Astronomical twilight passed a few minutes ago. The sky is that dark shade of twilight where you cannot see clearly the outlines of such things as the bluffs or the Sandhills, and colour has yet to penetrate the gloom.
Labor Day in an agricultural town is much like any other day.
More below the orange barbed wire.
Since the town has only 128 people, I wear multiple hats in the village government. One of those is chair of the Flag Committee. As such, I am charged with the care and maintenance of the village's flagstaffs and flags, and proper display.
Generally we do not fly the state flag except on the one state holiday (Arbor Day) or Federal holidays, or when the flag is ordered to be half-masted either by the President or the state governor. So on a Federal holiday like today, I go out just before dawn and raise the state flag on the staffs.
The reason we don't normally fly the state flag is that flags are somewhat expensive and the endless forty mile per hour winds on the High Plains tear them up rather quickly. I can get marine-grade national flags (called a storm flag), but not state flags.
In an agricultural area, Labor Day is like any other. If the harvest is due (and it is), and you have good weather, you harvest. If the cattle need tending, you tend. Corn and cattle do not understand Federal holidays.
So I walked over to the park to raise the state flag to the mast. As I was doing so, one of the local farmers was driving past on a tractor. (Farm equipment regularly drives through town on the village streets: I once lost my Smart parked on a street in Bridgeport when a combine and a giant tractor parallel parked in front and back of it. I couldn't see it.)
The farmer stopped his tractor, as I was raising the national and state flags. He then tipped his cowboy hat at me and started along out of town.
Thence off to the village hall and public library. The flagstaff there is from when the building was the former high school: we no longer use that flagstaff except on holidays. (Labor Day in the flag code is one of those days when government is directed to display the flag on all buildings and government grounds.)
I went into the village hall (as I have the keys to the city, so to speak, as a village trustee), and retrieved the national and state flags. When I came out of the building there was a person walking up the sidewalk about a block away.
I went to the flagstaff and affixed the flags to the halyard. The pedestrian stopped, and placed hand over heart as I raised the flags to the masthead.
For most around here, Labor Day will be a workday, but not because of any despite of workers. Ranchers and farmers here will allow off work today every bit of their ranch and farmhands that they can. The general store here is closed, as is the Post Office and the guns and ammo shop. The stores in Bridgeport are closed today. I suspect the closest open store is Wal*Mart in Sidney (over sixty miles away).
The Scottsbluff Star-Herald is not printed on Mondays, so the delivery woman and her son (my back-door neighbours) will not be by to deliver the paper — they too have the day off.
We can go to the beach: we have four hundred miles of Sandhills here to play in, though it is awfully cold outside this morning (46F / 8C ).
For the rest of you folk, whether you have the holiday off or not, have a safe and wonderful Labor Day.