LABOR DAY

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

I realize wikipedia does not have the prestige or accuracy of the old classic Encyclopedia Brittanica. Even so, I did get some help from wikipedia about the background and importance of the Labor Day holiday. From wikipedia:

Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September (September 6 in 2010).

“The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City. It became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with the labor movement as a top political priority. ... All 50 U.S. states have made Labor Day a state holiday. ... Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer. ... In U.S. sports, Labor Day marks the beginning of the NFL and college football seasons.”

For several years on Labor Day our family used to drive Rachel to Westfield State College (now “University”) and help her moving in. Last year’s “moving in” day was actually several days before Labor Day and this year’s was a week ago! Even so, I miss those Labor Days that we’d drive out to Westfield. We’d leave at 6:30 in the morning, grab breakfast from McDonald’s Drive Thru, and be at Westfield State before 8:30. After all the moving in hassle, we’d leave for home somewhere between 11:30 and 1:00. It became such a tradition that I really miss it.

If it seems to you like Memorial Day weekend was only four weeks ago and Fourth of July weekend was only two weeks ago, welcome to the club! We’ll be shoveling snow and doing Christmas shopping in what’s going to seem like two more weeks; and I frankly find that depressing! Even so, I’m going to try to enjoy Labor Day! I did have a speaking engagement (actually a “preaching engagement”) at a church in Franklin this morning and I LOVED it! I don’t think there’s any greater “work” a person can do than proclaim the Gospel. For right now most of you know my principal means of income is working at a telephone answering service and I AM grateful to have that job.

I find in life that some people are work-a-holics and some are very lazy and irresponsible. My father was a work-a-holic. When we were kids, my brother and I used to call him, “Mister Manual Labor”. If you like military marching cadence songs, go to youtube and do a search for the cadence song “Hard Work”. There are a couple of versions of it there on youtube. That makes a great Labor Day theme song. It also could have been a great Gene Baril theme song. My father was very “handy” mechanically and around the house, as was my late brother Eddie. I’m not! If you’ve ever seen that home improvement show on one of the cable channels, “Holmes on Homes”, he was as much of a perfectionist as Mr. Holmes, but unlike Mr. Holmes, he did not have a crew of 10 or 15 guys working with and under him. He had just himself and what work he could get out of us kids. Dad did everything slowly and painstakingly.

He built a fence around the Canton property. He did not want that fence to fall down, SO he built a cement and stone base. AND rather than using wooden support posts, he used galvanized steel poles. The holes for the steel poles were all 6 feet deep. He dug each hole by hand. Then he line up the poles PERFECTLY with levels and rope. THEN, he filled the hole with cement. No kidding, I’m actually very good at mixing cement...I’ve mixed enough of it! THEN, he dug a 2 foot trench between each post. The bottom of the trenches were filled with crushed stone and cement. The top were granite “cobblestones” and cement. That’s just the fence BASE. The wood was cedar and redwood, nailed and screwed together by him. Then the wood was painted red. The fence took about 3 summers to build in the 1960s. By his death in 2000, much of the 30-plus year old wood was rotting and deteriorating, and my sister took some of it down, but the base and poles remain. (The healthy part of the fence was repainted green to look better next to trees and the now yellow house.)

At the time Dad was building the fence, his sister-in-law Aunt Milly marveled at the hard work, and told my mother, “That fence will be left as a memorial to him”. My mother didn’t understand at the time, but over forty years later, it does stand as a memorial to him. Dad only relaxed when he got away from the Registry of Motor Vehicles and he got away from his Canton residence. That WASN’T enough. His work-a-holism really began to frustrate my mother. HE was such a perfectionist and wanted a house and property which would last forever. She got to the point she’d rather have lived in a slapped together 1950s starter home, sold it when the kids were grown, and lived in a simple apartment. She’d have preferred spend money on restaurants and trips and new cars, and not on galvanized pipe, cement, stones, the highest caliber piping (inside the house), the highest quality wiring, etc. etc. etc.

Which of them was right? I don’t know. They’ve both been dead for 10 years.
I guess it’s smart to strike a balance between my Mom who’d like to have spent her life laying around reading poetry books, and my Dad whose idea of a great time would be screwing bumpers on new Jeeps at the Toledo plant for 14 hours a day! There’s gotta be SOME balance between work and play. Neither can get out of whack or you’ll pay for it.

I will be 56 this month. That’s sobering for me. One reason is back to my Aunt Milly who was a real character. It was at age 56 that she began seriously thinking about retirement and her sunset years. She kept telling everyone, “I’m 56!!!” That was in 1968, and we kids got a big laugh out of it. But the other more sobering reason is that at age 56 my Dad began having serious health problems. He had serious heart problems, vascular problems, persistent massive nosebleeds, a stroke, a bleeding ulcer which nearly killed him, several mini-strokes, and finally Alzheimer’s Disease and cancer. He died at age 77. It was a depressing and debilitating 21 year decline. I definitely don’t want age 56 to being a depressing and debilitating 21 year decline for me.

My mother died of cancer but was very healthy until she was well into her 70s. The good news is, genetically as far as HEALTH, I tend to be taking much more after her...thank God!

Anyway, this Labor Day I’m thinking, there’s gotta be a middle ground between Mister Manual Labor and Mister Couch Potato!