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The Mountain Home Observer will not publish a Monday edition in observance of Labor Day. Regular publication resumes Tuesday, Sept. 8.
City, county, state and federal offices will be closed Monday, along with banks, post offices and the Baxter County Library. Most stores and restaurants will keep holiday hours.
The holiday is older than the state of Arkansas’ current constitution. The first Labor Day was a parade and picnic in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, organized by the Central Labor Union, at a time when many Americans worked 12-hour days, six or seven days a week. Historians still argue over whether the idea came from Peter J. McGuire, a carpenters’ union leader, or Matthew Maguire, a machinist from Paterson, New Jersey.
Oregon became the first state to make it a legal holiday in 1887, and about 30 states followed. Congress did not act until 1894, when President Grover Cleveland signed the bill making the first Monday in September a federal holiday. He did so on June 28, six days after federal troops were sent to Chicago to break the Pullman railroad strike, in which more than a dozen workers were killed.
The September date stuck in part because it kept the American holiday separate from May 1, which labor movements elsewhere had already claimed. Over time the union parades faded, and the weekend became what it is now: the unofficial end of summer, the last long weekend on the lake and, in most of the country, the first full weekend of high school football.
Here, the weekend starts Friday with the closing run of Twin Lakes Playhouse’s “Murder on the Orient Express.” The Agatha Christie adaptation, directed by Joanne Helms with Mike Horberg as Hercule Poirot, has its final performances at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee. Tickets are at tlpmh.org or by calling the box office at 870-424-0444.
Also Friday, Mountain Home Moose Lodge No. 1953 holds its monthly fried fish and shrimp dinner from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the lodge, 4754 Highway 5 South.
The Bombers travel to Harrison Friday night for a 7 p.m. kickoff against the Goblins, one of the oldest rivalries in Arkansas high school football. It is Mountain Home’s second game of the season and its last before an open week.
Sunday brings the annual Bull Shoals Lake Boat Poker Run, which runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. out of the Bull Shoals Lake Boat Dock. Boaters collect a card at each stop around the lake and the best hand wins. Proceeds support the community fireworks show over Bull Shoals Dam each Fourth of July.
The holiday itself belongs to the 9/11 memorial. Mountain Home’s ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is at 4 p.m. Monday at Veterans Plaza, four days ahead of the anniversary and open to the public.
The guest speaker is John Ceriello, a retired captain of FDNY Rescue 1 who responded to the World Trade Center that morning. Mountain Home firefighter Tommy Feliccia, who organizes the city’s 9/11 events, said Ceriello flies back to New York the morning of Sept. 9 to be there for the anniversary itself.
The ceremony takes place at the memorial Feliccia designed, which holds a 50-pound piece of steel from the Twin Towers suspended between two concrete pillars. After the ceremony, around 6 p.m., a sponsored meal at the community center honors all Baxter County fire, police, EMS and dispatch personnel and their families.
Ceriello stays in town Tuesday to teach a free eight-hour class on evidence-based fire operations at the Sheid on the ASUMH campus, hosted by IAFF Local 4496, with firefighters coming from as far as Springdale, Jonesboro and Little Rock. The city’s annual memorial stair climb follows at 8:46 a.m. Friday, Sept. 11, at Bomber Stadium.
For those heading to the water, the Army Corps of Engineers and Arkansas Game and Fish Commission typically see Labor Day weekend as one of the year’s heaviest for boat traffic on Bull Shoals and Norfork lakes. Life jackets are required for children 12 and under on any moving boat, and boating under the influence carries the same penalties as driving drunk.
The following Saturday, Sept. 12, brings the second annual Run for Tomorrow 5K at ASUMH, which raised more than $15,000 for suicide prevention in Baxter County in its first year. Registration is open at runsignup.com through Sept. 11. Dennis Gillan, founder of the Half a Sorrow Foundation, who lost two brothers to suicide and speaks nationally on prevention, is scheduled to speak that evening at the Sheid.
