Beer sales on Labor Day will top those of Superbowl Sunday.

That’s according to the Beer Institute, which keeps track of such things.

The fact seemed odd at first. Labor Day was intended as a time to honor laborers and spend time with family.

The first Labor Day was in 1882 in New York, organized by the unions. The idea grew and states began recognizing it as a holiday. In 1894, Congress officially made the first Monday in September a legal holiday.

Throwing back a few brews over the backyard grill was always part of the fall tradition, but bigger than the Superbowl?

Maybe it’s workers’ attempts to block out the memory of what they do for a living. A long weekend of contemplating that you spend half your waking life in a cubicle may inevitably lead to the beer cooler.

When you’re a teen, Labor Day is a happier event, marking the end of a summer job.

My happiest Labor Day was following my late ’70s’ summer job at Carney Insulation, an old plant that was located out on Third Avenue in Mankato.

If you’ve ever put in rolls of fiberglass insulation, you’ve experienced the itching. Now imagine a sweltering room full of floating, hot pieces of fiberglass strands and dust. That was Carney.

The new workers got stationed in front of a long, narrow oven where fiberglass was melted, pulled into strands and formed into rolls. Every couple of minutes the doors would fly open and a blast of red hot fiberglass dust would hit your body.

My job was to dig out molten balls of fiberglass that hadn’t stranded properly and then use a big bear-hug to grab the hot batts and stack them in a pile.

At least it paid better than weeding soybean fields, the job any kid growing up on a farm had to do.

They called it “walking beans.”

Walking beans — a brilliant euphemism.

“Hey kids, we’re going to walk beans next week!”