University of Virginia Library

Sunday In Charlottesville

Sunday was one of those lazy days in the
beginning of the semester when there isn't any
pressure from academic work and the
incipient Spring weather beckons us to more
pastoral pursuits. It was a day for being out of
doors and unhurried, a day that would have
gone a lot smoother with a jug of wine to pass
the time with.

So we went down to our favorite corner
market in search of a bottle of thick red wine,
coarse-bodied, cheap, and not too dry. But
the lady wouldn't sell it to us, even when we
produced a draft card, a driver's license and
numerous other identification cards supporting
our claim of age. It seems it was the blue
law, a statute of the state of Virginia that
forbids the sale of certain goods on Sunday.
We could have bought beer, but no wine. We
could have bought bread, but no baby food;
fortunately, we had no hungry babies to feed.

It then occurred to us that there was a
record album recently released and that this
particular Sunday afternoon seemed like a
good time to purchase it and see if it was as
good as everyone said it was. So we dropped
by Mincer's, took the record up to the
counter and were told again that we couldn't
buy it. Since there are no age laws regarding
the sale of records, we immediately surmised
that it must again be the ubiquitous blue law.
That, indeed proved to be the case. It seems
that everything in Mincer's was for sale on
Sunday except sound recordings.

Now it didn't seem to us that sound
recordings were especially dangerous to the
keeping of the Sabbath, so we went to a local
expert on the blue laws and asked him if there
were any non-religious reasons for them. It
turned out that there were. It seems that the
larger retailing outfits in the state carry a lot
of weight with the state legislature. These
outlets would rather be closed on Sunday
than pay their help time-and-a-half for holiday
work. These outlets also don't care to see
their trade cut into by the smaller merchants
who run their own stores and can therefore
remain open on Sundays. Thus, the state
legislature has passed laws forbidding the sale
of records, wearing apparel, cameras ( but you
can sell film - the big stores don't make much
money on film), jewelry, watches, etc. There
are no ministerial associations which lobby for
the blue laws anymore. It's just the economic
interests of the big retail outlets.

Well, we were pretty angry about this so
we called one of the owners of a big retail
outlet just to tell him what we thought. The
man was obviously unaccustomed to listening
to the complaints of common people; he told
us, in no uncertain terms, to go fly a kite.

Ah, here was something with which we
could successfully while away the rest of our
Sunday afternoon; kite flying season was just
around the corner. So we went down to our
favorite all-purpose drugstore, only to be told
- you guessed it - that you can't buy a kite
in Virginia on Sunday.