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H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) http://tinyurl.com/HLMencken

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Happy Abandon

From "Romantic Intermezzo," 1943. Read Online

Reader: Kevin Hearle

Liquor and politics are not a new mix, but, if H.L. Mencken is to be believed, the 1920 Democratic convention was memorable mostly because it broke with the tradition of serving "the worst obtainable and at the highest prices."

Prohibition had begun only five months before, so delegates came to San Francisco fearing the worst. Instead, Mayor "Sunny Jim" Rolph's bourbon supply

. . . seemed to be unlimited. Day by day, almost hour by hour, the ladies' committee produced more. Thus Thursday passed in happy abandon, and then Friday. On Saturday someone proposed boldly that the convention adjourn over the week-end, and the motion was carried by a vote of 998 to 26. That afternoon the delegates and alternates, each packing a liberal supply of the Bourbon, entered into taxicabs and set out to see what was over the horizon. San Francisco was perfect, but they sweated for new worlds, new marvels, new adventures. On the Monday following some of them were roped by the police in places more than a hundred miles away, and started back to their duties in charge of trained nurses. One taxicab actually reached Carson City, Nev., and another was reported, probably apocryphally, in San Diego. I myself, though I am an abstemious man, awoke on Sunday morning on the beach at Half Moon Bay. . . .

Mencken closes his 1943 essay "Romantic Intermezzo" by noting that despite charges that he had billed the liquor to the city's smallpox hospital, "Sunny Jim" Rolph served as mayor of San Francisco until he became governor of California in 1931.

–Contributed by Kevin Hearle.