Are you ready for the big parade?

Parade organizers say it’s coming together like clockwork, and the Tercentennial Edition of Newtown’s Famous Labor Day Parade will step off from the staging areas up by Currituck Road at 10 am.

I know three Newtown kids who will be ready. Shannon, Jennifer, and Megan McDonald will have a lemonade stand in front of their home at 7 Main Street for the duration of the parade — or for as long as the lemonade supply lasts. The three will donate the proceeds from their enterprise to the American Brain Tumor Association in honor of their uncle, Kelly Ketchum, who died of brain cancer in 2003 at the age of 39. In addition to Uncle Kelly’s Lemonade, brain cancer awareness bracelets will be available. Be sure to stop by the stand sometime during the parade.

For Newtown kids and their parents Tuesday may have been the first day of school, but Monday was the last day of summer! So where did everyone go on Monday morning after elementary school orientations to celebrate their last morning of freedom? To the local eateries and coffee shops, of course.

By 10:30 am, all the tables at Starbucks were filled, and Dunkin’ Donuts was abuzz with schoolchildren, parents, younger siblings, and babies in strollers. Instead of the usual quiet line of adults waiting stoically for their midmorning cup of java, the scene was organized chaos. “Is there a potty in here?” “I want extra sprinkles!” “We need more napkins, please,” “Mom, tell Jackie to stop cutting in front,”  “Please close that refrigerator door,” “No you can’t eat that. It’s been on the floor.” I could add, Just leave it there for the black cat who will be coming by later to clean up.

Just when last year’s phone book was starting to feel nicely dog-eared and comfortable, we’ve got to replace it with the new 2005-06 editions delivered to our front yards last week by SBC. The telephone company has provided every homeowner with three weighty newsprint tomes including Northern Fairfield County White Pages and Yellow Pages, and Yellow Pages for all of Fairfield County. All those now-out-of-date telephone books can be recycled.  Simply bundle and haul them to the SNET/SBC building at 9 Queen Street (opposite the Big Y parking lot) where two blue recycling barrels have been set out for the purpose.

I think Lexington Gardens may have hired “gangsta” honeybees to guard the parking area on Church Hill Road from scofflaw parkers. The bushes that frame the parking lot were crawling with the winged warriors this week, making access between Lexington’s parking lot and other businesses a lesson in futility.

I caught a glimpse of the General Lee last week down at Amaral Motors. The car, that is, not the Confederate general. Newtown resident John Farley was having a little work done on his 1969 Dodge Charger, and the car is one of the few surviving General Lee cars from the television series Dukes of Hazzard. Mr Farley enjoys driving it around town and takes it to local car shows.

Members of the Newtown Woman’s Club will be selling $1 chances in front of Dunkin Donuts from 9 am to noon on Saturday and during the Labor Day Parade for several prizes including a quilt festooned with the town’s trademark roosters. The quilt was donated by Woman’s Club member Marion Thompson who won it in a raffle held by the Newtown Junior Woman’s Club during the nation’s bicentennial in 1976, when she —and many of the other Women’s Club members — were members of the younger group. What could be more fitting than a bicentennial rooster quilt for Newtown’s tercentennial?

Work is finally getting started on some of the streetscape improvements in Sandy Hook Center. After Labor Day, work crews will start upgrading the sidewalks and curbing, planting trees, installing decorative lighting, and adding crosswalks. The project, which has been in the planning stages for four years, should be done in time for the Sandy Hook Christmas tree lighting. The place is hardly going to recognize itself when all this prettying up is over and done with.  The long saga of Sandy Hook is turning into a real Cinderella story.

Well, I’ve got to finish this up before I turn into a pumpkin, but I’ll be back next week with all the post-Labor Day news, so be sure to…

Read me again.