Labor Day

Yesterday was Labor Day.  I think most of us didn’t do much laboring yesterday, at least in the normal sense of the word.  Mostly, we traveled, ate, boated, visited, swam, and any of 83 other things people normally do on a summer holiday.  Laboring was probably rather far from the minds of most of us.

Yet I can recall as a kid that Labor Day was nothing really special.  It was before it was a Monday holiday, but people did get off work to celebrate the day.  We, on the other hand, just did pretty much what we would normally have done had it not been a holiday at all.

Dad did some farming as well as work in plumbing and heating.  Labor Day was a time of working with the irrigation system, herding cattle, springtoothing the wheat ground, or getting the drill ready for yet another planting season.  Sometimes it involved fixing fence, mowing, putting up hay, or moving farm equipment.  Seldom did it mean a day at home with nothing to do.  No, make that “Never did it mean a day at home with nothing to do.”

We labored on Labor Day, the same as we labored on Independence Day, Washington’s Birthday (there was no Presidents Day yet), or Columbus Day.  Oh, we did take time off on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and also took a little time on Memorial Day (Decoration Day back then) to celebrate.

I never, though, thought I was somehow deprived of an indispensible part of life and living.  I may not have enjoyed carrying irrigation pipe through a field of almost ripe milo (we didn’t have center-pivots then…we had to move pipe by hand to the new setting in the field), but I never really thought it was the end of the world.  We were too busy making ends meet to worry much about things like boats, travel, and golf games.

So, whatever you may have done on this Labor Day, and however you may recall your younger days and the holiday, it’s all good, I guess.  We do what we have to do to survive.  We do what we have to do to get to the next day.  Some of us have life pretty much handed to us.  Others of us continue to work for the next day’s provision.

Whatever your lot in life, I suspect that if you’re reading this, you have a better life and outlook on life than many of us did some years ago, and much better than many people of the world have even today.  Because you’re reading this on the Internet…that wondrous, marvelous thing that connects people from all over.  And if you have Internet access, you can’t be very needy…compared to most of the world’s population.