Remember When

Quote: DRich

I only remember Blue Laws as they applied to liquor. For many years, maybe still, New car dealers were closed on Sunday in Nevada but it wasn't by law, just an agreement between the dealers.
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All new and used car dealers are still closed around here on Sunday but I've been told it's more of a banking issue than anything else. You can't do anything with loans or anything monetary when the banks are closed. People do a lot of car shopping at the lots on Sunday with no buying.

Quote: DRich

I only remember Blue Laws as they applied to liquor. For many years, maybe still, New car dealers were closed on Sunday in Nevada but it wasn't by law, just an agreement between the dealers.
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Maybe 15 years ago, I remember a lot of the places we travelled for business, you couldn't order an alcoholic drink in a restaurant on a Sunday.

These weren't mystical faraway lands, but places like South Carolina. A quick check shows this might still be the case.

In 1961 I started junior high and my parents started giving me an allowance of $5 a week. This was a tremendous windfall for a kid in 1961. You could still buy comic books for 10 cents, you could buy so much candy you couldn't eat it all, not that I did anyway. You could still buy most paperback books for 35 cents each. At my school library used paperbacks cost a nickel. Soft drinks out of a machine cost 10 cents. In 1961 you could see a movie and buy a ton of concession candy for a dollar. I was hard pressed to spend that $5 and I actually started saving money up. I felt rich most of the time.

Quote: DRich

I only remember Blue Laws as they applied to liquor. For many years, maybe still, New car dealers were closed on Sunday in Nevada but it wasn't by law, just an agreement between the dealers.
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I remember when every barber shop had his union card displayed and it said "Closed Mondays" and usually also Sunday, because closing Monday was the union rule.

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: DRich

I only remember Blue Laws as they applied to liquor. For many years, maybe still, New car dealers were closed on Sunday in Nevada but it wasn't by law, just an agreement between the dealers.
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I remember when every barber shop had his union card displayed and it said "Closed Mondays" and usually also Sunday, because closing Monday was the union rule.
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I still go to the same barber I went to in 1961 only it's his son that runs it now. It's a very small building that he built in 1950 and it was totally paid for and he owned the land so he was always his own boss no matter what the economy was doing he was always going to flourish. In those days barbers and TV repairman were notorious for paying as a little as possible on their income tax because they were in a total cash business. The old barbers son I've known since he was a kid and that place is always packed from morning till night everyday except Sunday and Monday. He makes a fortune and I'm sure he's still circumvents a lot of the taxes. The TV repair guy said a couple times a year the IRS would show up as soon as he opened in the morning and stay there the entire day going through his books. The books he gave him that he kept for the IRS, the real books nobody ever saw. And he raised 12 kids and supported a wife on a TV repair shop.

Quote: EvenBob

Quote: DRich

I only remember Blue Laws as they applied to liquor. For many years, maybe still, New car dealers were closed on Sunday in Nevada but it wasn't by law, just an agreement between the dealers.
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All new and used car dealers are still closed around here on Sunday but I've been told it's more of a banking issue than anything else. You can't do anything with loans or anything monetary when the banks are closed. People do a lot of car shopping at the lots on Sunday with no buying.
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I have bought cars on Sunday. Just paid and did the paperwork during the week. I think Tiffany said the same about their jewelry stores.

Even in the 80s almost all dealers closed early on Wed, it was a night the salesmen could go home early. Dealers that bucked that system had little traffic because everyone thought all dealers were closed. I was told that was a thing GM started and others followed.

I encountered wacky blue laws even in the 90's. One was Aiken, SC, where they closed half of the (24 hr) Walmart at exactly midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning. You could still buy groceries and other essentials, but all the other sections of the store were dark and roped off.

Somewhere in Alabama, we entered a county where it was illegal to possess a cold alcoholic beverage in public, even if it was unopened! Stores could sell beer, but it was warm; they weren't allowed to put it in the cooler cases!

I haven't been back to either of these places since; so I have no idea if these laws are still on the books.

Sadly, this is what the modern generation now considers the distant past. I still have clothes I wear from this time.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-wr-yjm7PkI

Quote: EvenBob

Anybody here remember the blue laws that were in every state. They said that no places of business could be open on Sunday except gas stations and only a few of those. I got my first driver's license 60 years ago this month and Sunday was the worst because everything was closed in 1965. I believe there were two gas stations in the entire County that were open. And it stayed that way into the seventies in Michigan. No grocery stores, no convenience stores, couldn't buy liquor or beer of course, movie theaters were closed, it was a ghost town. The year I left 1976 it was changing because of the Supreme Court and I moved to California in 1976 and much to my surprise everything was open on Sunday. What a huge deal that was. But even California had Blue Laws up until the late 1960s when it started to change. Unless you were around in those days you have no idea how much organized religion ran this country. Because of the Hays code until 1968 you could not use foul language in a movie or take the lord's name in vain or show two people in bed together. It wasn't until 1970 when I heard the first f word in a movie and it was shocking because nobody saw it coming.
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Again, so much misinformation. There were "blue laws" but NOT in every state. Some states were selective to ban certain items like liquor from Sunday sale while other states like Massachusetts had an all-encompassing all goods ban. Businesses that were Jewish owned stayed open on Sundays in Mass. and thrived because their Sabbath was Saturday. The other owners cried foul, so eventually those Mass. blue laws were repealed. (long story short) Other states in the NE eventually followed suit.

The southern states, because of the evangelicals and Southern Baptists maintained no liquor sales on Sundays up until the early 2000's. Liquor sales in GA are still banned before noon on Sundays today.

tuttigym

Bars in NY were allowed to open at 10 AM on Sunday but not serve booze until noon. Exceptions could be made for special events like first communion parties or baptisms. Liquor stores had to close on Sunday, but sometime in the 2000s, that law changed so the stores could open on any six days of their choosing.

I got my first driver's license 60 years ago this month in 1965. There was no Miranda law yet and the cops were very different than they are now. For the most part they were giant pricks. The ones I met worked for the county and they were just plain mean. These were men who'd been on the force since the late 40s and early 50s and times were totally different then. They had no desire to treat you like anything else but a criminal. Then Miranda came along and they still didn't change their attitude but it got better over time. I watch these police body cam videos all the time on YouTube and these cops are so polite and so nice and so understanding that it has to be something they're trained to do. For one thing you have to have a college degree in law enforcement or criminal justice in most big city or Sheriff's departments to even get a job. In the 1950s and 60s you just need a GED and you had to be physically fit. That was it. The physically fit thing has gone out the window, I got stopped last year by a female cop who was so fat she could barely get out of her Cruiser. The buttons were so strained on her shirt one could have flown off and killed me. She didn't walk she waddled. 60 years ago you never saw a fat cop, not around here anyway.

One thing that has changed for the worse is that in 1969 the Supreme Court said that cops could lie to the public with no penalties. As long as they weren't lying about your rights they can basically say anything they want to get you to cooperate or to get information out of you. This stuff about if you ask an undercover cop if he's really a cop he has to tell the truth, that's absolute crap. He can lie all day long. They can tell you a subpoena is coming when it's not. They can tell you they will help you get a lighter sentence if you just cooperate which they absolutely cannot do. They can tell lie after lie after lie now and there's nothing you can do about it. But you can never lie to them you'll go to jail. I constantly hear minorities on these cop videos say they don't trust the police because they lie. I finally looked it up and they're right, they lie constantly. They now act like they're the nicest person you ever met while they're lying to your face the whole time they're talking to you.