The March 31, 1938 Colorado Transcript included a peculiar set of editorials. The editors seemed to have Prohibition on their minds, even though Prohibition had been repealed four years earlier.
A. COORS JR. wants Golden to be a model town, so does Jno. Q. Adams, Dr. M. F. Coolbaugh, Mayor Burt Jones, so does every business man on the avenue, property owner and all loyal citizens. Good roads, adequate water, attractive lawns, clean streets, restrained indulgence in the use of liquor, careful driving, empty jails, excellent schools, a definite program for boys and girls, are a few of the most important things that would make Golden an ideal community.
With Golden the home of Coors famous quality beer...it is especially important that Golden be a model town.
To prove to the world that a community may enjoy all of these privileges and that prohibition, with its bootleggers and racketeers, is not necessary, is the task to which not only the Golden Chamber of Commerce, but every citizen in the community- should dedicate himself.
For reasons that are no longer apparent to us, the Transcript was anxious that Golden, the home of Coors, should be extra-respectable and extra-careful not to abuse alcohol. Those seem like reasonable goals for any town.
The second editorial was downright strange:
A FEW HABITUAL DRUNKARDS ARE NECESSARY
It is important that every community have a few habitual drunkards. It was necessary during prohibition that these unfortunate individuals be kept more or less under cover. For this reason they were not seen by boys and girls. As a result, boys and girls took to drinking. There followed dissipation, automobile wrecks, crimes—reformatories and penitentiaries were filled, not with hardened criminals, but with young men and boys—who became an easy prey for bootleggers in pursuant of the excessive liquor profits made possible by the prohibition law, and because on the streets were no disgusting examples of habitual drunkenness to warn them of their danger.
Maybe they were just getting a head start on April Fool's Day?
