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Labor Day Weekend is always Newtown’s busiest holiday. This year it was also the biggest sports weekend of the year with a road race, tennis tournament and Pop Warner Football Jamboree taking place. But of course, the highlight of the weekend always comes at the end with the annual Labor Day Parade.

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Though town officials and local townspeople agree that Dickinson Town Park is a terrible place to have the annual fireworks display, nobody seems to be able to find a better spot. But the main concern of the people who came to the meeting, most of whom live in the area, was the fact that because the display is at the town park, many people sit on the Newtown Country Club hill. And instead of being content with the town’s display, some people come equipped with their own supply of fireworks.

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A persistent problem, caused by people dumping garbage outside the locked gate at the town landfill on holiday weekends, has prompted First Selectman Jack Rosenthal to decide that from now on, the town will post police officers at the gate on holidays. Last year, the Friday after Thanksgiving, people left a huge pile of garbage — 50 feet long and nine feet high.

 

September 9, 1960

A piece of valued equipment in the town highway department is the new sweeper truck, an item not contained under the budget’s capital expenditures. The truck’s equipment was made by the town crew starting with a basic old plow frame, welding by R.S. Watkins & Sons, Inc, and considerable ingenuity. Designed to sweep the shoulders of a road before oiling, the sweeper was built at a cost of about $400, which is roughly equivalent to four days of sweeping by an outside contractor.

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With the opening of all Newtown schools on Wednesday morning, summer vacation came to an end for its students, members of the faculties, and the administrations. Total enrollment of all the town’s public schools this year stands at 1,645, compared to 1,555 last year.

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Two large windows at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Sandy Hook were smashed some time early last week end. Leo E. Garrepy, school principal, reports that in addition to smashing in the two windows at the school entrance, vandals drove their car back and forth over the island in the school parking lot, completely ruining two small trees which Mrs Hamilton’s first grade had carefully planted there in past years.

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NEWTOWN, CURRITUCK ROAD: Excellent Location, Street Lights, Town Water, Walk to Everything. 4 Bedroom Colonial, 2 baths, 2 zone hot water heat, large kitchen, dining room, 23 ft living room, fireplace, laundry, large garage, California Redwood siding, select oak floors. Low price, direct from builder, $24,950.

September 6, 1935

Sunday afternoon, September 8, at 4 pm, in Trinity church, there will be heard a service which will be of interest to the whole community. It will be a special festival service in celebration of the two hundred and third anniversary of the founding of Trinity church by the Rev John Beach. It is fitting that the whole community be extended a cordial invitation to join with the members of the parish in this special memorial service.

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In a grand band concert with about 50 pieces, next Thursday evening, September 12 (weather permitting), the combined American Legion Band of Shelton and Basket Hill Men’s League Band of Waterbury will render a program in front of the Edmond Town Hall, at 8 pm. Daniel W. Hatfield of Sandy Hook will conduct the entire concert. It is hoped that a large attendance will indulge in the opportunity to hear this last concert of the season.

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Several artists of the Southern Connecticut Broadcasting Company, connected with Station WICC, Bridgeport, came to Newtown last Tuesday evening to entertain the inmates of the Fairfield State hospital, in the institution auditorium. A floor show was given lasting about an hour and a half, which included singing, tap, clog and soft-shoe dancing, and a comic dance act. The audience seemed to enjoy the show, applauding loudly the difficult steps in the dancing.

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The schools in Newtown opened on Wednesday following the summer vacation. Attendance at the Hawley school was 293. This gives an enrollment of 126 in the upper four grades of the high school. Principal Carl Le Grow expects for the year a total attendance of nearly 300 pupils.

 

September 9, 1910

If you want to get any peaches for canning, this will be the last week you can obtain them at Newton Curtis’ orchard. He is about winding up the harvest of the largest and juiciest crop of peaches raised in Fairfield County.

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Newtown citizens were startled Wednesday morning, by the intelligence that a tragedy had taken place during the night, Michael C. Hourigan having been struck by an automobile and killed, shortly before the midnight hour. He proposed to James Sheehan that they should journey to Sandy Hook for a social call. They visited one or two places and started for home. An automobile hove in sight. No horns were blown and the machine was moving at a rapid speed. Sheehan heard a groan and turning about said, “Come on, Mike.” Receiving no answer he began to feel about in the dark and located his companion in an unconscious condition. He started for Newtown and returned with a brother-in-law of Mr Hourigan, who returned with Sheehan to the residence of Dr Kiernan. The driver of the car did not stop, but turned on the gas and made good his escape, like an assassin in the night. Later: A man giving the name of Cyrus R. Patscheke of New York called a the chief of police in Waterbury early Wednesday morning and said he had struck a man in Newtown with his car about midnight.

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The Good Roads Association held a very interesting meeting at the Gray’s Plain schoolhouse and heard with pleasure the report of the committee appointed to consult with the selectmen relative to repairing the road from Botsford station to the schoolhouse.

 

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John H. Frank, Jr, of Huntingtown, has a fine crop of potatoes, which he is now harvesting. He dug one which weighed a little over three pounds and has many in the field which weigh one and one-half and one and one-fourth pounds.