Big Red Car here honoring Labor Day and all those who work, know the dignity of work, and celebrate its nobility.
Happy Labor Day!
As a young Big Red Car, I used to work in construction and would come home from a long, hot day of jack hammering manholes out of the street, and raising them the thickness of the new asphalt pavement.
Jack hammer for a few hours, jerk the cast iron insert out, install a few bricks to make up the elevation difference, re-install the cast iron insert, mix concrete, fill and patch the hole. Two per day in those days. Maybe a couple of hours of overtime.
The work was in the middle of the street — parked the truck to block one direction, the air compressor the other side. It was hot, made hotter by the blazing sun and the asphalt. I used to work with my shirt off in my jean shorts and work boots. At the end of the summer, I looked like a betel nut.
When I got home, I had that good kind of tired. The kind of tired which said, “You have worked to your limit. You have earned your wages. You have given a days work for a days pay.”
I wish to all my friends a Happy Labor Day and hope you have known the dignity and nobility of work. I pray that you have experienced that special kind of tired. Because that is the tired which built our great country.
In Houston today, they will know that kind of tired and in the days ahead they will become intimately familiar with it.
God bless all those who have ever sweated and worked. You built this joint. God bless y’all! Thank you.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car.
