by Fred Moleck
The Liminal Feast of Labor Day
Two weeks ago I was bemoaning the fact that August was upon us, that it was hot, and how I never knew if it was too hot for me.
This latter observation was built on the conversation starter or stopper “Hot enough for you?” For which I still have no answer.
Here we are at another threshold in the climate history of our lives—Labor Day, the official closing of the summer season as to beach life, travel to the mountains, and the wearing of white clothes.
After Memorial Day and before Labor Day one wore white. Before Memorial Day and after Labor Day, one wouldn’t be caught dead in white.
Appropriate summer dress is the remnant of a civilized lifestyle in which seasonal vesture was important, and I’m not talking about vestments at Mass.
When all that stuff was important in our lives, academic schedules were stable and respected and were also geared to the Labor Day weekend and beyond.
It is in my recent memory that grade schools, high schools, colleges, universities and culinary institutes never began until after Labor Day, the hinge day of teachers and students.
In fact, many colleges and universities never kicked off the semester until mid-September.
As an ancient person and one who attended a small liberal arts college nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains in western Pennsylvania, I relished the September 15 date as the beginning of college classes.
This interim between Labor Day and mid-September provided usually ten days of travel and vacation time with friends whose jobs at the seashore terminated with the closing down of the saltwater taffy emporiums and boardwalk rip-off stores.
The equally obnoxious Ptomaine-Gardens-by-the-Sea restaurants closed up shop, which liberated many of my companions who worked as food handlers or bus persons.
These people were the friends who prayed every night, “Please, Lord, let Labor Day come quickly so our bondage can be lifted and we can return to being lowly students.”
With the coming of Labor Day, they embraced the newly gained freedom to blow most of their summer earnings.
My funeral and wedding stipends also were equally blown away by motel rates and too-expensive dinners for nineteen- and twenty-year-olds.
Happily, these Mass stipends in addition to my three morning Mass stipends provided enough income to tide me over until Christmas.
So, waiting tables or rolling fudge was never a possibility; for that I am still grateful.
That ten-day adventure always included at least one overnight trip to somewhere on the eastern Jersey Shore. I saw the ocean for the first time when I was nineteen years old, and I haven’t been the same since.
Labor Day of the Old Practice made it possible. I’m happy to admit that I’ve continued that tradition almost one hundred percent for the past forty-nine years of ocean gazing.
All of which to say that this week I will be visiting the shore line of the Atlantic Ocean, waiting for the perfect sunrise and the equally perfect sunset. How liminal!
Happy Labor Day.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@comcast.net