New Era lands on my desk, with this story below the fold:

Want a beer with your pot pie?

The story talks about how the Lyndon City Diner now is seeking a liquor license - because, as the owner says, he’s losing businesses to restaurants that serve beer and wine. The same is true of several other formerly “dry” establishments.

The headline - really, the tone of the story, and certainly the tone of the reaction here on TalkBack - is that there’s something wrong with this.

It may be news to you, or may be news to the New Era, but only a small percentage of people who go out to eat in Lancaster County are ordering pot pie, and are offended by the possibility that someone somewhere else in the restaurant might be enjoying a cold brew or glass of wine. And indeed; never of the history of Lancaster County has this percentage of pot-pie eaters been lower than it is right this moment; and that number will continue to fall.

So if you want to see this as a sign of changing times - that restaurants once able to survive and thrive without liquor licenses now feel compelled to have one - then do that. But please, please spare us the insinuation that there’s something wrong with it, that this somehow represents a violation of Lancaster County’ cherished pot-pie innocence. That pot-pie innocence is a myth, based on an erroneous assumption that because fewer places served liquor in Lancaster County that means we’re better and more moral than anyplace else.

It’s thinking like that which makes the rest of us long for a drink at the Lyndon Diner, or anywhere else.