Summer is officially over. Our neighborhood is now an emptying parking lot as the City of Marlborough begins to recover from the Annual Labour Day Parade.

Gabrieli for Polluter!

All of the usual floats and groups were there — in fact, the order is almost predictable now.

Machine gun fire is echoing from one of the floats. It seems that the parade is less a celebration of the working man, and more a celebration of the military culture of the United States. I know that the average military man is a working man, but does the air of my community have to ring with the constant rage of machine gun staccato to remind me of the glory of the military?

The one memory I will take from this year? The several thousand balloons released by parade spectators bearing the words “Gabrieli for Governor”. I think the Gabrieli campaign should have thought a little harder about this. Now there are flocks of latex animal killers floating through the MetroWest skies.

Yay team.