beer barn

Whenever I am abroad or elsewhere in the US besides where I live, people always want to know interesting things about my homeland. I once had a guy from New York tell me that I couldn't be from Texas if I'd never owned livestock.

I'm here to tell you that Texas is exactly what you think it is, but it's also everything you think it isn't. A perfect example of this is the indigenous (I think) beer barn.

A beer barn is in fact an actual barn, usually off of a major highway like I-35 or I-20, in a county where the sale of alcohol is permitted. (In Texas ther are counties which are dry.) It is a barn-shaped building with the double door at the front and back of the barn open. And, in this barn, there are two things:

1. An attendant

and
2. alcohol.

You cannot purchase liquor at a beer barn, only beer, wine, and perhaps an assorted meat snack or giant pickle.

I've neglected to mention the most compelling aspect of the beer barn as of yet: It's a drive-thru.

I'll give you a minute to wrap your brain around that. Yes, a drive-thru beer store.

Maybe its because I grew up around it, but I didn't think this was a big deal until I moved up east and people started calling me a liar. Hell, people in Los Angeles didn't believe me and you can have beer AND smokes delivered there!

Rononspoon has alerted me to the fact that a relative of his owned such an establishment in the late seventies. This one was in Kansas City. The phenom spreads!

While I must say they are not as aesthetically pleasing as the barns Beltane described above, we have drive thru beer distributors in Pennsylvania. I guess the reason they provide this convenience is to make up for the fact that you cannot buy beer in gas stations or grocery stores because of our backward liquor laws.

One other side benefit of these drive thru establishments is the fact that they generally do not card unless you look like you're ten.