Only in the last few years did Minnesota start allowing alcohol sales on Sunday.
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Wow, we’ve been able to buy on Sundays for years now,
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I just checked…Sunday sales started in 2017 here. Doesn’t seem that long ago. I moved into Minnesota in 2008 and was surprised to learn I had to stay up on my Sunday needs on Saturday or be prepared to drive to Wisconsin.
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I lived in Philly–less than 10 mins from the bridge to NJ where, not surprisingly, there were liquor stores right on the other side. PA (which owns the liquor stores) finally caught on to how much money they were missing out on.
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Texas was weird because it was a dry state but ceded decision-making to counties. I was stationed there in the early 1980s and again in the late `80s, luckily in a fully “wet” county. We could drive around with beer in hand and they had drive-through popup barns where you could grab one or a few cold ones on the fly.
On my second tour this was modified to passengers can drink but the driver can’t have (wink,wink) a drink within his or her reach. [Edit - I’m pretty sure these driving regs were creatures of the state rather than individual counties.]
Dallas county and I think also Tarrant were weird at the time because they didn’t permit restaurants or bars to sell you alcohol, but for $5 you could become a member (complete with membership card) and voila! you were now buying your own alcohol, drink by drink.
In the late 1990s I spent several months as an engineer working in Lamar County, TX which, with apologies to any HOs who may be from there, is one of the smellier armpits in the nation, just IMHO of course. For being a completely dry county but also for other reasons. Luckily the nearest wet county was only about 20 minutes away…
This is much more recent than my tenure there but describes it similarly
- “The Unicard is a pain in the ass,” Brandy Bray growls from a table at The Flying Saucer in Addison. If you drink in Dallas, you know what Bray is talking about. Wet and dry areas lay scattered across the landcsape in a seemingly random pattern. Within dry areas, private clubs may serve alcohol to members, and the Unicards serve as membership cards to many of these so-called clubs, which to the naked eye look suspiciously like the bars and restaurants serving hooch in wet areas–mainly because that’s exactly what they are. Becoming a member of a club that uses the Unicard is only slightly easier than getting into a community college.
The Unicard would have been great so far as I was concerned - back then we had to buy membership at every new place we went to, ending up with a stack of cards.
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Many moons ago I was in some state where they had drive up liquor kiosks. You could buy beer for sure. I don’t know about spirits but I have a vague recollection one could buy a margarita to go at them.
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We had that in Kansas too.
Blue laws till I was an adult.
But Missouri, sleaze state of the Midwest, had liquor stores
lining State Line Road so right across the street, literally.
Occasionally the Feds would set up surveillance and watch for folks crossing back over.
Our neighbor got busted one Christmas eve when he made the normal trip to Twin City liquors.
They stopped him, took the booze and gave him a ticket to boot.
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The highway patrol drank well on Sundays I think.
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These were feds- ATF.
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My oddest and most irritating experience was with changing state laws. In South Carolina I was able to buy beer at 18, but they’d passed a new law changing drinking age incrementally (under pressure from feds using $$$ for highways as the pain point). The laws were passed in Jan but took effect (IIRC) at the beginning of October for the new FY.
So I could buy beer for about 2 months until October hit, and for the next 10 months was a minor until I turned 19, when I could buy beer again. For 2 months - because then the 2nd phase went into effect, changing it to age 20. Same thing happened at age 20 - I had 2 months where I could buy beer.
I was a minor at three different timepoints in S. Carolina.
Luckily during this time I could at least still buy beer at the PX or go to the post club for drinking and dancing. The military didn’t roll over on age 21 for drinking until, I believe, all states where they had bases had adopted it.
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There are a few words/phrases I still can’t make out in the video - but yes, it’s hilarious. I’ve not said “Philadelphia” the same way since 
Back when I was share-boarding a gelding out in Penna Furnace, the farm worker struck up a conversation with me. Never before had I noticed a specific PA accent, but… let’s just say I nodded and smiled a lot, bc I didn’t understand half of what he was saying 
Philly police used occasionally try to trap folks coming over with booze. It never happened to me. But the Philly DA office finally told them to stop . . .they had enough to deal with.
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Which state is sleazier, NJ or Pennsylvania?
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Florida.
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So it was a federal offense to take liquor on Sunday from a wet state to a state with Sunday blue laws?
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It’s a race to the bottom. But I think @linguafood nailed it. (Have you ever read Carl Hiaasen?)
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One of my buddies teaches at U of Fl in Gainesville (moved there from PSU). His posts always, always end with “Carl Hiaasen’s Florida.”
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Hiassen is wickedly funny. And a great read as well.
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I wonder how the Pennsylvanians in thread (former or current) pronounce the word
- radiator
?
I had a girlfriend from there who pronounced it “rah-dee-ate-or” instead of “ray-dee…” (i.e., instead of a long “a” sound, sort of a harsh-sounding “a” sound as in “at” but drawn out).
We got into mild disagreement about whether her pronunciation made sense and I finally asked her, “Why do you think it’s called that” and her answer was
- “Because it “ray-dee-ates” heat… oh, wait.”
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I’m not even a native speaker, so I can’t answer this reliably. I pronounce it like you do.
