LETTERS FROM HOME: WHEN A LOVE OF LABOR MEANS A LABOR OF LOVE, THE SAWDUST FLIES

Sept. 9, 1999

Dear Pat,

Most people celebrate Labor Day by relaxing at a lake and having a picnic. DC's family, who wouldn't know Samuel Gompers from Cesar Chavez, marshal the minions to repair their cabin on the Castor River. Bring your ragged clothes because sawdust and paint are going to fly. There's always time to fish and swim, and staunch breakfasts and dinners are served at the long table on the porch, but the business at hand is the hammer in it.

When her father undertakes a project, he stops for only two reasons: food and sleep. In DC's case, like father like daughter.

Hank and Lucy must leave whenever the Neosho nieces come to the cabin because Hank bit Darci on the behind a few years ago. That was the pre-Prozac Hank, but he has lost our trust if not our love.

DC's parents took the dogs out a few days early, and we were to retrieve them on Saturday before the nieces got there. We were late and worried but arrived to find two anxious dogs penned inside fencing meant to protect a mulberry tree from deer.

I took the dogs home though I hated missing the afternoon of work at the cabin. The nieces' dad misses it so much he plans a hunting trip every Labor Day. This year he was searching for moose in the Alaskan wilderness, almost untraceable.

Actually, though the beds are uncomfortable the cabin has endeared itself to me as each member of DC's family has. They love the place and care for it so because most of them have been coming to it since they were children.

There is always plenty to do even at a cabin lived in mostly on weekends only half the year. This year we re-screened all the windows that run along the porch that encircles three-fourths of the cabin.

It is amazing that three high school girls are willing to spend their Labor Day weekend painting molding instead of their fingernails. Darci and Danica cut the screens. Devon sat in a porch swing gazing at something no one else could see. But when the yell "Brown paint girl" went up, she was there.

The cabin now has new screens for the winter, but if polled the sometime inhabitants probably would agree that the major accomplishment of the weekend occurred in the bathroom. The toilet never has flushed quite right in the nearly seven years I've been paying it visits. Toilet paper rarely would completely disappear, so jugs of water were kept nearby to do the flushing the old-fashioned way, by hand.

Fortunately, DC's father watched a TV handyman show that demonstrated a technique for removing mineral deposits from inside your balky toilet. It involved standing on your head but it worked.

DC's sister, Danel, was so thankful to have a toilet that flushed that she wrote a song for the occasion. She premiered the tune after Sunday night's dinner. Set for some reason to the melody of "Winter Wonderland," the song invoked "the flood of Noah" and boasted, "you can have the flush of your delight."

The nieces passed around pictures from their summer cruise to Mexico. Afterward in the back yard, they reprised the dance they'd performed to "Zoot Suit Riot" on talent night aboard ship.

Every Labor Day weekend is really about celebrating the birthdays of DC's brother, Paul, and her mother, Polly. DC hung a dinosaur banner because Paul has an affection for the Paleozoic Era. DC's gift to her mother was a ladder.

We also celebrate that some calamity hasn't befallen Paul, who has come out hurting in confrontations with both a snake and a squirrel at the cabin.

DC's father and I finished off the weekend by weed-whacking the water lilies choking the pond behind the cabin. Nobody else would help him. He whacked while I paddled the little boat and ducked lily pads.

Love, Sam