By my second year at DePauw, I had learned a valuable lesson about law and the State of Indiana. One could not buy carry-out in the Hoosier State. By that, I mean one could not walk into a grocery or liquor store and purchase a 12-pack or a case of beer—or a bottle of wine or whatever. I began a practice that has lasted to the present day. On Saturday, I always stock upon my favorite beverage. (At present I prefer Bud Select®—fewer calories and the same taste as Bud Lite.) 

   When I moved to Chicago in the early 1980s, I was surprised that not only was I able to purchase carry-out on Sundays—but could do so on Christmas Day! And on Christmas, the bars, too, were open for business.

   While in California a couple of years ago, I realized we had reached late Saturday afternoon. I went to the front desk of the hotel and asked if California had carry-out sales of alcohol on Sundays. The clerk said, "Of course we do. This isn’t the South."

   This all brings me to the present.

   On Huffington Post this morning I read that Connecticut had become the 49^th State to allow sales of alcohol on Sunday. Indiana is the only State that bans sales of alcohol on Sunday.

   In the past couple of years, carry-out has been allowed here, but only for micro-breweries. You may criticize my tastes in beer as pedestrian. You may say that I am low-brow for embracing a domestic (actually the corporation is controlled by Belgian and Brazilian interests) beer as my brew of choice. Nonetheless, I never have cared for micro-brewed beers or foreign beers.

   All of this is beside the main point I want to make.

   When I was a kid, Indiana was dominated by Sunday Closing Laws or what were called "blue laws." The only stores open on Sundays—as I recall—were grocery and drug stores. One might say religion had something to do with these statutes. Of course, such a notion would be silly, as we all(except Paul Ogden) know there is an Establisment Clause to the Constitution of the United States. Even in McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961), the Supreme Court held that "blue laws" were constitutional. Despite the "strongly religious origin of these laws," the Court held that people need a day off. "However, the State’s purpose is not merely to provide a one-day-in-seven work stoppage. In addition to this, the State seeks one day set aside from all others as a day of rest, repose, recreation and tranquility—a day which all members of the family and community have the opportunity to spend and enjoy together, a day on which there exists relative quiet and disassociation from the everyday intensity of commercial activities, a day on which people may visit friends and relatives who are not available during work days."

   Chief Justice Warren wrote that quaint opinion over fifty (50) years ago.    

   Today nearly every business is open on Sunday. "Rest, repose, and tranquility" usually do not coexist with "NFL Sunday." Indiana’s laws have loosened so that we now can go to a bar and buy drinks. We just cannot take anything home.

   My radical suggestion is to make Indiana the 50^th State! Legalize carry-out sales for everyone on Sundays—not just those snobs with the cutely-titled micro-brewed brands they like.

   Let the Hoosier State burst into the 21^st Century!