By Bill Barlow
It was hardly the crime of the century, but in August of 1986 it made headlines in local papers and the Washington Post: The owner of an Ocean City supermarket allegedly sold frozen ravioli to an undercover detective.
On a Sunday.
It was one of a series of citations in a sweep of local businesses that summer, with police issuing tickets week after week. Ronald Reagan was president, Dominic Longo was the chief of police in Ocean City and the infamous blue laws were in full effect.
Along with a ban on the sale of alcohol, the Sunday closing laws were woven into the fabric of Ocean City since its foundation in the late 19th century. In the often-retold story, four Methodist ministers – Ezra Lake, James Lake, S. Wesley Lake and William Burrell – established a Christian retreat on the island, modeled on Ocean Grove to the north.
Starting as a camp meeting, the Ocean City Association drew up streets and laid out lots for cottages, hotels and businesses. In 1881, the Ocean City Association passed a set of religious restrictions that would one day be known as “blue laws.”
“They were written right into the deeds from the beginning of time,” said local historian John Loper. “That wasn’t just the blue laws, it was a whole series of things, like no gambling, no bone boiling. There was a whole page of it.”
Those restrictions were enshrined in city code and in every property deed. Loper believes that the restriction on bone boiling sought to keep people from whaling off the island or render the blubber on the beaches. John Peck, for whom the barrier island was once called “Peck’s Beach,” had a whaling station in what is now Ocean City in the 1700s. Loper said it is still uncertain exactly where.
But even from the start, restrictions included contradictions. The bone boiling, for instance, meant people could not technically make chicken soup at home.
For decades, businesses closed each Sunday. That was unlikely to remain popular among business owners who made most of their money for the year on summer weekends, primarily in July and August. There were some attempts at accommodation, but that only meant more paradoxes.
“We owned a store. You could only sell certain things on a Sunday,” said Ken Cooper, a member of the board and a former president of the Ocean City Historical Museum who grew up with the blue laws.
Both he and Loper seemed to get a kick out of outlining the paradoxes that grew out of them. The idea was to keep the Christian sabbath as a day of rest. That meant people could not buy anything that would involve work.
Frozen ravioli was out, or a raw steak or even an uncut cantaloupe. But you could buy a slice of cantaloupe, a take-out order of cooked ravioli or be served a steak in a restaurant. According to Cooper, you could get ice cream as dessert if you went out to Sunday dinner, but you could not buy a cone for your kids in the afternoon.
Stores could sell a magazine, but not a hardcover book, leading to the ridiculous example of being able to buy a Playboy magazine but not a Bible.
“All of our stores were set up to accommodate the blue laws,” Loper said. Everything that could be sold on a Sunday was put together in the same aisles, with the others blocked off with string or tape. That could be an issue for chain stores that wanted a consistent layout.
“Those who came from afar never knew where anything was,” Loper said.
There was a lot of gray area, Loper said. There were exceptions for necessities, but that meant constant arguments about what would constitute a necessity.
“I got out of washing a car once,” said Cooper. “I said, ‘Mom, no un-servile work on Sunday.’”
His uncle, Joe Murry, owned a shop in the north end, selling snacks, beach items and sundries. It also had a soda fountain and ice cream. He said he remembered a line of phone booths in the 1950s and ’60s, because few houses had phones, and the items that could not be sold on Sundays were kept separate within the store.
“My uncle got a ticket once because I was fixing a screen door on a Sunday,” he said. A neighbor was a police officer and called it in.
As Loper points out, Sunday closing laws were once common in New Jersey and around the country. They have been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. While they have become rare, some still exist, including in Paramus in Bergen County, where major malls shut down one day a week.
Ocean City ended the blue laws in 1986. Decades on, the exact process is difficult to unravel, with court cases, City Council votes and a hard-fought, narrowly decided referendum in November of that year. One report put the final tally at 3,936 to 3,345.
“It was a very close vote. There are still people on the island that don’t talk to each other because of the vote over blue laws,” Loper said.
Cooper compared the atmosphere in town at the time to that surrounding this year’s presidential race, with sincere anger between some partisans on either side.
“Hopefully, everybody’s over it by now,” Cooper said. He was one of the no votes.
Before the vote, the city got a taste of life without blue laws. According to a report in the Washington Post, an appeals court threw out the restrictions in 1985, or at least stopped the city from enforcing them. That meant arcades, shops, and amusement piers could remain open all week, until the state Supreme Court overruled that decision in 1986.
According to Post reporter Ewen MacAskill, the city soon went back to full enforcement, issuing citations throughout town with an undercover squad that infuriated business owners. In the report, a local supermarket owner said the rules were so vague as to be impossible to follow, with soap allowed, but not dish liquid.
Today, there are still no bars in town, but the Sunday restrictions that once defined Ocean City for many visitors are almost forgotten.
“If you ask somebody about blue laws today, they won’t know what you’re talking about,” Loper said.
“I was happy to see them go, and I think most people were,” said local author and historian Fred Miller.
Cooper said the Sunday restrictions were just part of life. In some ways, they worked as intended. He said he remembers dinners with the family and a nice break from the frantic pace of summer at least once a week.
“I have fond memories of the blue laws. I might be the only one,” he said. “Change was inevitable. But I did think it was very special having one day to ourselves.”
