Labor Day Tradition

As a kid, I always knew that Labor Day meant we were piling into the Plymouth along with the neighbors and heading for the carnival and outdoor supper up at the Glyndon Volunteer fire house. Then, it was back to school the next day. I'd put on my desert boots, khaki pants and plaid sport shirt and head back to the salt mine. Substitute "Rockports" for desert boots and nothing much has changed in the wardrobe.

The past 43 years have meant that I obsessively watched the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon.


I make no apology for admiring Jerry as I do. He has his faults, a titanic ego being chief among them. But he has done so much - raised over 2 'BILLION with a B' dollars for muscular dystrophy and other allied afflictions, such as ALS, the dreaded "Lou Gehrig's disease." You can't take that away from him. And as a performer, he knows few peers in his niche of clowning. Shoot me for thinking it's funny for him to jam a water glass in his mouth and make it appear that he has a glass snout! Put me in jail for convulsing when he hollers "Hey Laaaaaaaaaaaaaa-dy!" File charges against me for re-running the classic scene from "The Nutty Professor" in which the professor drinks the potion that turns him into a monster - who turns out to be an unctuous egomaniacal nightclub performer, based on Jerry's own self-image.

He do get complicated, don't he?

But the showbiz corn-lover in me, the guy who thrilled when Sammy Davis, Jr., sang "What Kind of Fool Am I?", who nodded ruefully when Debbie Reynolds got dumped by Eddie Fisher and then broke her neck to race out and record "Am I That Easy To Forget?" - the same guy who thrills every December at the first "thrum, thrum" of "The Little Drummer Boy" - finds nothing more heartwarming than the end of the MDA Telethon, when Jerry does one last check of the tote board, and as the electronic numbers dance across the LED screen, Jerry straddles a stool, croons "You'll Never Walk Alone" and then walks off. Alone.