I received a lot of positive response from my recent “Older Than Dirt” column. I qualified for this “honor” by remembering things like telephone party lines, Studebakers and candy cigarettes. I also remember cigarette machines in restaurants. People would put in quarters and pull the knob below their favorite brand. Then they would return to their booth and light up right there inside the joint.
My how things have changed. Today you have to smoke outside, unless you’re on a “tobacco free” hospital campus, where you can’t smoke at all; or at Starbucks, where you can’t smoke within 25 feet of the front door. You can sit outside Starbucks and breathe diesel fumes from passing 18-wheelers and Volkswagens in the drive-through lane, but you can’t smoke a cigarette. A bit odd, if you ask me.
But it’s not the strangest law in the land. If you live in North Carolina, like me, you can’t buy beer or wine on Sunday until noon, when church services are over.
What difference does it make?
When was the last time you saw someone drinking beer in church? And forget buying the hard stuff on Sunday in the Tar Heel State. State-owned ABC stores are closed on Sunday. Seems a bit pompous in my opinion. People who drink are going to drink, regardless of state laws. And people who gamble are going to gamble, even before noon on Sunday. That’s right. In my state you can buy N.C. Lottery scratch-off tickets anytime you’d like, even on your way to Sunday School. The State condones gambling on Sunday, but won’t sell you a fifth of Jack Daniels on the Sabbath. How hypocritical is that?
I wish my mother were still alive so I could get her opinion on these antiquated Blue Laws. She would probably side with the State. I know she would agree with stricter smoking regulations.
She never smoked a cigarette in her life. Didn’t need to. She inhaled enough secondary smoke from Dad’s Pall Malls to last a lifetime. In her case, right at 90 years.
As for alcohol, Mother was a teetotaler. Almost. Her cure for a cold was rock candy and Georgia Moon bourbon. She seemed to catch more colds as she got older. I know because I went to the ABC store for her. Said she wouldn’t be caught dead in a liquor store because someone from church might see her.
Many years ago she called and asked me to pick her up a fifth of Georgia Moon. It was New Year's Eve, which happened to be on a Saturday. As I was paying for her bourbon I noticed the TV cameras. The segment on drunk driving aired on the six o’clock news.
Mother called me the next afternoon and said, “Several church members told me they saw you on TV at the liquor store yesterday.”
“Did you tell them why I was there?” I asked.
“No, honey,” she said. “I just shook my head.”
Raymond Reid can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .