Labor Day 2008

Growing up, Labor Day was always a major holiday at our house. I lived in a small town and like many small mid-western towns, we have one "major" festival each year. In my hometown, that festival is Labor Day weekend. Covering both blocks of our downtown, there are rides, games, food, and a stage where local musicians, dancers, and entertainers of all sorts perform. The high school marching band plays at an ice cream social at the old train depot. The local scholarship/beauty pageant is held in the high school auditorium. (No, I never competed but I did go to watch several years.) On Labor Day, there is a long parade filled with antique cars, politicians and trucks hauling local sports teams and classes that were having reunions that year. The best part of the parade was a majority of the participants throw candy to the crowds. I'd come away with just as much candy from the parade as I would on Halloween. As I got older, I remember spending HOURS each day hanging out downtown with my friends, some of which I was just catching up with since school had just started the week before. Labor Day weekend holds a lot of memories for me.

This past weekend, I took Nate back to my hometown to experience another Labor Day with my son. On Saturday evening, we met up with my best friend and her two little girls and walked downtown. Somehow, the festival seems so much smaller than I remembered. Nate wasn't too interested in the rides (even though he really liked them at the two fairs we went to over the summer) but he did play two games where he won a shark and a dolphin. I bought him some french fries and I had my fried cheese on a stick. (The same fried cheese stand has come for as long as I can remember and sets up on the same corner every year. I will truly mourn the year that it does not show up.) We were only at the festival for around an hour and had covered it all. Was this really the place where I had spent so much time as a child?

On Monday, we went to my parents' house for a cookout and then a short walk up the street to watch the parade. I ate too much, watched Nate play with water balloons for the first time, and sweated through the parade. I loved every minute of it. Seeing Nate wave at the people in the parade and happily munch on a sucker instead of diving all over the street to grab even more candy. (I know that day will soon come because I watched his older cousins racing to grab as much as they could.) Nate finally decided that he could pedal his bike so I walked behind him as he rode his bike around the block that I circled so many times when I was growing up. Even though not much has actually changed in my home town during the Labor Day festival, Labor Day isn't the same as I remember growing up. I thought I might miss the way it was, but really I loved it just as much.