The Elizabeth City police made one of their annual raids on restaurants last Sunday; Harry Paulos, proprietor of the Busy Bee Café, was arrested for selling a brick of ice cream and R. Ives, an employee of the Eagle Café, was arrested for selling a bag of peanuts. Both defendants were convicted and fined $10 each in the County Court Monday morning.
For months at a time the restaurants in Elizabeth City are permitted to sell pretty much everything on Sundays in violation of the Sunday Blue Laws, and the police do not molest them. But about once a year the police remember that the Blue Laws are on the books and some one is arrested. The restauranteurs are then good for a few weeks, but gradually slip back into the practice of letting the people have what they want.
The Sunday Blue Laws would be a joke if they were not actually a crime. Joy riders can buy gasoline on Sundays and news dealers may sell their Sunday papers with their dreadful comic sheets; the railroads run on Sundays and jitneys are for hire for immoral purposes on Sundays as well as week days; the girls at the telephone exchange and the men at the electric light plant, gas plant and ice plant work on Sundays. Servants work on Sundays. But it is a crime for a druggist or restauranteur to sell a cold drink to thirsty traveler or a plat of ice cream to a working man on Sunday. A tourist caught in Elizabeth City on Sunday is denied the privilege of buying a cigar. We have some very good men on the Board of Aldermen who praise God that they are too holy to permit the people to enjoy any pleasure or recreation on the Sabbath; but these same holy Aldermen wink their pious eyes when a policeman in their employ shoots a helpless human being without warrant and leaves him in a ditch to die. Is it any wonder that the general run of humanity holds the law and its minions in utter contempt?
From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., April 21, 1922
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