Labor Day
by Tyler Woods on Sep. 05, 2010, under Life
tvguide.com
I have just made a salad, cut the watermelon, got the grill ready, made the macaroni, and have cleaned. Yep, getting ready for pre and post Labor Day sure is fun. For me, it is about having dinners Friday-Monday. I will have a BBQ at my home, a BBQ at another friend’s home and yet at other friends home. I feel blessed with friends, filled with food and it got me thinking…
I cant’ say that Labor Day was a big event in my family’s life. They really never celebrated, maybe because my father was too tired, maybe because there was no one to celebrate with them. I am unsure, but I always celebrated Labor Day as a kid and mainly for two reasons.
First, it was the Jerry Lewis Telethon. It really was a great show back in my day. They spent less time on sponsors and who was giving money and more time on pure entertainment. The entertainers back then was worth staying up for too, and that is normally what I did for Labor Day.
I would invite a few friends to spend the night and we would sit up all night in sleeping bags watching the Telethon. There would be lots of fun snacks and goodies to munch on all night, and we would see who could stay up the longest before sleep took us away.
It was fun because back then, TV was not on all night like it is now. Normally TV would shut down by midnight the latest. So you could imagine how fascinated we were that TV was on all night. I think that was part of the fun of it all.
The other thing that was fun was that us kids knew it was our last hurrah because the day after Labor Day was over, school started back. It’s true. We did not start school as early as kids today do. Labor Day was the sign that summer was over, and it was back to school. No more late nights staying up and having fun. No more freedom from homework and no more sitting outside watching the monsoons and watching lightning. Summer was over!
Today it’s all so different. The Telethon is about as boring as it gets. Maybe it’s boring because they don’t make entertainers like they used to or maybe because it’s because I grew up and TV is on 24-7 and there is nothing exciting about staying up all night to watch TV. Maybe it is because there was a sense of excitement as well as dread because school was starting. Who knows. What I do know, is I really don’t watch the Telethon any longer. I might turn it on here and there and take a quick peek, and I always donate to “Jerry’s Kids”, but Labor Day as a kid growing up in the 60s and 70s sure is a lot different than it is today.
So I will clearly enjoy my BBQ’s all weekend, and eat lots of fun food, drinks tons of lime-aid and be with lots of friends as we celebrate a holiday that says it’s okay to eat, drink and be merry.
