A spontaneous Labor Day picnic, fried chicken and potato salad beside the pool, followed by carrot cake in air conditioned comfort.
We forgot to take the camera, so later David did a basic recreation and snapped some shots. I got a picture of the cake.
When I remember the elaborate family picnics of my childhood—chicken barbecued on the riverbank, baked beans, potato salad, creamed corn, fresh onions and tomatoes, iced tea, pecan pie, homemade peach ice cream, and on and on—I am ashamed that I let Walmart do the cooking.
When I think of all the labor that went into celebrating warm-weather holidays—most of it done by others while I was splashing around in the river—I’m okay with a scaled-down version.
M. K. Waller 
One of my memories of Labor Day relate to teaching and coaching in historic days of the 1970’s. Labor Day was not a day off for a small town coach. We practiced in the heat of the day for the Friday nite game coming up with our brave eleven. It was also back then the start of school. Yes, we didn’t start school until after labor day. It was the benchmark day. Another school year for an educator with anticipation and maybe some excitement. It was also a day to plan out your first week of teaching five different social studies classes from grades 9-12 without any technology only a chalkboard and some mimeographed handouts . Yes Labor Day was labor day…….
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That was just before I started teaching. I got my BA on August 17 or 18 and the first day of in-service was August 20. I went to the same session as Harold, something about science, and learned teachers weren’t doing a good enough job. I hadn’t done anything yet–I thought my teachers had done a pretty good job, but obviously not–so I went into Labor Day knowing I wasn’t doing a good job. I don’t know what I did on Labor Day, but it was probably wishing I didn’t have to go back. I taught three English classes and three in biology. Mid-year, they changed the schedule and lopped off some time and one of my English classes, thank goodness–something about the energy crisis. Do you remember the old copy machine that crumpled paper? And the new electric one that crumpled paper. George M. once told me my eye makeup was smeared on my face. It was just purple from the spirit master. After technology invaded, I didn’t have any more holidays. I had to learn something new every day to stay one step behind the students. But it was fun. Thanks for reading, Tom. And for commenting.
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