My grandfather was one of the last two registered members in Napa County, and when he died I assumed the party had disappeared, too. But it is still alive, sort of, and if not well at least not dormant.

That wasn't always the case. Prohibitionists once were an important, perhaps even a vital, part of the American political scene. The party was formed with one primary goal: to prohibit the manufacture and sale of all alcoholic beverages in the United States.

Its one grand success—although a lot of people didn't think of it that way—was when it managed to get the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed back in the 1920s and Prohibition descended on the land. The Noble Experiment, it was sometimes called.

Noble, however, might be the wrong adjective. A lot of folks believe if it hadn't been for Prohibition, there would have been no Al Capone, Franklin Roosevelt (who was pledged to repeal the amendment) might not have been elected and so on.

That, of course, wasn't my grandfather's motive for being a staunch member of the party. In good part, my grandfather's loyalty was because of my grandmother. She was the eldest daughter of a Norwegian sailor who had, as they say, a drinking problem and who committed suicide after the ship with which he used to ply the Napa River to San Francisco burned to the waterline, leaving his widow with 10 children and no prospects.

My grandmother never forgave the Demon Rum, as it was called in those days, and for the rest of her life was a staunch supporter of all temperance activities, a founding member of the Napa branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the efforts of the Methodist Church—the Methodist Episcopal Church, as it was then called—to end inebriation everywhere in the land.

That didn't happen, of course, but I think my grandmother always thought it was just around the corner.

By an ironic turn of fate, my grandparents' eldest son turned out to have a drinking problem, too. It evolved after Prohibition ended.

I doubt, however, this had much to do with the Demon Rum. My eldest uncle was a mining engineer, a common occupation in the West in those days, and he lost everything in the '30s when the bottom dropped out of the silver-mining business. But that, as they say, is another story.

And apparently so is the history of the Prohibition Party. It was founded in 1869 by a Methodist minister named John Russell. Its high point came around the turn of the century when it managed to garner 2.2 percent of the vote and to elect at least one governor (in Florida) and several congressmen.

I am indebted to an article in the New Yorker Magazine by Adam Green for this information and for the following: The party still has an annual convention, and for 25 years it has had the same candidates for president and vice president. The perennial candidate for president is Earl Dodge, a Baptist minister in Massachusetts. (The Methodists, for the most part, have lost interest in Prohibition.)

There is, however, according to Mr. Green, currently a division in the party these days. Some party members think it's time for the Rev. Dodge to step aside and let someone else run. So far, however, this has not divided the party's limited strength.

And, it would seem, Prohibitionists need all the help they can get. Election laws are such that a political party in most states needs to poll a certain percentage of the vote cast in order to qualify for the next election.

The Prohibition Party has not been able to do that in most states and hence is in danger of becoming what I had thought they had already become: a memory.

Were my grandfather and, more importantly, my grandmother still alive, I'm sure they would be among those out seeking to defy that outcome. As for the Methodists (and I now count myself one), they have given up on booze. But they have had a lot more success with another evil: tobacco. Prohibiting it as a social and medical evil seems much more likely to happen—and not a moment too soon.