I’m old enough to remember when all stores were closed on Sunday. We did not enjoy today’s luxuries, yet we managed to survive.
I’m old enough to remember when commerce shut down from midday on Wednesday until Thursday morning in South Carolina. That tradition didn’t die out until the seventies but only the older people remember it now. Some think you are crazy if you mention it but it was the norm. Banks were open on Saturday morning to make up for being closed on Wed. afternoon. You could not buy much of anything after five PM the other days and nothing was available on Sunday. If you didn’t plan trips carefully you could wind up out of gas somewhere with no place to buy any until the next morning and you didn’t dare run out on Saturday night, you would be stranded until Monday and you had to have cash money to buy gasoline anywhere, there were very few places that accepted any kind of credit card, open account credit was available to local people but travelers were out of luck. Amazingly we managed to live under such primitive conditions, in those days anyone who did not have food in the house to last for at least a week was considered mentally incompetent. The idea of going to a grocery store just for some snacks never occurred to anyone, you might buy some soft drinks and crackers along with the regular groceries and you might stop at a store for something if you were on the way home from work but I don’t think I ever heard of anyone making a trip to the store just for drinks and snacks.