The working American’s holiday
In recognition of the growing voice and influence of the organized trades and the beginnings of America’s Industrial Revolution, Oregon became the first state to make Labor Day an official public holiday in 1887. By 1894, 30 states were celebrating the holiday. Following the Pullman Rail strike of 1894, Congress passed a bill recognizing the first Monday in September as Labor Day, making it a federal holiday, with the bill signed into law by then President Grover Cleveland.
The holiday has since become more viewed by many as a bookend to summer, bracketed with Memorial Day as the official start.
Labor unions arguably gave us the five-day work week and 40-hour work week, overtime pay, health care and other related benefits, including paid pensions.
My paternal great-grandfather, Charles Clinton Crane, was a working man. He ran away from home at age 14. His family’s failing farm in upstate New York was not able to sustain a family of nine children. Charlie headed west, leaving school and becoming a real cowboy. He picked up the habit out west of wearing Stetson hats for the rest of his life, as well as a love of western folk art and customs.
When he returned to upstate New York, he met and married my great-grandmother, Hazel, and almost immediately after, he was shipped off with the Army to fight World War I. His first-born son, William Clinton “Bud” Crane, was born while he was overseas.
Charlie survived that long conflict overseas, and returned home, largely none the worse for wear. He joined a company called McDougal-Warren Paving, and worked primarily as a paving crew foreman, constructing what you and I now know as U.S. Highways 19 and 41. Highway 41 starts in Copper Harbor, Michigan, (north of Detroit) and travels 2,000 miles south and east to Miami, Florida. Highway 19 is just under 1,450 miles, connecting Lake Erie and Pennsylvania to the Gulf of Mexico.
Charlie and Hazel lived on the road with the paving crew for the years it took to pave each road. The summer heat in the South was simply too hot for laying pavement, so the company would give the crew the summer off. Charlie and Hazel found a modest heart of pine cabin to their liking in Pine Lake and after a second summer spent there as Charlie’s retirement loomed, they decided to make Georgia their new home, near the onset of World War II.
Charlie liked to share tales of his adventures and work building American highways. He went into some detail about blasting and digging tunnels as well as carving highways into the sides of mountains. Both U.S. Highways 19 and 41 were built from north to south, with several brutal winters on the road. Hazel ran the cook wagon that fed the crews.
Having only experienced deep snow a few times before I was in my 30s, I was fascinated by driving or making it through a snowstorm. Charlie told me they would cut straightaways through the shaded and tree-covered mountainsides, and curves, as often as possible as well as steeper grades open more to full sunshine. Even in winter, the sun could bring enough heat to the blacktop to melt off most snow and ice, making the roads less treacherous.
As I headed north toward Blairsville, Georgia, along Highway 19 during the great Snowmaggedon of 2012, this guidance likely saved my life along 37 miles of very curvy roads through the north Georgia mountains—though I only made it as far north as Helen before the roads were closed, and I watched several less fortunate drivers in their cars slide off the roadway and down the mountainside.
As I crashed safely in bed that night at the Country Inn in Helen, with my black Jeep Liberty looking a bit like a snow-crusted locomotive, I even more fully appreciated the many life lessons I learned from Charlie.
So, for Grampa Charlie and the millions of other men and women who toil, build, repair, and rebuild for us all the rest of most every day, I hope you each had a restful and blessed Labor Day holiday and weekend.
