Today is not the “Day of the Workers in the Oil, Gas, Power, and Geological Industry” — a national holiday in Turkmenistan. It’s celebrated on the second Saturday in September, so you’ve still got time to stock up for your party.
Turkmenistan is a bit unique in having various “professional holidays” — there’s one for people who make (and, I guess, install) carpets (the last Sunday in May) and one for “workers of culture and arts” (June 27). Border Guards Day is August 11, and September 30 is the “Day of the Worker in the Organs of National Security.” They also celebrate the wheat harvest on the third Sunday in July, and the second Sunday in August is Turkmen Melon Day, in honor of a kind of native melon that’s said to be particularly tasty.
Holidays in Turkmenistan are actually listed in their constitution, which took effect in 1992. And, yes, it includes Constitution Day (May 18). The Turkmenistan Constitution includes an amendment method, which has been used three times so far, but nobody has had the temerity to mess with the list of holidays. That’s even though they left out some professions for some reason. There’s no sanitation workers’ day, even though anyone who visits Ashbagat (the capital and largest city) notices that it’s exceptionally clean. It’s also quite new (most of the city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1948) and mostly built of white marble.
In some ways, Ashbagat resembles a fictional city more than a real one. It looks like the kind of zero-litter, planned environment you’d see in something like “Star Trek” — which, by the way, first aired on September 8, 1966. In the first episode, the USS Enterprise has traveled to “Planet M-113.” That’s way farther than the Van Buren sisters had gone when they pulled into Los Angeles on September 8, 1916. They’d just crossed the US on motorcycles in an effort to prove that women could become military dispatch riders in World War I. They weren’t the first women to cross the continent on motorcycles — but they were the second and third.
It wasn’t easy to cross the US with any road vehicle in 1916, and it was even more difficult for women. The Van Burens were arrested several times along the way. Not for speeding — they were arrested for wearing men’s clothes.
Most people used the train to cross the country in 1916. There were several routes, including the most northerly line, which was part of the Northern Pacific Railway. The route had been an option ever since September 8, 1883, when Ulysses S. Grant (at that point a “former” US President) drove in the ceremonial final spike in Montana.
Big railroad projects in those days usually finished up with a special “golden spike” ceremony (the spikes weren’t really gold; they were just painted). But after a certain point, all the major routes were finished and there wasn’t any more romance involved in building railroad tracks. That point was much earlier than September 8, 1930, which must be the reason that even though Scotch Tape was introduced that day, there has never been a ceremony featuring a new railroad track being taped together.
In fact you’d be hard-pressed to find any kind of recent ceremony associated with railroads. They’re just taken for granted nowadays. Which is probably why the Turkmenistan Constitution doesn’t include a Railroad Workers holiday. Even though it probably should — after all, even the Van Buren sisters could be feted there — March 8th is Woman’s Day in Turkmenistan.
