Labor Days
I'm writing on an actual Labor Day--Monday, September 5, 2016. And it's the final day of a weekend that's been rather special or unique to Pete and me over the years. For we met forty years ago on Labor Day weekend 1976. My cousin Carol and I had driven to my former school of Denfeld in Duluth because ALHS (where I'd just begun teaching) was playing a non-conference football game at the school I'd just left after filling in for a teacher who'd taken a one-year leave of absence. It's a crazy story of drinking beer in the stands, overnighting with friends at their lake home just north of Duluth (we'd convinced my good friend Bob and his buddy Pete to join us), venturing into the sauna where we discovered Pete without a stitch on. Soon, under the influence of plenty of spirits and merriment, Carol and I shed our bikini tops, and we eventually slept on the floor, all four of us in a row. The next morning I recall clearly Pete and I standing outside before getting into our respective cars to drive back home. He wanted to know if he could ask me out, and I said sure. But then that rascal never called, and I ended up contacting him to join us at a post-football game party at my parents' house where I was living at the time. Our first Labor Day experience.
Labor Day of 1979 our godson Alex was born--always thought it was ironic that my friend Irene had gone through labor on Labor Day. When I first met her in the hospital hall after Alex's birth, she was walking with her IV pole, wearing a brown, lacy nightgown and robe I'd loaned her. (Actually thinking about it now, it was the one and only time I've seen Irene in lace. She's truly a denim gal.) But when Irene and Dan brought Alex home, I remember Pete holding Alex in the air and saying, "I want one; I want one!" And 12 months later Scott was born.
We took the kids to Camp Foster on Lake Okoboji on several Labor Day weekends. I'd begin teaching in Northwood where the schools started before Labor Day, and then on Friday afternoon when my school day ended, we'd load up the car, drive the two hours to Spirit Lake, and spend several days enjoying the sandy beach, eating at the communal dining tables, catching frogs, and even target shooting. I realized I was a pretty good shot and tacked my paper target (showing my nearly bulls-eyed precision) to my classroom bulletin board in a "don't mess with me" gesture. One year the monarchs, migrating en masse, covered the trees and bushes, everything glowing orange with their magical bodies.
One of our first years at the camp, we met a family from Cedar Falls, Iowa, who had two girls similar in age to our kids. Both university professors, Geoff and Karen liked a pre-dinner beverage just as much as Pete and I. Since alcohol wasn't allowed in the camp proper, we devised a plan--each year the Mills requested the cabin the camp nurse had occupied (it was smaller, but had a frig!) and we kept our beer there, enjoying it surreptitiously in the evenings. After telling them about Concordia Language Camps, both the Mills girls attended several times, and we carried on a wonderful correspondence for years.
Labor Day 1999 we took our Scott to college--just an hour's drive north, but it still was an event that is pictured clearly in my heart. I recall Scott's uncanny feistiness that previous summer. He was obviously anxious about moving on. But that Labor Day, Pete and I had loaded up the van, drove to the dorm, helped Scott set up his room, hugged him good-bye. We felt that Scott's life was up to him now. He had a great foundation he could build on. We were proud.
The final major event I recall that occurred on a Labor Day weekend was in 2004 when we moved from 107 The Fairway to 104 Ridge Road. We had the help of a dozen friends, and load after load was shuttled between the two houses, actually only several hundred yards apart. We used pickups and trailers and even two-wheeled dollies. I remember Bob Oothoudt wheeling a good load of slate with the dolly--down one driveway, across The Fairway to Ridge Road and then into the new driveway. Good weather, good friends, a new house, this one with one floor.
I had moved from the old house rather reluctantly; my heart ached to leave the place I felt was my childhood home. But the upkeep and the two floors of living space were just too much for Pete and me. I had washed the 75 windows too many times, I had chipped ice and skidded up and down the hill too often. This new house would do--one floor and not far from my parents. Those were the requirements, and this house at 104 Ridge Road filled them.
But I've come to love this place. I sit now this Labor Day on the porch as the raindrops fall and the clouds begin to move off. The lake view calms me, and promise of a gorgeous sunset draws me each evening to linger here and realize it's a wonderful world.
