American Notes LIQUOR

Kansas, the first state to go dry (in 1881), the state that made Carry Nation's saloon-shattering hatchet famous, last week became the 48th to go wet. Utah and West Virginia still limit the sale of alcohol to private clubs. But in 36 out of 105 Kansas counties, it is now party time. Exulted Stewart Williams, manager of a Wichita bar: "Kansas has finally come into the 20th century."

Wyoming, meanwhile, remained the country's last holdout against raising the drinking age when the legislature refused for the third time to increase the minimum from 19 to 21. Wyoming will forfeit more than $11 million in federal highway funds over the next year. But, explains Wyoming Historian T.S. Larson, "it is a tradition that we are a hard-drinking lot, and we don't like people to interfere with that."