by Margaret Radisich Sleasman

Created on: September 08, 2009   Last Updated: August 04, 2011

Labor Day always meant the beginning of the school year when  the kids would be out of the house for seven hours every day. What a great cause for celebration; time for barbecues and picnics, parades, and a trip to the store to buy some paperbacks for my winter relaxation. I am not being mean, because I am happy about the kids being gone; however, five children of various ages screeching and fighting constantly tend to get a tad bit on your nerves.  Labor Day  was my favorite holiday even out-doing Christmas; actually I dislike the Christmas season immensely, but that is another story.

The first thing EVERY Labor Day morning I kick hubby out of bed and tell him to take the kids somewhere so I can get ready for the barbecue. Since he can't remember what happened last year, he just obediently obeys.

"We have company coming and I need the next five hours to prepare food and clean: oh, and go to the store for some rolls, chips and soda." I chuckled as he grudgingly put our brood in the car, and could only imagine what would transpire once they drove off; but then he has a higher tolerance than I do, or maybe they actually are well-behaved for him.  When they came home, he looked somewhat like "Bill the Cat" in the "Outland" comic strip with his hair sticking up every which-way, shirt ripped, and eyes staring aimlessly. I even felt a surge of guilt and offered a hug, but he avoided me the rest of the day, imagine that.

Once I had everything prepared for my "happy day" celebration, I changed and looked almost as good as June Cleaver waiting for the excitement to commence. The relatives began driving in along with a few friends and friends of friends - boy this is going to be a party, it gets better every year. Of course that is because the friends and the friends of friends also have numerous children to get rid of the next day and feel the need to celebrate too. Some of the relatives have children, but most of the aunts and uncles are just old and glad kids grew up and are at their own Labor Day parties. My cousins are a whole other story and I won't be going there, but the police will and possibly the DEA.

Generally the day goes well, except for the time Mikey took his diaper off and sat in the potato salad.   Aunt Bessie still hasn't forgiven me for that, although she still comes every year bringing a bowl cover even though Mikey is 16 now, "You just never know what these kids will do," she says. Probably because her thirty-year-old son burned his house down trying to simmer ten ounces of marijuana on his barbecue to get their party going. He lifted the lid to test the fumes, caught his shirt on fire, then threw it off into the shrub which in turn caught the house. The gene pool on that side of the family is not the best, but the firemen were a happy little group that day.

Our Labor Day barbecues are much less lively than that because we only serve beer. We did run a bit short one year causing a massive fight for the last beer in the cooler. It is lucky for us that the neighbors go out of town for the holiday or we would have had several police cars show up and many arrests made. Knowing that these guys will fight to the death over a single beer, I stood on top of one of the coolers, fired a shot gun in the air and announced that I would go to the store for more if they would settle down. Men will do darn near anything for a beer, so they retreated with their black-eyes and bloody noses until more beer arrived; some of them even had something to eat while they waited.

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