In PA you can buy up to two six-packs at a time on Sundays from take-out stores or bars that also sell food. Beer distributers are closed though, weird.
And now I believe Liquor stores (state controlled) are open on Sundays too but they don’t sell beer.
I never did get the thing about car dealerships.
I do remember when I was a kid that at the Jersey shore you weren’t allowed to buy stuff like beach balls (or anything fun) on Sundays.
As to blue laws, nothing to do with the colour of paper, so it would seem.
This is from the Word Detective
“The term “blue laws” seems to have been invented by Reverend Samuel Peters, a pro-British American clergyman whose “General History of Connecticut,” published in 1781, set out to paint the colonists as religious fanatics. Although popular legend maintains that the term “blue laws” arose because the laws themselves were printed on blue paper, Peters himself explained that by “blue” he meant “bloody,” i.e., enforced by whipping, maiming and death.”
I used to live in College Park, MD. I know people used to run over to Town Hall (a bar + liquor store) on Sundays for the liquor store half, not the bar half. Maybe there are local laws in Baltimore that don’t apply in the rest of the state.
That really isn’t that bad. I live next to a town that was completely dry up until 2 years ago when Applebee’s International came into town and fed the trustees hookers. Now alcohol is sold everywhere in the town.
Around here in Connecticut, the beer shelves at the grocery stores are actually locked off behind a cover on Sundays. No cold beer either. So the OP’s plan wouldn’t get far.
Which town is that PA? And I assume they have an Applebees now too?
We have the same law here. Just last week I was standing in a line in the grocery store at just before midnight, and when the person just in front of me tried to buy some beer, the clerk told her that since her register showed it was after midnight, he couldn’t sell her the beer. This city has a law that I’ve never heard of anywhere else, and that is you can’t sell beer cold. It has to be hot. It also was once the law here that you couldn’t buy beer, but you could buy wine and hard liquor. In Mississippi, the state has a monopoly on wine and hard liquor. They buy it then resell it to liquor stores. It’s illegal to them to buy from any other source. Just recently when the state was upgrading its computers they were unable to ship any for a couple of weeks. I heard several stores ran out of almost everything. On another note, when the whole state was dry, the state still collected taxes on liquor and the tax collector(who was paid by how much taxes he collected), was the highest paid public official in the country including the president. This was in the 30’s if I remember correctly.
When I was in college, I once worked at a convenience store for a couple months. The town had ordinances against the sale of alcohol after midnight (2 a.m on Saturday night/Sunday morning), and another ordinance prohibiting the sale of beer on Sundays between two a.m. and twelve noon.
The other clerks and I hated working shifts that encompassed this time frame, and we would bargain like fiends with each other to avoid having to do so. I often worked this schedule, because I needed the money, and others were willing to bribe me to do it.
The reason we hated it was that you encountered MANY persons who did not like the situation, and attempted to circumvent it in any way possible, or simply argued, or took it out on the hapless clerk (who did not make the laws, did not agree with them, and was in no position to do anything about it). It was certainly an education; I had no idea so many persons could get so worked up over the lack of beer in the house at nine a.m. of a Sunday morning. Sad, really…
The way it worked was this: if I took the money, or implied to the customer that the sale was legitimate, in the “illegal” time frames, then I was party to a crime. Technically, so was the customer, but the cops weren’t real interested in chasing HIM down. They’d bust the clerk, and a fine would be levied.
I wasn’t interested in this, and I told every customer who tried it. No, I am not interested in committing a crime, I am not interested in paying any fines. No, I cannot take your money. No, offering me three times what we’re charging for that sixpack will not tempt me. No, no, no, no, no.
On several occasions, I encountered the exact situation in the OP, in two permutations:
1. "Hey, what if I just drop this fiver on the counter, and walk out with this beer? You aren’t really selling it to me, right?"
Answer: If I do not try to inform you of the situation, or if I take your money, I am party to a crime. If you simply abandon the money and leave with the beer, I am required to call the cops, show them the fiver, give them the security tape from the camera, and set them to catching YOU for shoplifting. The fiver you left on the counter is totally irrelevant, and I have to do all this to keep the cops from going after MY butt, thank you very much.
So, technically, no, I’m not really selling you the beer. You are stealing it.
The money you dropped is irrelevant, and I don’t get any of it. And before you go on about how no one will ever know, I should point out that the cops in this town bore easily, and have been known to pull sting operations, once in this very convenience store. So, no sir, I am not interested in risking losing my job and paying hundreds of dollars in fines. I do not feel like taking large gambles just so you can have beer, unless you are prepared to bribe me with many thousands of dollars, so that losing my job and/or paying stiff fines would be irrelevant to me."
2. (Person says nothing, drops money on counter, and storms out the door with beer, ignoring cries from clerk).
Answer: See previous answer.
It’s Baltimore County. They just don’t sell beer and wine in grocery stores or convenience stores here. Gotta get it all at liquor stores or package stores. Other counties sell it in grocery stores.
I’ve heard stories of people who move here from out-of-state and make that first grocery store trip and wander around looking for the Beer Aisle. 
Sorry, there isn’t one!
The goofiness of these laws has always amused me, too. Purchase of beer at the 7-11 in VA on a Sunday is permissible, but not until after noon in MD, and only from a bar in PA.
PA experimented with Sunday sales from State Stores, Rooves but none of the stores around here are open on Sundays any more. The carry-out limit for beer in PA is 192 oz., IIRC. That would be 2 six-packs of pounders. Oddly enough, you can buy two sixes of 16oz. beer, walk out of the establishment, put them in your vehicle, and re-enter to purchase another two.
Ocean City, NJ is still dry, and prohibits purchase of numerous items on Sundays.
Go figure 
My bad, Bibliocat. The previous post referred to Frederick County. I should have remembered that MD handles sales on a County basis, as does NJ.
[hijack]
Oh, man. You haven’t seen any of the propaganda that comes from some organization that blames all of Penn State’s problems on the fact that there’s a liquor store in Centre County.
Robin
Speaking as a fellow Hoosier, I’d imagine the store owner would yell at you for not knowing you could go next door to the tavern and buy a to-go bag.
Well, I don’t think it’s available at the supermarket in Howard or Prince Georges Counties. I grew up in one and went to college in the other. I remember visiting friends in VA for New Year’s Eve one time and was confused when they suggested going to Giant for champagne. Liquor at a grocery store? Weird.
I’m still confused these days, but more because there’s no way you’ll find a decent (if even a real) champagne at Giant.
I thought this too, the first time we vacationed in VA, but then I thought. WAY cool! I don’t need to go to another store just to buy wine for dinner! 
Pfft. The liquor store’s the least of Centre County’s problems…
Heh. I remember a few months after I moved down to Lancaster (from another Pennsylvania town), I was in the Giant shopping when I saw two older gentlemen looking hopelessly lost. I happened to overhear one of them saying “They hid the beer good here,” and stopped and said, “You’re not from Pennsylvania, are you?”
I explained to them that grocery stores aren’t allowed to sell beer or liquor in PA and directed them to a beer distributor down the road.
I was massively amused…
p 246 (one of the few times I’ve got this book out all semester and I still have an A in the class) " These statutes, which date back to colonial times, are often called blue laws. Blue laws got their name from the blue paper on which New Haven, Connecticut printed its Sabbath law in 1781. The ordinance prohibed all work on Sunday and required all shops to close on the “Lord’s Day” So if it is a legend than it is one that West has also fallen victim.
What about this Thought Experiment:
You are from out-of-state and already late for a party (or whatever). You grab the six-pack from an open cooler, ignorantly wait in a long line, and when you come up to the cashier you have already calculated the cost of the beer at $9.50 (w/tax) and toss a tenner at the cashier and dash out the door.
Although you have broken the law, you did so without any intent. Further, you had no reasonable way of knowing that beer wasn’t for sale as it was in an open cooler beside the milk/yogurt/etc. Therefore, isn’t it the stores responsibility to enforce the law by taking the beer from the cooler/counter as a product of sale every Sunday??
Ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse anywhere, I don’t think.