For a generation of New Glarus teenagers, adulthood once arrived with a driver's license, a high school diploma and, not long afterward, the legal right to order a beer. A trip to Monroe for the driver's license was part of the ritual for many. So was learning which older friends were already legal and, eventually, which classmates were not.

Then Wisconsin began moving the line. First from 18 to 19. Then, under pressure from Washington, from 19 to 21. What looks today like a simple change in a statute was anything but simple for the young people living through it. It split graduating classes, divided college roommates and fraternity brothers, changed bar culture and helped create an underground world of fake IDs and basement parties.

Wisconsin's relationship with 18 ran deep. For decades after Prohibition, 18-year-olds could legally drink beer while liquor remained 21; in March 1972, the liquor age also dropped to 18. By the early 1980s, legal youthful drinking was not some novelty. It was part of the social landscape.

For early Generation X, the line then began moving underneath them. Wisconsin Act 74 raised the age to 19 effective July 1, 1984, but grandfathered people who had already turned 18. That meant many members of the class of 1984 entered adulthood under one set of rules while younger classmates, sometimes separated by only months, faced another.