Remember When: Sundays were time for long drives, visiting kinfolk

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”

Cut to ghastly-sounding laughter coming out of the living room radio, while the family awaited the latest installment of the Sunday evening adventures of Lamont Cranston and his girlfriend Margo Lane as they battled craven villains that had the police baffled.

Fans of nostalgia are correct when they speak of packed church services, family dinners and simple pleasures (like radio shows) on Sunday during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s in America. Many of us really did live that way.

But there’s also a lot in those long-ago Sundays that has not made the cut memory-wise. With the weather warming and a weekend here in 2023 on tap, let’s take a glance backward at some less-remembered aspects of the way it was.

You couldn’t go shopping: Here in Pennsylvania, state law up until the 1980s forbade most stores to do business on Sunday, a fact that automatically cut down on our “worldliness.” Pharmacies opened Sundays on a rotating basis, and the law generally gave the OK to the few small groceries still around.

But the big stores, the shopping centers and the discount marts that were available had to skip Sundays. Once in a while a store would test the state ordinance, and an unlucky clerk would be handed a citation by a “customer” who was actually a state agent.

If you enjoyed flea markets, though, you were in luck. With stores closed on Sundays, shopping center parking lots and vacant buildings became home to these second-hand extravaganzas.

Sunday driving was the “in” thing: Today, you pull out the ignition key to go someplace specific, whether it’s for work or recreation. But there was a time when the family would pile into the Studebaker and maybe not even have a specific destination in mind.

That ritual had a name. It was called “the Sunday drive,” and its format was whatever Mom and Dad happened to feel like after the chicken and mashed and veggies. Hey, in a time when you could fill up the gasoline tank without checking the bank account first, a ride around the mountains or the lake (with maybe a stop for ice cream) was a road trip for the ages.

Relatives ruled: In a day when family groups were compact rather than far-flung, a Sunday afternoon visit to the cousins or aunts or grandparents or whatever was almost a requirement. If you were lucky, there’d be some kids your age in the place.

My favorite visits, though, were to the kinfolk who, in those pre-TV days, had big-city Sunday papers with massive comic sections I hadn’t seen. While the old folks settled the world’s problems, I was catching up on “The Phantom” and “Flash Gordon” as they battled jungle poachers and alien miscreants.

Riding the radio waves: Probably because so many people were at home or at leisure in the car, radio networks filled the air with really good stuff. In other words, all day Sunday – yes, all day and evening – you could listen to top-rated shows ranging from New York Philharmonic concerts to “Juvenile Jury” (kids answering weighty questions) to “Nick Carter, Master Detective.”

All of this, of course, leads us to the big question. Whatever happened to our traditional Sundays? Where have all the relatives gone? How has the Sunday drive turned into the mad pursuit of that new shirt or appliance?

I think there’s only one person who has the answer.

“The Shadow knows.” (Fade to maniacal laughter).

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Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history writer. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.