To Think We Survived

That's just the way it was during those 1940's-'50's, East St. Louis.  I'm speaking of the significance of the Labor Day weekend. I believe most East St. Louis natives would concur that Labor Day tied for third with July 4th, behind Christmas and Easter as the most important celebration. Why not, we were a blue-collar hotbed of proud people representative of a known 'melting pot' of diverse ethnicity.

Labor Day morning thousands of workers representing various union trades marched through East St. Louis streets behind and in front of decorated floats and monster machinery ending at the huge Jones Park where a day long celebration ensued. The day, however held a bittersweet taste for school children because Tuesday after that Monday marked the beginning of the school year. Summer, for all practical purposes was at an end. Those comfortable summer togs of torn t-shirts and ratty jeans gave way to fashionable uncomfortablness. Those heavy-stiff-unyielding 'new' Levi's jeans were torturous to a boy sitting in a non-AC third floor classroom of East Side High located in the Mississippi River valley. Sweat? I should say! Impossible to take a study hall nap until mid-October.

I always survived the first month of oppressive heat and humidity. What I shall never understand is how those egg salad sandwiches I put into my metal school locker at 7:30AM with heat hovering around 90 degrees did not kill me considering the fact that my lunch hour was at 12:30PM. No, I didn't eat egg salad every day...mother often made Tuna salad and ham salad sandwiches. I'll tell you how hot that school locker was in September. Sometimes mother fixed a hot ham sandwich for the school brown-bag. Well, actually it was a 'Spam' sandwich; I asked her to fry it just to get rid of that freaky jell substance.

I never told my mother that I saved the two dimes she gave me for the city bus ride to and from school. I bought snacks instead. I wonder if she would have worried knowing I hitchhiked both ways.