Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye

Labor Day: All-American Holiday celebrating the commitment and worth of our workers? Or insidious socialist (really, COMMUNIST) plot to motivate the lowly toiling stiff to overthrow the evil global corporate empire and replace it with an evil ruling Junta?
Of course it's neither. It's nothing more than an extra day off, for some - retailers are all open - and those that gots the day off, they're all boozing and whooping it up as summer's last hurrah. I remember one Labor Day weekend, about fifteen years ago, where we had a keg set up in the backyard, and friends and family came to drink and set off some sort of illegal explosives, when my then four year old son got a dinosaur sippy cup and walked over to the keg. I thought, No, he can't be going to get himself a beer! Then he got himself a beer. I let him go for a minute, as he walked over to a Little Tykes molded plastic picnic table situated under a towering choke cherry tree and sat down. Before he got into his cups I went over and asked him if he wanted a cigarette with that beer. Said son scowled and gave up his prize, and only scowled more when my now ex mother-in-law admonished his actions with, "No drinking until you're at least fifteen!"
Oh, those halycon days of yore. I marvel that we all emerged with only emotional scars and no physical ones.