Chief Askew's Diary: March 2, 1930

A drunken driver causes a pileup; how did this happen during Prohibition?

It was a “cool and disagreeable” Sunday when a drunken driver from nearby Lagrange, Georgia caused a wreck with a Newnan family of eight out enjoying an afternoon drive. The wreck happened on Greenville Street “just outside the City limits,” Police Chief Askew wrote in his diary.

It was a bad one. “Both cars were practically demolished and several people seriously hurt and carried to the hospital,” he wrote. The driver “from all reports was drunk and driving at an excessive rate of speed and was going out of town towards Lagrange.”

Indeed, the report in the March 7 Herald said he was driving on the wrong side of the road.

It had been illegal to buy alcohol since 1908 in Georgia, 1920 in the rest of the country. Why were there so many arrests for drunkenness in Newnan?

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The contemporary cartoon above shows the problems plaguing Herbert Hoover in his second run for president in 1932. No wonder he always looked grumpy.