Summer in Newtown is a season of distraction. Loose ends that would be tied up quickly any other time of year tend to be left straggling: phone messages go unreturned, dishes are left a little too long in the sink, routines are bent, curfews are broken, and youth sleeps in while not-getting-any-younger struggles to make it to work on time. So now as summer slips away, we have to pull it all together, tie up those loose ends and show a little backbone, enthusiasm, and discipline for work, for school, and for the impending dark side of the year. Most communities accomplish this in a kind of uncoordinated shuffle that takes a few weeks to accomplish. Newtown, on the other hand, has the Labor Day Parade.

The parade reminds us each year of just how much Newtown does pull together. This year 118 marching units have secured positions in the parade’s five divisions. Not everyone “marches.” Scores will square dance, skateboard, karate chop, or jump-rope their way through the center of town. Many more will chose a less energetic means of conveyance, including homemade floats, flivvers, fez-jostling tiny cars, antique tractors, fire trucks, and, of course, on-the-hoof horsepower.

However, most people walk with varying degrees of left-right coordination but with universal conviction that — at least for this one day — the entire town is headed in the same direction. Even though that direction happens to be the better part of a circle, the important thing is that we are all together as a community, with half of us marching and half of us cheering on the procession. To the outsider, this may look like one big distraction, but to Newtowners it is a great tying up of summer’s loose ends.

With a snap of snare drums and a blare of horns, courtesy of the Newtown High School Band, the 49th Annual Newtown Labor Day Parade steps off at 10 am, Monday, September 6, at the head of Main Street. Be there.