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Jewish World Review Sept. 2, 2005 / 28 Av, 5765 Of labor and leisure By Diana West
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
DUCK, North Carolina — Everybody takes a break, practically. The
concept of the "day off," the week off, the two weeks off (the six
weeks off for heyday Euro-socialists), could well be one of the
astonishing markers of our civilization, if we ever bothered to stop
and be astonished by it. For the great mass of humanity, from the
time of slavery to serfdom — which takes in, what, the first 10,000
years — a day without toil wasn't even a dream, let alone an
expectation... let alone an employee "benefit." A holiday was a holy
day, certainly not a "personal day." From the 19th century, when
Dickens exposed workhouse conditions in "Oliver Twist," to the 20th,
when P.L. Travers revealed in passing that Mary Poppins absolutely
insisted on something like every second Thursday off, the
development of vacation time as a social ideal was incremental. By
now, of course, the arrangements and provisions of "time off" drive
the engine of a mighty, if oxymoronically named, Leisure Industry.
Vacation is practically a universal right; it is certainly an annual
rite. Everybody takes a vacation break, practically.
Which is astonishing. I can't help thinking this, writing from
accommodations at one of countless pressure-treated-wood resorts at
"the beach" — maybe the primary destination for modern-day leisure
fulfillment. This beach happens to be on the Outer Banks of North
Carolina, one of the Barrier Islands that were once known — and not
all that long ago — for their inaccessible isolation. After a Civil
War battle was fought in the region, Northern businessmen returned
to develop the island chain's extensive fishing and hunting
resources. Still, the Barrier Islands remained, figuratively, off
the charts for nearly another century, even after Wilbur and Orville
Wright flew, in 1903, the first airplane over the shifting sand
dunes (now stabilized and grass-covered) at Kill Devil Hills, near
Kitty Hawk. If the Outer Banks were known to the outer world at all,
they were known for the kind of work, the kind of duty, that allowed
no real conception of a vacation break: lighthouse-keeping and
shipwreck rescue.
The handful of men and their families who, from the second half of
the 19th century to the first half of the 20th, labored in
lighthouses to ward off disaster from the edge of this "Graveyard of
the Atlantic" couldn't just turn off their lifesaving beacons and
head for the mainland. Nor could the small crews of the U.S.
Life-Saving Service, who would brave any storm to reach any wreck,
simply dry-dock their launches and knock off. New technologies and
the U.S. Coast Guard would render such vital toil obsolete; but that
old life of service remains hard to forget.
Particularly after a visit to a lighthouse. When the Currituck Beach
Lighthouse, rising 158 feet, opened in 1875, it was the final beacon
in the Barrier Island chain. Until its operation was mechanized in
1939, the lighthouse required a crew comprised from three families.
There is a world of difference between a clockwork routine devised
to save lives at a distance, and a holiday schedule that seeks
diversion up close, but the intervening decades have brought these
family portraits into unexpected juxtaposition. We tourists are
amazed by evidence of the lighthouse families' lives in isolation;
they, surely, would be shocked to find so many of us tromping
through their front yard (not to mention buying made-in-China
lighthouse knickknacks in the gift shop). The lighthouse itself
rises in splendid obsolescence, a reminder of what no longer needs
to be done. But does that mean it's time to relax? From point to
pointlessness; from isolation to congestion; from natural wonder to
developer's paradise; from urgent utility to frenzied leisure. It's
enough to make you want to get back to work.
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JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Diana West |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
