the impact in terms of productivity.

  The other problem posed by reducing the workweek to four days on a seven-day calendar week is the negative impact it would have in terms of the increase in air pollution and carbon emissions endemic to the three-day weekend. Fifty-two three- day weekends a year (several would be four-day weekends due to Monday holidays) would be an environmental disaster. Given a three-day weekend Americans cannot resist seizing the opportunity to drive further distances from home for recreation.

  Changing from the seven day calendar week of 52 weeks a year to (what I call a World without Wednesdays) the six day calendar week of 60 weeks a year, promises to enrich our lives far more than just decreasing the unemployment rate. A week without Wednesdays is sure to improve the lives of workers throughout the modern industrialized world in terms of quality of family life and of life it self.

  Decades ago Studs Terkel surveyed workers and found the vast majority didn’t like their jobs. Everyone knows that if a person has a job they love then they are truly blessed for they are in the minority. Now decreasing their annual workload by 7.7% doesn’t seem like much relief but anyone working Monday thru Friday who hates their job knows the worst part
of Monday morning is knowing that it is five full days until the weekend arrives. A week without Wednesdays changes that paradigm forever because now on Mondays you face a maximum of four days work until the weekend. One of the greatest joys of the three-day weekend is knowing it will be a mere four days until the next weekend. The workload may have only dropped by 7.7% but each and every workweek is 20% shorter and that represents a dramatic improvement in your quality of life, especially if you don’t love your job.

  How about those who love their job? Whether they have a family or not, an improvement in the quality of family life, enriches society as a whole, so everyone benefits from a six day calendar week. In a world where two family incomes have become the norm, the importance of the quality time afforded by weekends has grown exponentially. More leisure time spent together as a family unit is better for the institution of marriage and for child rearing.

  If the six day calendar week doesn’t improve life immeasurably, as envisioned, then after a trial of a few years the world can certainly return to a seven day calendar week and no one should be any worse off for the experiment. Overpaid athletes such as NFL players would have one day fewer to rest each week but that just means that the second string players see their roles grow in importance in spelling off the first string to keep them rested. That just makes it, that much more of a team sport. Those businesses like restaurants and bars that are busier on weekends, would make more money and so would the waiters, waitresses, cooks and bartenders they employ. This is a socioeconomic experiment with little risk of downside and with such upside potential it deserves a good old college try at the very least.

  In closing, I must address those of you, who in your seething hatred of Monday mornings are upset with my choice of Wednesdays for elimination. The most passionate of Monday haters probably won’t be mollified by appeals to their poetic nature but that’s where the reason lies. So many songs have been written with Monday as a theme or Monday as a part of the lyric that I just couldn’t bring myself to advocate the demise of Mondays. Wednesday on the other hand is not in any lyrics, I recall, and it stands alone as the only day of the week that is not spelled phonetically. Lastly, elimination of Wednesday has a symmetrical appeal in the order of the day’s initials as such: SMTTFS the S’s on the outside and the T’s on the inside. Many months of February (and all 30 day months commencing on Sunday) would require only five rows down the rest of the months require six.

  P.S.

  This idea will certainly never come to pass in my lifetime, but it should.

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  About the Author

  Born ’43 (icy December morn, on the bathroom floor with a full head of red hair).

  Native of Long Island (more specifically Valley Stream, New York).

  K-6 Wheeler Avenue PS#13, 7-9 VS Memorial Jr. High.

  Class of ’61 Valley Stream Central.

  Class of ’65 Dakota Wesleyan University, Mitchell, SD.

  Master of Social Work ’67 University of Oklahoma.

  ’67-’68 Bureau of Indian Affairs Social Worker, Anchorage Office, AK.

  28 year career California Youth Authority (4 years Fred C. Nelles School in Whittier and 24 years at the Ventura School in Camarillo).

  Retired 2/96 and relocated from Oxnard, CA to South Jersey (wife was anchored there by career and offspring).

  Married twice, once in ’66 lasted 7 years and in ’93 got married and stayed married to Dakota Wesleyan alum.

  Have one married son born ’67 in Oklahoma, three adult stepchildren, two grandkids and an elderly tomcat of unknown origins.

  Dad of Irish Catholic stock from Upstate NY and Mom of English/German stock (with a touch of Dutch and Welsh blood) from Brooklyn.

  Older sister born ’40 in Queens (brighter but no red hair).

  Lifelong Yankee’s fan, Sooner's fan since ’65 and Eagles fan since ’96.

  Swim laps faithfully three days a week, read Time weekly and newspaper daily.

  Wrote a screenplay parody of the Rocky movies, so if you liked the book, perhaps someday, you’ll love the movie.