近距离内射合集

Labor Day means something more than a three-day weekend, the unofficial end of summer and one last chance to fire up the grill.

It鈥檚 set aside to honor people for something most of us spend a huge portion of our lives doing: working.

When I think about Labor Day, I especially think about the people who do the jobs most of us wouldn't want to do.

We have plenty of them in New Mexico.

They climb into trucks before daylight and haul freight across long, lonely stretches of highway. They work construction sites under an unforgiving New Mexico sun. They work the oil fields of southeastern New Mexico and in mines where the work can be dirty, exhausting and dangerous. They work farms and ranches, repair our roads, collect our trash and keep the electricity flowing.

Police officers, firefighters and emergency medical workers never know what will be waiting when the call comes. Nurses and nursing assistants spend long shifts caring for people on some of the worst days of their lives.

I would be remiss if I forgot teachers. They educate children with grace, dignity and professionalism while also dealing with a whole different class of knuckleheads outside the classroom.

Some of these jobs are more dangerous than we realize.

Thirty-two New Mexicans died from workplace injuries in 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Eleven were heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers.

I have a soft spot for those drivers. I have a commercial driver鈥檚 license myself, having driven a school bus part time, and I know there is more to that job than simply getting behind the wheel. It takes patience, concentration and a willingness to spend long hours away from home, with the responsibility of getting a heavy load safely from one place to another.

Others died working in construction, agriculture, mining and the oil and gas industry.

Behind every statistic was somebody who got up that morning and went to work.

I think that's why Labor Day has always resonated with me.

I come from a family of people in Tennessee who worked hard, often under difficult conditions, because that was what it took to build a better life.

Like many families from the Volunteer State, members of my family headed north to Detroit when decent-paying jobs were extraordinarily difficult to find back home. Two uncles left our little hometown and retired from auto industry jobs. Others followed the same path, trading home and familiarity for factory floors and a paycheck that could support a family.

My father went even farther.

Just before I was born, he left Tennessee for California and worked in the missile industry during the Cold War. He didn't go west seeking adventure or a beach view. He went because that was where he could earn a livable wage to raise his family and to helps his mom and dad.

The women in my family knew hard work, too.

My mother spent five years working in a boot factory in my hometown of Cookeville, Tennessee. My grandmother made shirts in a sweltering factory in nearby Sparta.

None of these people became famous. Nobody wrote stories about them or put their names on buildings.

They worked.

And I grew up respecting them for it.

My father was a farmer during my teen years. I woke up every morning at 5 a.m. to milk cows, raise tobacco, pick strawberries or haul hay. (I鈥檒l write more about my strawberry picking in a future column.)

There was nothing glamorous about it. The mornings came early. The work had to be done whether I felt like doing it or not. The cows weren't interested in excuses, and neither was the hay.

I learned something from those mornings before sunrise: There is dignity in getting up, showing up when you're supposed to and doing your job well 鈥� particularly when the job is difficult.

Maybe that's why, after all these years, I still like to work just about every day.

My workplace isn't a factory, a farm or a bus. It's a newsroom here at the Journal. Compared with the work my parents and grandparents did, I know how fortunate I am.

But their lesson applies just the same.

You show up. You do the work. And you try to do it well.

So on Labor Day, I'll think about my family and the thousands of New Mexicans doing the same thing today 鈥� driving trucks, caring for patients, responding to emergencies, tending livestock, working construction and doing countless other jobs we too often take for granted.

Then Tuesday morning will come.

They'll get up and go back to work.

So will I.

And I'll be thinking about the people who taught me that work isn't just something you do to make a living.

It is, in its own quiet way, one of the ways we build a life.

James Bennett is managing editor of the Journal. Reach him at jbennett@abqjournal.com.