I don’t know about you. But now that the Fourth of July has come and gone, I’m looking forward to the next big summer event. I’m like a kid waiting for Christmas. I’m marking my calendar and counting the days. Man, oh, man. It won’t be long now.

It’s almost time to drain the canal.

They do it every summer, and every summer I find my way down there. Try stopping me. The draining of the canal is like the opening of a secret vault. You just never know what will be down there in the foul-smelling muck, exposed like some unearthed Mayan ruin.

You’re getting excited, too, aren’t you?

I can tell you this much: When the water is sucked from the canal and all that remains is mud, a few items are sure to be seen. Bicycles and shopping carts will top the list. Every single year, bicycles and shopping carts lay half buried in the slime, like artifacts from long ago. The canal is a Bermuda Triangle for these things.

Boots, too. You can’t drain the canal without unveiling an impressive array of boots. Never a pair, though. Just one boot poking from the ooze all sad and lonely, missing its mate. I’ll bet you’ll see a dozen individual boots when you make your traditional summer jaunt down to the banks of the canal.

Hubcaps, spent hot-water heaters and twisted bird cages seem to feel the tug of the canal magnet as well. Not to mention a TV or two. And a few stop signs.

But forget about that stuff. It’s the unexpected you want to look for. That’s what will wow the kids when you bring them down canal-side for the summer vacation. Show me a small aircraft down there when the water disappears and I’ll be impressed. The hull of a steamship sticking up from the muck would be a nice touch. Something wildly unexplainable – a Ferris wheel or a Zamboni machine – would make my day.

Mostly, though, I’m looking for crime-scene relics. For an entire year once, I waited for the canal to be drained so I could clap eyes on a handgun said to be down there. The gun was one of several used in an early morning killing on Knox Street. Three men were convicted of the crime and at least one confessed to throwing his gun into the canal. But when the water was gone and cops sloshed through the muck, they failed to come up with it. They tossed aside hubcaps and boots, but never found the gun. My guess is that it had disappeared into the layers.

That’s the problem, you know. Things sink down there. I’m no archaeologist. If I were, I’d be writing a column in Egypt called “Sphinx Talk.” But if you could sift through individual layers of mud, you’d find fossils from each era that has come and gone (Oh, look! Ye olde shopping cart!)

Consider this: The first of the Lewiston canals was built in 1809. A mill was constructed nearby but shortly after, someone burned the sucker down. Now, you just know the firebug ran to the new canal and tossed all tools of the crime into the dark water. Empty oil can? Splash! Box of matches? Plip. I’ll bet he threw one of his boots in there just for the hell of it.

There is just something about the canal that leads people to believe it’s the perfect hiding place. Maybe it’s symbolic of the subconscious, a roiling, murky place where secrets can be buried. Maybe it’s as simple as the canal being a heck of a lot closer than the town dump.

Me, I’m just going to wait and see what we’ll find this year. And when canal draining day has come and gone, I’ll wait for the next big thing: sewer cleaning.

Man, oh, man.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.