#blue laws

But you can buy a gun on Sunday?

Make that one make sense

The Blue Law Life, an update:

Nostalgic for the peaceful Sundays of my childhood I created my personal Blue Laws.

One month in, I am happy to report that spending Sundays with my phone shut off, eschewing all commerce, and performing zero school work is working out darn well.

I pack a lunch, fill up a water bottle and find another wonderful New England town to explore.

I’m happier and sleep better. My outlook is sunnier.

A flip phone may be next.

1962.

Ice cream sundaes were first created in the late 1800's to circumvent "blue laws" that outlawed ice cream sodas on Sunday. Ice cream was served with the syrup of your choice but without the soda. – WTF Fun Facts

“‘Cobalt Beer’ Placed On Prohibited List,” Toronto World. August 5, 1911. Page 15. --- Judge Lee Decides It is Too Much of a ‘Near Booze’ Drink For Quebec --- MONTREAL, Aug. 4. - Cobalt beer, which has a wide vogue in various parts of Ontario, and has become very popular in Montreal since the temperance wave has limited the hours in which genuine ‘booze’ can be sold, was officially ruled out of the temperance drink class by Judge Lee to-day.

An afternoon with Kevin Young’s “Aunties” sounds awfully good right now. The poem, from his collection Dear Darkness, appears most recently in Blue Laws, a selected and uncollected gathering that is an essential tour of Young’s work.

Aunties

There’s a way a woman          will not relinquish her pocketbook          even pulled onstage, or called up to the pulpit—          there’s a way only your Auntie can make it taste right—          rice & gravy is a meal if my late Great Aunt          Toota makes it— Aunts cook like there’s no tomorrow          & they’re right. Too hot is how my Aunt Tuddie          peppers everything, her name given by my father, four, seeing          her smiling in her crib. There’s a barrel full of rainwater          beside the house that my infant father will fall into, trying to see          himself—the bottom— & there’s his sister Margie yanking him out          by his hair grown long as superstition. Never mind the flyswatter they chase you          round the house & into the yard with ready to whup the daylights          out of you— that’s only a threat— Aunties will fix you          potato salad & save you some. Godmothers,          godsends, Aunts smoke like it’s going out of style—          & it is— make even gold teeth look right, shining,          saying I’ll be John, with a sigh. Make way out of no way—          keep the key to the scale that weighed the cotton, the cane          we raised more than our share of— If not them, then who          will win heaven? holding tight to their pocketbooks          at the pearly gates just in case. More on this book and author:

Learn more about Blue Laws by Kevin Young.

Browse other books by Kevin Young, including Stones, forthcoming in September 2021.

Hear Kevin Young read poems from the first pandemic year, along with other contributors to the anthology Together in a Sudden Strangeness, via Left Bank Books on April 19.

Share this poem and peruse other poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.