Labor Day Monologue

Did you see that? I can’t believe they lost the damned flag. It says right here they lost the flag from Ground Zero. What they gonna do for a flag? They gotta have a flag for the ceremony. It’s nearly upon us, the anniversary. I bet someone took it as a souvenir or something. How they gonna commemorate it?

Seems like we got two Memorial Day weekends now. One in May and another one in September. Some people still got their flags up from last year. Like ragged birds. Well, Labor Day’s pretty much lost itself in the hubbub of time anyways. I mean, now, everybody goes back to school BEFORE Labor Day Weekend. Used to be the end of summer. Labor Day. Last fling of summer. Last chance at a holiday before the old salt grind begins again.

Labor Day belongs to the past. Back then when things had proper beginnings middles and ends. Not like today where everything slides into each other so fast you don’t hardly know where you stand. Now folks are putting Christmas ornaments up right after Halloween. In my day at least they used to wait till after Thanksgiving.

Most folks are too busy shopping to notice how they’ve already forgotten what Labor Day stands for anyway—other than a big sales weekend. Like Memorial Day. I hear it’s gonna be made into a flag holiday, You know, the clerk at the mall said things were pretty slow on account of 9-11, but just you wait, soon it will be a shopping holiday like all the rest. The malls will be packed. They oughta just call them mallidays. Tht’s what it’s about. Buy, buy buy. They say that was what was buggin’ the Muslims. All that buying. I think they’re just jealous.

What’s the point of still having Labor Day Weekend? They oughta just knock it right off the calendar. It’s just cluttering up another one of those little squares and we need to make more room on it. Besides, at the schools, the teachers don’t even come back from their holidays early but they send some poor lackey in to hold court. No matter that the students had to cut short their holidays in order to get to first day of class or lose their places. Some jackassin the University miscounted and we got 2000 extra students with no place to go. No room at the inn. All fighting for classes. Talk about labor!

No, Labor Day will slide right into 9-11 and soon we’ll forget it ever existed. We already lost May Day. Who knows what IWW stands for anymore? Buncha Commies and Wobblies. And the real May Day with its Maypole and May baskets was a rival of my affections for Easter. But the Christians got upset over that. Said it was Pagan. What was so pagan about bringing your teacher a basket of flowers?

Me, I never been to New York. But I think Labor Day is quintessentially New York. Don’t ask why. It’s just a feeling I get inside. Labor Day always makes me think of the East Coast. Long Island. Places like that. Back when people had summer houses and got away from the city. Guess that always meant New York. Seems like everybody who could, got outa New York in summer. Too hot in the kitchen.

Yeah, it makes me think of the days when people had a proper sense of time. Respect for things. Like sitting down to Sunday dinner. Chicken every Sunday was something to look forward to. It meant something. Now everybody eats on their own schedule. Out of boxes you zap in the microwave. NO more home-cooked meals. No sir. That’s a thing of the past. An artifact I say.

Did you know the Smithsonian is having an exhibit on stuff saved from the Towers? They got a whole fire engine door from Brooklyn. All red, white and blue like the flag. Only it’s got a yellow stripe in it too. But those firemen weren’t yellow, no sir!. They was brave. Real heroes. I always wave to firemen now ‘cause I get all choked up and teary-eyed inside. Never forget. That’s what my Irish granny always said about the English, you know. Never forget. Or history repeats itself.

They found some guy’s camera all melted in the rubble. The guy had no more need of his cameras. But what was weird was that the camera was OK. I saw a picture he took before the North Tower collapsed on him. I swear there were ghost shadows rising up from the towers. Like those pictures of Dresden after the bombing. And I thought of all those ghosts having to learn how to fly. It was plumes of smoke and dust from the towers. I remember seeing a picture where people’s shadows were burned into walls at Nagasaki like indelible angels.

And now everybody is asking each other: How did you witness 9-11. It’s like the day Kennedy was shot. An event for the next generation to pinpoint in time. Some things are indelibly burned into the retina like film in a camera.

They have this section of a steel girder in the exhibit that’s twisted like a negative image of Brancusi’s sculpture of birds. You know that one you always see in all the art history books? It always caught my eye. At first I didn’t get it, a column of steel rising up—how could it be birds? But then something happened, one day I didn’t look at it head-on, but from the side, and I swear I saw the steel was like a mass of birds rising up to the sky like a plume of smoke. Like angels bearing flags.

©2002 Maureen Hurley