A fellow Bayou State expat sends along this editorial from today’s Times-Picayune, concerning drive-thru daiquiri bars. When I was courting my Texan wife, and told her about these fine institutions in my home state, she thought I was joking. She has since learned that any crazy story I tell about the Great State is true. Here’s how the editorial starts:

Louisiana should tighten up its open container law by requiring drive-through daiquiri shops to use lids that can’t be punctured by a straw.
Doing so wouldn’t prevent a customer who’s determined to drink and drive from breaking the law. It’s pretty easy to peel off a plastic lid and take a swig, with or without a straw. But the change would make alcoholic beverages a little less accessible and make the state’s ban on open containers of alcohol in vehicles more meaningful.
Unfortunately, the Senate Judiciary B Committee unanimously voted down a bill by Sen. Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge that would have made it illegal to drive with an alcoholic drink in a receptacle that “permits access by a straw.”

I can’t decide if this is appalling or charming. Both, probably. Just like Louisiana. To paraphrase the great Randy Newman, “She may be a fool, but she’s my fool.” Bless her heart. When I was growing up in the Seventies, among the useful things south Louisiana kids were taught to do was to mix Daddy’s toddies before a road trip, and to clean the beer cans out of the back of the fambly pick-up.