Had this weird thought about the old law in my town that bans ice cream in your back pocket

I was walking through downtown Chattanooga last weekend and saw a kid drop a melting popsicle on the sidewalk. Made me remember there's this old local law from like 1895 that says you can't carry ice cream in your back pocket after dark. I compared it to the modern rule about jaywalking and honestly the ice cream one seems way more useful since it probably stopped people from staining benches and attracting bees back then. Does anyone else have a goofy local law that actually makes weird sense if you think about it?

3 comments

3 Comments

claire_young7629d ago

...and that's exactly why that law exists - to protect us from our own stupidity. I mean come on, who carries ice cream in their back pocket after dark? That's just asking for a sticky disaster. But honestly the bee thing is real. Those little guys go nuts for melted sugar. Probably saved a lot of people from getting stung on park benches at night. Modern laws like jaywalking just stop you from getting hit by a car. That's boring. Give me the weird local rules that actually solved a specific, stupid problem.

ward.kim29d ago

Laughing out loud because I actually remember getting stung by a bee at a park at night when I was a kid. I had a half melted popsicle in my hand and those little buggers came out of nowhere. That law makes perfect sense to me now. These weird old rules are the best because they're based on some real idiot doing something dumb and the town going "okay, we're making a rule so you don't do that again.

patricia26228d ago

The real question nobody's asking is who had the idea to stash a popsicle in their back pocket in the first place. @ward.kim at least had it in his hand like a normal person. Some poor guy probably walked around all evening with melted Fudgsicle dripping down his leg and then wondered why bees were following him home. That's the kind of mistake that gets a whole town to write a law.