Anniversary Of An Era - All Middletonians who complain about their Sunday 3.2 beer today had better think back 34 years to the day that all beer was practically pointless. Prohibition came into effect on Jan. 17, 1920, in this country. Today is one year less the jade anniversary of that parched event. Since today is also Sunday, which offers a prohibition of its own each week, the affair will receive no Mardi Gras-like celebration in this city. Quiet reverence is perhaps most fitting for the era that came into Middletown with only a whimper in 1920. The city, which has been exposed to various dry statutes since the World War I marked the event with a quiet ceremony in the First Presbyterian Church. The Middletown Journal, which still boasted it was "The Paper with Pep" reported on Jan. 16, 1920, that the local Woman’s Christian Temperance Union held a prayer and service in the church for the "purpose of giving thanks on the eve of prohibition..."