Labor Day

Ah, here it comes - the Labor Day Weekend. I always get a little wistful this time of year, and not necessarily because it's time to put away the white bucks for the year. I return each Labor Day to the summers when my family would spend three months living in the mountains above Boulder. Tucked away in our little cabin, we had no running water, no telephone and perhaps most significantly, no electricity. No electricity meant no television. Each summer we lived in a world without reruns. When we stayed up late it was to read MAD magazine and comic books by kerosene lamplight, not to catch Creature Features on channel two.
On Memorial Day weekend each year, we knew that we wouldn't see the Indianapolis 500 because we would be moving in: two loads in mom's squareback VW, and Dad brought whatever didn't fit when he came up from work. Then we were set, sometimes for weeks at a time, until we headed "into town" for supplies.
Did I miss TV? Not in any active way, but there was a latent itch that I couldn't scratch. It was on these trips that we found ourselves, however briefly, around a television set. While the last load of laundry was in the dryer, my little brother and I would sit slack-jawed in front of whatever program we were fortunate enough to find in the late afternoon. I became quite fond of "The Match Game" as a result. Gene Rayburn held great significance in my world. Then it was time to turn off the tube and head for the hills again, wondering what came on later.
June and July flowed together, but August showed up as a warning. The days grew shorter, and we all knew that our lives as the Grizzly Family Caven were dwindling. No matter how I chose to prepare myself, Labor Day always came as a surprise. We talked a good game about getting home in time to see some of Jerry Lewis' MDA Telethon, but we all knew that was a sign of our summer's apocalypse. We wandered around the house, putting things away, watering plants, finding missing socks, taking baths to prepare for our reentry into society. And I can still hear Ed McMahon in the background, asking for a drum roll, as Jerry mugged shamelessly as the tote board revealed still more incredible amounts of pledges for his kids.
As a family we knew that the quiet time was over again for another year. The TV was on, and we were headed back to school.