As a kid, Labor Day wasn't a good day. Yes, all the Finlayson kids didn't have to go to school on Labor Day. No, we didn't get to enjoy the day doing our own thing. We were all rounded up in the morning, marched outside, and handed rakes. We had a large yard with A LOT of pine trees. With a great amount of pine trees comes a greater amount of pine needles...and pine cones. Every Labor Day you'd find my dad sitting at the top of the hill, organizing the labor, directing or efforts ~ making sure we were all on task and doing it right.
Our job was to rake the pine straw, making sure we had put pine straw about all the shrubbery around our house. We had a large house with lots of shrubbery. We always had plenty of pine straw for the task, with lots of it left over.
I didn't care for Labor Day. Every time it comes around I think of pine straw. I quit asking dad if we could skip raking the yard, doing all the extra household chores that Labor Day usually demanded. He would say "No". I used to ask "Why?" Dad would reply, "...because you're supposed to labor on Labor Day."
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