Labor Day

Labor Day always brings back memories. When I was school-aged, it marked the end of summer and the return to school. In all of the excitement and the slow process of organization of the new school year, those of us with birthdays in early September were overlooked. I’m certain that those with summer birthdays were also forgotten. Occasionally, my birthday was the first day of school.
That always felt awkward to me.

Another memory is the story that was always told to me around my birthday. Labor Day 1959 was a typically hot day, and my Mom was very pregnant. Mom and Dad packed up the family and went to an A&W drive-in, and during that meal I announced my imminent arrival. Her waters had broke. To complete the story, I was born early the next day into a family of siblings who had promised to leave home if I wasn’t a girl, or wasn’t a boy. They didn’t follow through on that.

Later on, in college, Labor Day meant working on Labor Day in Detroit. The Montreux-Detroit Jazz Festival was in its infancy, and the jazz radio station I worked for started recording and later broadcasting the festival. Hart Plaza was fairly new at that time. Early on, the station rented an RV and converted into a recording control room. Parked next to the dumpsters where the kitchens dumped their waste was unpleasant to say the least. It was a loading dock area, so it was four feet from the level of the main stage to the pavement, and we ‘borrowed’ bread and milk crates to build what passed for stairs. You used the stairs, or you walked way to the end of the loading dock around a concrete barrier and back to the ‘truck’. Those stairs became very slick with spilled oil and the inevitable rain that fell each year in Detroit. Later, the station rented office trailers that were out of the ‘garbage zone’ and had a good view of the crowds of people.

Initially, the broadcasts were local. Equalized phone lines from Hart Plaza to WDET, and then, over the air to WEMU. I remember one year, after sweeping the lines (test tones to be certain that the quality was what was paid for) and finding them unacceptable, we had a conference call with phone technicians at every amplifier and equalizer in the run to WDET and with WDET’s engineer. We did our best to get them right, right up to the seconds before air – literally, we were in the minute before the broadcast before we had to stop and start the program. Another hour or so would have helped, but that was all that could be done. It was Friday morning, and there would be no technicians available until the Tuesday after Labor Day.

As time went on, things became more complex. Two recording control rooms each feeding hundreds to thousands of feet of wire, with intercom and video feeds back to a central broadcast control room that received a sub-mix of the broadcast hosts from yet another location. My responsibility was to make sure everything worked right, and fix it if it didn’t. As Friday before Labor Day wore on, there was always anxiety went the stage lighting was turned on. What new problems would be discovered with buzz and hums from the lighting? Soon, the broadcasts became national broadcasts with an NPR satellite truck brought in. This meant another long set of audio and intercom cables.

These became long days, where I’d take vacation from my day job back in East Lansing, pack up tools and borrowed equipment, and live in Detroit from Thursday to Tuesday. Early in the festival, the days started on-site at eight in the morning, and not leaving the site until midnight. A club sandwich and a glass of wine, or a bottle of beer, a quick shower and collapsing into bed until room service woke us at seven the next morning. There was more free time later on when the to-do list was shorter, and occasionally I’d be asked to record a set or two. Fifteen and sixteen hour workdays did take its toll.

There was one memorable year that I worked live broadcasts from the Michigan Festival, including two or three live musical broadcasts in early August. Back to the regular day job of being a broadcast engineer (all of which was in catch-up mode), and then into the Jazz festival. That was the year it all caught up with me. Too much work, not enough recovery time, and other issues pushed me over the brink. I had to ask a friend to take away my set of keys to the roof of my building because I could no longer feel safe having them. It was when I first understood that I had to take care of myself, to say ‘no’. A lesson that I need to repeat time and again.

So, I well remember the exhaustion, but it is tempered with the knowledge of work well done. Many hours of live broadcasts sent into space and back. Many live tracks on CD’s and vinyl for the jazz musicians. A deeper understanding that beyond sleep and rest, I have to have time to reflect, ponder and be quiet, sometimes by myself, to be able to sustain the me that I am, or else.

This is what comes to mind each year during the Labor Day week. The Michigan Festival is no more, and the live jazz broadcasts ended to 2001 or 2002. I do miss the annual reunions in Detroit with the crew from Aerial, with Jim and Dave. The little espresso machine tucked in by the monitor mix position. Cutting off screws to door (breaking and entering) to get access to where the hosts would broadcast from because the overnight security person took the keys home with him. The year I got a late night call from the satellite uplink engineer that slid off the road in heavy rain and getting a fly-pack uplink flown from DC to Detroit in time for the broadcast. Basically, a year of problems packed into a few days. I miss the people but the long days, not so much.