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In Hard Times, Weekend Still Is Labor Of Love

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By STEVE OTTO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 31, 2008

The mind plays tricks on you now and then, but in my memories the Labor Day weekend used to have a different feeling.

Maybe it was just the times themselves. In my mind, the Labor Day weekend was that unspoken change in the calendar marking the end of the not-so-endless summer and the beginning of everything else.

It was that last weekend at one of those little cottages on Indian Rocks Beach. It was the beginning of school and football and the coming holidays. You knew that autumn was around the corner.

It seems like it used to be cooler on Labor Day weekends, but when I went back and checked the records I was wrong. Maybe it was those years we spent up North, where it was time to drag out the sweaters. And maybe it's because in recent years, the end of August and beginning of September have not been the best of times.

Money, Morale Going Down

Now we know that summer still has at least two more steamy months. Now instead of watching temperatures go down, we worry about our savings plunging. Instead of watching the thermometer, my wife tells me every day how much more money we've lost in our 401(k) plan.

We go to restaurants and listen to owners talk about smaller crowds. We see stores where we've shopped for years now empty. Instead of pay raises and more perks, the conversation around offices is about buyouts, layoffs and tighter budgets.

I received an e-mail the other day from my old friend, Joe Voskerchian. He was reminding me that it was 16 years ago this weekend that we found ourselves standing outside a shattered schoolhouse near Homestead in the sultry misery following the savage destruction from Hurricane Andrew. Voskerchian is executive director for the Gold Shield Foundation started by George Steinbrenner that offers support and scholarships to family members of police officers killed in action. He was down there helping to coordinate efforts between the Bank of America he represented and Army mobile support units.

It almost seems that ever since that storm rolled across Florida pretty much paralleling the Tamiami Trail, our Labor Days have been filled with storms circling the state. It is no different today.

The Last Picture Show?

Part of my melancholy this holiday weekend is probably tough times and that built-in fear of change you have when you've possibly seen too much change.

An old reader friend called me last week to tell me the Britton Theater was about to close. In some ways, it had closed long ago. The massive movie palace that had opened at the South Tampa plaza back in the 1960s has long since been subdivided into those cracker box theaters and grown tired. He told me that someone down at the theater had come up with a copy of "The Last Picture Show" and was going to run it as the final showing. You get the feeling sometimes we're all living in the last picture show.

The truth is, I don't. Maybe that comes from having three sons. Maybe it's the opportunity in my job to see some of the good going on around here and listen to the plans and dreams of others.

I'm not going to the beach this Labor Day weekend. Those little cottages are long gone and I don't want to waste the gas. But we'll fire up the grill, be with family, and look forward to a better day and maybe even a winning season for the Bulls.

Keyword, Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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