We Were Baptists.

Going to church every Sunday wasn’t an option during my growing up years in Oklahoma City during the 1950s.

We were always the first ones there because Momma unlocked the doors.

She was director of the First Baptist Church’s pre-school department for newborns up to four-year-olds. Momma worked while I went to early church to sing with the youth choir, then to Sunday School, and late church, and again that evening while I was in training union, and the evening church service.

Wednesdays after school meant me walking to church with my best friend, and both of us going to youth choir practice before her mother picked her up. I went on to GA’s (Girl’s Auxiliary), the church dinner, and finally the chapel service before we went home.

Momma soon turned their Friday “Mother’s Day Out” church program into a five-day daycare for working moms.

Saturdays were spent cleaning, grocery shopping, and Momma making out clothes. Daddy had his uniforms so she just made pajamas and TV-watching shorts for him.

Momma could certainly stretch a dollar, and I knew when we had fried chicken that it wouldn’t be long before she’d make chicken and dumplings, and then chicken salad sandwiches.

Our Sunday lunch was always the same, and Momma had it in the oven before we went to church. It was roast beef with potatoes, onions and carrots, a salad or green beans, and always pie.

“Sundays are special because it’s The Lord’s Day, and a day of rest,” Momma used to say, and I think that was the only day she ever took a nap.

Momma said she was almost out of coffee, and a lady from church said there was a new nearby discount store open on Sundays.

That may, or may not, have meant anything to me in the mid-to-late-1950s, but it sure does now.

I can’t imagine not being able to buy food on a Sunday, but as I found out this week, that was due to a “Blue Law.” It was adopted to “promote the observance of the Christian day of worship,” but was aimed at the sale of liquor on Sundays.

Although some of those restrictions included Sunday sales of cigarettes, tobacco, gasoline and candy which caused problems for grocery, pharmacy, and other businesses.

It never bothered the Baptist in me that liquor wasn’t available on Sundays at restaurants, or that liquor stores were closed on Sundays.

So I looked up the March 2020 election numbers on our website. That was when Kingfisher County voters approved Sunday bar and restaurant liquor sales by 69.37%, and Sunday sales at liquor stores by 68.21%.

If she’d lived longer my Baptist mother would have most definitely voted no on that liquor issue, or would’ve danced a jig if it was defeated. Or, maybe dance the Charleston that she taught me before my first boy/girl dance in junior high.