Labor Day

Most of us seniors have paid our dues and are entitled to celebrate Labor Day. When I was growing up, Labor Day meant that you were probably in the tobacco field priming tips, getting in the last of the crop so that you could go back to school. There certainly was no celebrating. I'm not complaining. That was the way it was and that was all we knew. I had to work in the fields because my parents worked in the fields. When I was old enough to touch the peddles of that old Ford 8N tractor, I was helping with the farming. I didn't necessary like it, but now I am glad that I had to do it.

Today, many high schoolers don't know what labor is. They don't know what it is like to do backbreaking labor in the hot sun for very little pay. Now all of that is done by migrant laborers. Though farming has changed tremendously in the past 50 years there is still quite a bit of manual labor involved as it is in other occupations. 

My hat is off to those who harvest our food, build our houses, flip our hamburgers, or do the jobs that we can no longer do. Hard work didn't hurt us and hard work will not hurt them. Maybe when they get to be 69 or 70 years old, they can look back and say that they have paid their dues.