Celebrating Labor Day

Celebrating Labor Day

I am the son of working people. My dad and mom labored hard for much of their lives to give their children a better future. It was a mantra in our household, at least for my dad, that our only job was to go to school and leave Moss Point. He would take care of the rest.

That work would often leave him irritable and distant. Walking all those miles with a bag on his shoulder (especially when it was time to deliver JCPenney catalogs and telephone books) wasn’t easy. Nor was it a cake walk dealing with people anxious for their checks, unchained dogs, white supervisors and white folks generally. It often left him silent. Plus, Mississippi summers can be brutal. I don’t know how many of his belts were ruined. I just remember them twisted and stiff, with a distinct smell of cowhide and sour sweat.

He was the second African American hired at the Post Office in Pascagoula. He returned from Vietnam, worked for a moment at Ingalls Shipyard, and finally took the exam and became a letter carrier. He would go on to be president of the local chapter of the National Association of Letter Carriers, fighting for his co-workers and frustrating management with his knowledge of the labor contract and with a temperament that did not tolerate fools easily.

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One of my earliest memories is of my mom returning home from work at Burger King. I think, although I am not sure, she brought one of those Burger King crowns home along with a hamburger and fries. That’s when we lived on Rose Drive, on the East Side of Moss Point, when my brother and our friends used to build homemade go-carts out of discarded plywood, boards, and wagon wheels and played “cat ball” or “pick n’ up and running” in the open lot.

She started work at Ingalls on the janitorial team. By that time, in my memory, we had moved to the other side of town. She had a pink safety helmet and worked the third shift. It was a deliberate arrangement to ensure that someone was always home with us. Dad would get off work. Dinner would be on the stove. They’d kiss. Mom would leave, only to come home around one o’clock in the morning.

They married young, had four children, with the oldest severely disabled. Mom contracted rubella (what they used to call German measles) while pregnant. My sister cannot walk, talk, hear, or see. We grew up with a rotating schedule of feeding her breakfast before school and dinner during the evenings. The doctors said she wouldn’t live past twelve years of age. Bonita is now sixty-two years old, and my mom and dad still care for her in the home where they raised all of us.

One day the pink helmet became a white helmet. Mom had been promoted to supervisor. She now managed janitorial teams, gave assignments, and fired people. I remember testy exchanges between her and my dad. “I am not one of those people you supervise,” dad would say (the language would be a bit more pointed). She worked that third shift as a supervisor well into my college years. I still don’t know how she did it.

When I was home recently, while driving her to her radiation treatment, we passed this notorious place on River Road. There is a mangled oak tree at the corner along the west bank of the Pascagoula River, with a faded white skull and bones painted on its side. So many accidents have happened there. So many were left dead after graduation or a prom night; cars wrapped around the tree and bodies thrown into the river. I mentioned the tree.

Mom told me the story of one late night as she was driving home from work. The night was chilly. She usually drove with the window down to keep herself awake but decided not to. And then she said, with a slight chuckle, “for some reason I decided I was going to lay down and go to sleep. But God woke me up. I just suddenly woke up as the car was about to go into the river. It was real late. So, no one would have found me. Only God brought me home that night.” She laughed, “I know, no matter how cold it was, I drove with my window down from then on.”

The sacrifices made cannot be measured. Hard working people. Hands made rough by back-breaking work. Bloodshot eyes because of a lack of sleep. Sunbeaten skin and crows-feet around the eyes. A life of toil to make possible a life of meaning for themselves and for their children. These are the improbable aristocrats who walk among us, even if their backs are slightly bent now or who shuffle their feet instead of picking them up.

They made, and make, our world possible. This Labor Day let us genuinely celebrate them and the dignity of work amid this obscene gilded age.

Paul Robeson’s rendition of “Joe Hill”.