Rev. Evans Relates Story of Liquor, Kissing Party Among ‘Nice’ El Pasoans

April 30, 1934

Night in El Paso finds some of the city’s “nicest” people preparing for drinking parties and visits to clubs, Rev. L.L. Evans charged last night at Trinity Methodist church in the second of series of sermons on “Night Life in El Paso.”

He proceeded to describe a party of El Pasoans in the upper social levels.

“After they had had enough drinks, enough to make them drunk, the men went around kissing the women,” Rev. Evans related. The congregation chuckled. “Then they got up and made speeches, both men and women. What some of the women said was vile! I understand that one of the women said that such and such a man was stupid until he got a few drinks in him.”

Denies “Cleanup.”

“I’d rather uncover the shame in these homes than in the dives of El Paso. I say to those who are supposed to be the best people that they are setting a cup of death before the other people of this city.”

Rev. Evans denied he is trying to institute a “clean-up.”

“I’m not interested in closing any dives, although I would be happy to see them closed,” he said. “I’m not much of a reformer. I am an old-fashioned preacher of righteousness.

“Some people have called me up and said, ‘I hope you’ll be able to make these officers do something.’ I’m not trying to do that. I don’t know anything about the officers in this town.”

Rev. Evans criticized parents who say they will teach their children to drink “moderately.”

“There’s death in that cup,” he warned. “You can’t drink and be temperate. There is no such thing. People drink for the effect it has. It is always the temperate drinker who makes a drunkard.

Lauds Newspapers.

“It’s not a matter of will that makes a temperate drinker. It’s stupidity. A highly sensitive, intellectual person can’t drink much without feeling its effects. Edgar Allen Poe, who had a brilliant, sensitive mind, was driven into a frenzy by one drink.”

Rev. Evans praised El Paso newspapers for “the kind and courteous way they reported my last Sunday’s sermon.”