Well, as you may have remembered me mentioning about 100 times, Rockwall county is a dry county. This means that technically, one cannot purchase alchohol anywhere in the county. Guns yes, beer, no. Of course, in reality people find ways to get around these strange laws.
Welcome to Mobile City! Population: 196. That’s right, you heard me: 196 people. What does this have to do with alchohol you ask? Well, as it turns out: everything. Aren’t you just dying to know? Click “more” to find out!
Firstly, the way that bars get around this problem is they call themselves “clubs”. In that way, they are “private houses” (not “public houses” or “pubs”). They serve drinks to their “members”. To become a member, you give them your driver’s license. Often if a group of you are drinking, they only require one of you to be a “member” and technically, they consider you to be the one consuming the alchohol of everyone there.
Buying liquor in a store, however, is far more difficult. You can’t claim to be a “private club” if people take the booze off the premises can you? Sigels (shown above) is the only place in the whole of Rockwall that you can buy booze at. Why? The camper vans at the bottom of the image should give you a hint.
You see, Mobile city used to be a mobile home park. Let’s be politically incorrect and call it what it is: a trailer park. Yes, who would have thought? In the middle of rural Texas, of all places: a trailer park.
The folks in this trailer park were mighty annoyed at not being able to buy booze in their county, so they incorporated a city! It’s actually quite clever, they had enough people to qualify as a “city”, so in 1990, they created one and passed a by law that allowed the selling of alchohol in their city.
Sigel’s is, to this day, the only place in Rockwall that you can buy any booze. Their selection of alchohol is impressive. I guess that what with everyone in the areas needing to buy fro them, they can afford to have a wide selection.
I went to Sigels today with two things in mind: 1, to buy strawberry Daiquiri mix (my new favourite drink) and to take pictures of the fabled Mobile City. I walked from one end of the city, down the longest side (it’s about 11 houses wide). I walked all the way to the railway tracks and took the picture shown on the left here. As you can see, the houses here are more like permanent trailers than anything.
You don’t believe me? Think I’m making it up? Behold, a satellite image: