Happy Day After Labor Day

Today is my favorite holiday of the year.

This is a holiday that you will find on no official calendar, but it’s one all seasonal theme park caricaturists adore. Read that last link if you don’t understand… you need to spend at least one entire summer sweating out on the midway drawing endless lines of snot nosed kids, vain teenagers, drunk couples and surly art critics in order to get it fully. As a theme park concession owner, that goes double for me. Yesterday I was ultimately responsible for 12 art concession locations in three states with a combined work force of about 60 artists. Today… Nada. Nothing. Zero. well… one guy drawing at Union Station in St. Louis, but that barely counts.

Okay, it doesn’t mean as much to me these days as I have not drawn 5-6 days a week all summer in the theme parks for a long time now… but there is still a great feeling of relief from responsibility on this day. Back when I did to the full time drawing thing, I would go out to Valleyfair, the theme park I drew at all summer, on the day after Labor Day. I’d go to the chair I always drew in and sit there with a book for an hour or two. The eerie quiet… with no rumble of roller coasters, no screaming kids, no endless stupid questions, no recycling soundtracks and no smells of fermenting soda in the trash cans was always indescribably healing.

These days I don’t need that quiet time, but I try to enjoy the day nonetheless.