Well, there it goes…another summer and another zero chance to finally wear that bikini I bought 30 years ago…so YOU’RE WELCOME!
To get your mind off that mental picture, let’s talk about something equally unsettling…like the WEATHER! 2022 has been a temperature record breaker…and not in a good way. The nice tv weather lady says we’re now in our FIFTH heat wave…Hello? I don’t remember #1 actually ending. But we are but playthings to the weather gods…and they did make up for it with this year’s fantastic corn crop.
…so on to the bigger issue…your seasonal wardrobe.
Can I see a show of hands on who’s already packed away their white slacks and cool cottons?
For those of you under a certain age…pay attention. There was a time when etiquette (look it up) decreed that the first weekend of September was the absolute cut-off for wearing those breezy white dresses and linen polo pants. If you don’t believe me…here’s the word straight from the archives of Better Homes and Gardens:
“Since Labor Day typically represents the end of summer, a ‘rule’ was established that you shouldn’t wear white after Labor Day if you didn’t have the money to take fall and winter vacations.” * (Pearls duly clutched here). And if that weren’t quite snobbish enough…
it was also used as a way to identify those who needed to work and those who didn’t.
Which brings us to the actual point of Labor Day, and a more sober discussion than is usually found in my weekly musings.
Where would we be, all day every day, without the men and women who move us along our way with plumbing, electricity, waste management, construction, education, and even handing us that first cuppa coffee? And giving us voter-registration-card-carrying membership in what we like to call our American Middle-Class.
I’ll tell you where… likely living in sub-standard housing rented from and at the pleasure of the owner of the mill, or the mine, or the factory assembly line, where we toiled for not much more than charity. School for your kids, if any, would be limited to the 3 Rs, but just until they were big enough to work the day shift. And if you got sick, or worse injured on the job, or just too old to be of value, you were thanked for your service… right at the bottom of your eviction notice. And don’t let the door hit you…
What those barons of industry failed to recognize is that there is a bottom to everything…and once you hit it, the only way out is UP. Therein lies the story and the lesson. I call it the Yertle the Turtle moment. (Props to Dr. Seuss.) If you haven’t read it lately, stop by the marketing tent and I’ll happily recite it for you. Because by the turn of the 19th century, the worm had finally turned, and in 1894, Labor Day became an official holiday; and the middle class and a better chance at life became the new normal. So, go ahead, relax and enjoy this three-day weekend…but don’t forget to remember how you got it.
And if you’re too grown-up for Yertle, another excellent and factual read on the subject of unionization, and populated by the real men and women whose sacrifices got us here, is by one of my favorite authors: Mary Doria Russell’s The Women of the Copper Country . I highly recommend.
And if you’ll be hangin’ around Lansdowne for the holiday, the LFM will be here at our usual place and time this Saturday. There’s still another month or two of peaches before the apples push them out; and still plenty of this year’s spectacular corn crop, so don’t put that grill away just yet.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to read all of The Lansdowne Link for what’s going on in ‘downe town.
Enjoy this weekend, and remember that “free time” didn’t come free.
Terry Baraldi.
*WardrobeFootnote: Thankfully, somewhere in the eighties, Emily Post (who???) stopped clutching her pearls long enough to decree that here in 2022 you may wear whatever color you please, regardless of the date on your calendar.