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For as far back as I can remember, the long Labor Day holiday weekend, of all the long and short weekends, is the one I have always detested. Despised. Dreaded.
This bitterness began during the …
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For as far back as I can remember, the long Labor Day holiday weekend, of all the long and short weekends, is the one I have always detested. Despised. Dreaded.
This bitterness began during the early stages of my youth. When the only thing I knew to be significant about the Labor Day weekend was that Jerry Lewis would host a telethon, the Mets would be mathematically eliminated from the pennant race and my summer in the mountains was at an end.
That’s when it was time to leave be- hind the pool and the playground, the camp and the counselors, the grill and the grass and most importantly – my friends and my freedom.
It meant back to life in the land of stoops and streets and even more dis- heartening, it meant back to school.
On Saturday we’d pack two months worth of possessions – including clothes and board games that went untouched all summer long.
On Sunday we’d play a final game of softball, sneak in a swim and spin the bottle one last time. At night my Dad, the emcee, would don his tux, Mom would puff up her beehive bouffant for the season-ending show in the playhouse and I’d maneuver the bunny ears to watch Jerry.
On Labor Day Monday we’d say our goodbyes to summer friends, Mom would exchange phone numbers to people she’d never call and Dad would take on the role of Houdini and magically jam into the car all that we brought with us and all we had accumulated.
That included miles of unfinished box stitch lanyard, hundreds of unused tickets from the arcade on Broadway in Monticello that I had forgotten to redeem, half a dozen ice cream stick sculptures that never lasted past the Red Apple Rest, the bikes we just had to bring but never really got around to riding and whatever Mom bought from the various schlock vendors.
Dad’s system was simple. Fill the back seat with as much stuff as possible. Never consider his need to see or my need to be comfortable. Or to breathe. He just figured to look ahead and that I’d sit on top of, or in-between or kinda below – whatever space was left. Twenty pounds heavier and I’d be on the roof with the bikes. Certainly would have been healthier considering the constant cigarette smoke wafting from my parents as they turned the back of our Plymouth into a cloudy Turkish prison.
For years I wondered why my dad’s style of car packing looked so familiar. Then I watched “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Dad’s packing was reminiscent of Tevye leaving Anatevka. The only thing missing was the mule and I’m sure Dad would have figured out how to squeeze it onto the roof between the bikes and the valises.
Three hours and one quick Red Apple Rest pit stop – so I could relieve my bladder and take in fresh air – we were back in Brooklyn.
It would be some nine long months before we’d get to experience summer again in the Catskills.
Decades later, I see that same Labor Day weekend scene being played out as I drive along our country roads, fam- ilies at bungalow colonies and small resorts packing up for their seasonal exodus.
Their disappointment on leaving a place we call home should not be lost on those of us who sometimes forget how special our area is.
How can we fault folks for wanting a small taste out of the bounty we get to enjoy year-round?
I stop to watch mothers say good- byes, boys and girls bringing out boxes and bundles and bikes to their exas- perating fathers, who with the look of pain and desperation wonder where it will all fit.
They’ll make it fit. Like Tevye and my father before them, they’ll carry on the packing tradition.
Barry Lewis is a longtime journalist and author who lives with his wife Bonnie in the Town of Neversink. He can be reached at barrylewisscdemocrat@gmail.com.
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