As I get ready to go to a BBQ with familty and friends today, I always recall what my wife's great-uncle told me.
Perry had a 6th grade education, grew up on a chicken farm at the eastern end of Long Island, NY. Through hard work and belonging to the Screen Actors Guild union, he raised himself from poverty to the middle-class 'dream', and sent both his children to college, and provided for my wife when she was young and her parents had family problems.
At the last Labor Day party he was alive, he had surgery recently for a brain tumor and was receiving radiation, so the scene was not pretty.
Sitting at a table under a tree, Perry asked me "Bill, what does Labor Day mean for you?". I answered something about end of summer, family, get togethers, back to school type stuff.
Perry dragged on his Lucky Strike, and said, "You know what it means to me? It means when I was walking a picket line with a sign on one shoulder, and an ax handle on the other- because the movie companies hired the Pinkerton Guards after WWII to break the union when we went on strike, and the Pinkertons would come to where we were striking with baseball bats. That's what Labor Day means, and the working guys in this country."
I don't walk a picket line, or belong to a union, but here's a salute to the working guy and American labor.
Perry had a 6th grade education, grew up on a chicken farm at the eastern end of Long Island, NY. Through hard work and belonging to the Screen Actors Guild union, he raised himself from poverty to the middle-class 'dream', and sent both his children to college, and provided for my wife when she was young and her parents had family problems.
At the last Labor Day party he was alive, he had surgery recently for a brain tumor and was receiving radiation, so the scene was not pretty.
Sitting at a table under a tree, Perry asked me "Bill, what does Labor Day mean for you?". I answered something about end of summer, family, get togethers, back to school type stuff.
Perry dragged on his Lucky Strike, and said, "You know what it means to me? It means when I was walking a picket line with a sign on one shoulder, and an ax handle on the other- because the movie companies hired the Pinkerton Guards after WWII to break the union when we went on strike, and the Pinkertons would come to where we were striking with baseball bats. That's what Labor Day means, and the working guys in this country."
I don't walk a picket line, or belong to a union, but here's a salute to the working guy and American labor.
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