It is hard to believe that Labor Day is tomorrow, and that around here the kids have been in school for the past week and a half. Labor Day for me, as a kid, was knowing that the very next day, school started. Fortunately I loved school and was happy to go back. That is the memory I have as a child.

But after Bob and I married, there are lots and lots of memories. Early on, when Jerry Lewis had his Labor Day Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy, we would stay up all night watching it. As the kids came along, all of us would lay around in the living room watching it, some of the kids even stayed up all night with Bob. By that time, I just couldn't sit and watch for more than a hour or two.

When we started vacationing at Truro, Cape Cod, things changed. We always took the two weeks, including Labor Day. In driving down from Sudbury, three or four legs of the trip. Getting on to what is now I 95 south, to Route 3 south, crossing the bridge over the Cape Cod Canal, and then on the main road all the way down to Truro, which was next to Provincetown. We had found a great cape house, and rented it for several years. One year we had Jim and Mary Betsill and their kids with us; Tip and Patricia Thiboutot would rent close to us, Pat and Bob Hall (where we stayed the first time down) had a cabin right next to where we stayed. It became a tradition for us to go to a nice restaurant for our anniversary. But, on Labor Day weekend, we ALWAYS ate Lobster - that is most of us. Siobhan always had hot dogs, and I think a few others did also. But we ate and ate lobsters, steamers, fresh corn on the cob, with butter dripping off our faces and hands, and none of us caring what we looked like. Sometimes we would go to a lobster shack where we didn't have to clean up the mess afterwards. I have wonderful memories of Cape Cod vacations, and I am sure Frank, Siobhan, Kat, and Phil do also.

Then we stopped going to the Cape. Our good friends, Bill and Mary Sayles had a cabin in Maine, on Kezar Lake in Lovell, and we had been up there once or twice with the kids early on. The older kids weren't interested in going where there was no action, and they were working or gone. We rented a cabin from friends of ours on another "pond" in Fryeburg,and vacationed there the last two weeks of August, including Labor Day. Phil would bring a friend up with him, sometimes one each week we were gone. And on our anniversary, all of us would go to a favorite inn near us. Unfortunately that inn closed down about two or three years after we started going to Maine. Kat and a friend came up one year for a few days also. We also would come back and stay with the Sayles for the Fryeburg Fair in late September/early October, which is one of the best small fairs I have ever been to. Only the Iowa State Fair, a huge event beats it, in my estimation. This cabin in Fryeburg is also where Bob had his first heart attack. Many memories....

Once the kids were mostly grown and on their own, Bob and I would make reservations around Stockbridge, Massachusetts and go to the Jazz Festival at Tanglewood. What great times we had. Most of the time we were with friends - Tip and Patricia, Lisa and Gene, Jacquie and Joe, Trudi and Don. Each day we packed up our food and headed over to the Tanglewood grounds, and set up camp. And each year, we got fancier and fancier. We never reached the heights of some of the other parties there, but we ate and drank well. We went from plastic glasses to real glass wine glasses, fancy paper plates, napkins, candles, etc. We ate good food, found in various stores and delis around Stockbridge. And when Bob got his Bose, he carted it in and entertained us and others with great music sometimes recorded by the musicians we were going to hear. When he got stopped at the gate one year, Tip just put the Bose on his lap, and wheeled in with it. Nobody said a thing. As the years went by, we got smarter, finding that Tanglewood, being in the Berkshires, was often colder than we thought. So we all began to buy tickets under the shed, and then picnicking out on the hill, as normal, and then schlepping the food and chairs, etc. back to the cars, and going inside. If it was nice out, we stayed outside. But I can remember several times when it was cold, and one year it began raining. We were grateful to be inside. Those wonderful times stopped when we moved from Sudbury.

Down here most people have cookouts on Labor Day, and we were invited to them. But none have had the memories I keep of our days at Cape Cod, Maine, and Tanglewood.

Happy Labor Day!

Adieu, Adios, Mahalo,
I love you,
Sally