As friends enjoyed the holiday with barbecues and hours on the lake, as families returned from the beach, there is a whole world of those who must labor on Labor Day.
Hospital workers waiting in emergency rooms, troopers responding to car crashes, Department of Natural Resources rangers looking for dangerous boating and firefighters standing by for the next call.
For them, Labor Day was just another Monday. There was nothing special about it.
“I’ve never had holidays [off],” said State Patrol Cpl. Johnny Easley, who worked a stretch of I-75 north of downtown Atlanta. “My family is very supportive. They understand my job.”
The first national Labor Day was held 130 years ago as a “tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country,” according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The proposal creating the holiday said there should be parades to show “the strength and esprit de corps” of workers as well as festivals and “amusement for workers and their families.”
Easley didn’t go to any parades or festivals.
It was about an hour before daybreak when Easley got into his patrol car at his home in Fannin County for his regular Monday shift.
A few hours later, Easley pulled off I-75 near the line dividing Cobb and Fulton counties to catch speeding drivers as they came around a curve.
On that stretch of I-75, the speed limit is 55 mph. But Monday morning cars were clocked going as much as 87 mph.
“Not everybody I stop gets a ticket,” Easley said.
But everybody did Monday morning.
The slowest driver the 41-year-old Easley pulled over was going 75 mph.
A white Honda Civic, with a Bartow County plate, was stopped around 10:30 a.m. just south of Mount Paran Road after the laser recorded the driver going 84 mph.
Where were they going in such a hurry, Easley asked? A couple and three teenagers in the back seat were hurrying to a 1:10 p.m. Braves baseball game.
Moments later, a maroon Tahoe, with Tennessee plates, zoomed past at 87 mph.
“This is going to be a good excuse,” said Easley, a father of two.
“No. No. No. No,” Easley said as the driver pulled to the shoulder on the left side of the interstate. “I hate pulling to the median wall. It’s dangerous.”
The driver offered no excuse.
Like Easley, Fulton County Deputy Damen Butler began his day before sunrise Monday, making the 30-mile trip from Lithonia to the jail on Rice Street in northwest Atlanta.
For Butler and two other deputies, the day started by going to each cellblock on the fifth floor of the Fulton jail to literally count heads.
“OK, gentlemen,” Butler barked as he entered the first cellblock about 7:25 a.m. “Let’s go. Get up. Get up. Make sure we get the beds made.”
Disheveled inmates, some with their jumpsuits unsnapped, came out, groggy, their ears filled with Butler’s commands and the sounds of toilets flushing and rubber shower shoes flip-flopping on the concrete floor.
“It’s just another day,” the 34-year-old Butler said.
Yet his wife and two children went to a barbecue while Butler spent some of the day questioning sullen inmates about their gang affiliations and the meaning of their tattoos.
“Lots of times, they think they are smarter than us,” Butler said after inmate Jason Ware refused to explain the “74” tattoo in the curve between his right thumb and index finger.
"You're not going to tell me what 74 is?" Butler said to Ware. "Well I know what 74 is."
The “7” represents the letter “G” and the “4” is for “D;” Gangsta Disciples, Butler said.
“I’ve been doing it so long, I couldn’t tell you when I didn’t work [on a holiday],” Butler said as he moved on to routine paperwork.
The last time he had Christmas Day off, Butler said, was in 2004.
That’s the only holiday off that he can remember.
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