How do you force the powerful to do their jobs? Carry Nation smashed Kansas saloons with a...

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."The day after Christmas in the year 1900, Carry Nation boarded a train in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, wearing a black alpaca dress and a bonnet. In her hand, she carried an iron rod tied to a wooden cane.

Its purpose and hers were the same: to smash the illegally operating saloons where men got drunk in plain sight, without consequence, in this supposedly dry state.

Disembarking in Wichita, Nation checked into a modest hotel, then walked to a bar that had just opened in town. When the young bartender ruefully informed her that he could not serve ladies, Nation picked up a bottle of booze and dropped it at her feet, glass shattering. Then, deeming her cane-rod insufficient for the job, she left — only to return the next morning with a sack full of pointy rocks.

This time, she broke a giant mirror, dented a cherry-wood bar, and punctured a lascivious painting behind the bar. "Peace on Earth and good will toward men," Nation reportedly shouted at the morning-drinking crowd, during one of her many now-infamous saloons-smashing rampages.

I've been thinking about Carry Nation a lot lately.

It's easy to laugh at her dramatic antics, and her story has been told accordingly for generations — with a hearty chuckle. Portrayed as a matronly woman in a bonnet who charged into taverns with a hatchet and a Bible, Nation's popular image is neither flattering nor evidence-based.

Her actions get attributed to everything from menopausal rage to some sort of delusional psychiatric condition. Nation did claim to commune directly with God, something that earned her a reputation as a religious zealot.

But there's a lot more to Nation's story than the popular mythology around her acknowledges. While first researching her years ago, that's something I had a hard time reconciling."...