LABOR DAY WEEK!

I remember, as a kid, Labor Day was quite a deal. Every house had a flag flying. All of the neighbors celebrated. As a child I looked forward to a really fun weekend before the school doors would open on Monday.

My friends and I started a tradition of decorating our wagons and bikes and “treating” the neighborhood to a kid parade.

The parade route would start at Trompeter’s house, ceremoniously travel North to Madison, West to Cambridge, South to Adams, East back to Chatham and North to our starting location.

For us kids this was a very serious tribute worthy of front page coverage. We demanded, as only children can do, that every mom and dad join as a respectful audience.

Our Labor Day celebration never ended there. We would go downtown (Elmhurst) and watch “The grown ups parade” with fire engines, soldiers and all of the things you would expect to see.

Sometimes we would finish the day with a bar-b-que, other years we would go into “the city” and have a party with Chicago relatives.

This is my first Labor Day as a retired cop. Most recent holidays I was either working or fresh off of a midnight shift and too tired to enjoy all the fun.

This year has been different. I started my celebrating early. My brother Paul won a free boat tour of Lake Geneva Wisconsin, about a 2 hour drive North from my house in Illinois. Paul and his wife, Julie, shared the wealth and invited my sister Pam, her husband Neil and me to tag along (Oddly enough the tour was scheduled for three hours- we did not see Gilligan, but there was a skipper).

Paul booked the tour for August 28th, the Saturday before the official weekend. It started out as a beautiful sunny day. There were thousands of people in the area.

Our tour was cut short by a rainstorm that appeared suddenly and had not been in the forecast. We had been out over 2 hours and, by a unanimous vote, we told Kevin (Our tour guide/skipper) he could race to the dock to try to get home before the brunt of the storm hit, after all I watched several seasons of what happened when Gilligan and The Skipper didn’t come in when their 3 hour tour ran into an unexpected storm.

Kevin, who was a bit younger than us, happened to have grown up in our hometown and knew a lot of the same families we knew. He met us at one of the docks and drove us around for a few hours. As part of our prize he told us stories about the owners of the mansions we could see on the shore and some of the Lake Geneva history. “No, that’s not an apartment building”, Kevin said in answer to our queries, “it’s a mansion with a gigantic garage!. There are several of them on the lake.”

We had a great tour and got a voyeuristic view of how “the other half” lives.

A few days later I took my motorcycle out for a few hours. My plan was to drive two hours South, Southwest and then turn around.

I followed that plan which resulted in no discoveries at all. I did not see anything of historic interest but I did see a lot of trees, corn, beans, cows, horses and pigs. It was a fun trip.

At one stop light a guy in an older model red Ford pick up pulled up next to me. He rolled down his window and yelled, “Hey nice bike, what is it?” I proudly responded, “It’s a 2006 Heritage Softail I bought myself as a retirement present!.” He elbowed the girl next to him in the arm and said something I couldn’t hear.

They drove away smiling, I did too!

Then on the real Labor Day Weekend my family met at my daughter’s house and celebrated.

It’s always good to get together with family, especially when that includes sunshine, grandkids, barbecued hot dogs, hamburgers, steak and a cold beverage!

Just like “The good ole days” I filled the week with fun and was exhausted, but happy at the end of it.

I hope you all had a fantastic Labor Day!

Let me know what you did in the comments section, I’m dying to hear!