LAST SPRING, Pat “PJ” Newton
applied for a local business license
to open a bar and cafe in Shannon, Miss., two hours away from
her Memphis, Tenn., home.
A few weeks later, at the mayor’s request, she attended a meeting at the Shannon town hall. As
she arrived, she noticed the parking lot was full. Latecomers had
parked on the street. Newton, 55,
grew up near Shannon and ran a
bar there back in the ’90s. She’d
been by the town hall many times.
She had never seen so many cars
parked there.
Inside, she was met by a contingent of 30 or so townspeople.
The crowd was “stone-faced,” she
recalled. “There was not one smile
or nice gesture from everyone in
that whole room.” A man in the
back stood and held up a petition
signed by nearly 200 residents.
“We don’t want another bar here
in the town,” Newton remembers
him saying. The petition declared
that the bar would offer “no benefits or enhancements to the citizens of the Town of Shanno