My friends, I’m afraid the city of Lewiston is about to change dramatically. Once sad and sagging buildings will become gleaming and majestic. Cracked and crooked streets will suddenly be straight and paved with gold.
Odder still will be the inhabitants of our mysterious city. No more late-night howls from downtown parks. No more random acts of lunacy. Peculiar people who do zany things at strange hours will change their ways forever.

The denizens here will walk clean downtown streets smiling at one another. They will tip their hats in afternoon greetings. They will leave their doors unlocked at night and invite strangers in for dinner.

Lewiston will become like rural Mayberry, where everyone knows everyone and we all care about our neighbors.

I tell you, I rue the day the big No. 13 comes down from the sign that marks entry into the city. As long as I can remember, rolling off turnpike Exit 13 signified arrival to a place that was ominous and fraught with possibilities.

“Beware Exit 13,” a low, rolling voice should have announced just before the turnpike ramp. “Here lies a city where anything can happen.”

I have always found it profoundly appropriate that the most bewildering, arcane city in the state is marked by the most feared and dreaded of numerals – so loathed by some that there is a psychological term for the fear of it: triskaidekaphobia.

Police and city leaders will tell you that for decades, the city has been unfairly stigmatized by misconceptions. Some call it the armpit of the state. Others describe it as a modern-day Gomorra, where fiends lurk and sin of all kinds is rampant.

Much of it is bunk, of course. The stigma was born of some real history mingled with more than a little misinformation. Some bad reputations just won’t go away. Attach to it a number considered evil by some and it only lends to the malignant mystique.

But you’ve got to admit that there is something about Lewiston that earns it the right to be the 13th stop along the highway.

The other day I spied a young guy strutting down Park Street. The strut signified that he was cool but that he also had attitude. So much attitude, in fact, that when he found a trash bag in front of him on the sidewalk, he picked it up and hurled it into the street. A few items sloshed out of the bag and came to rest in the center of the roadway.

The young guy sneered at it and then strutted away. But after a few steps, he stopped and turned around. He somewhat pranced to the mess he had created in the middle of the street and gingerly picked up the garbage bag. He returned it to the side of the road, looked concerned for a moment and then started strutting again.

I found this so amusing that I laughed all the way to the hot dog stand. It was such a Lewiston thing to do, this wanton, unprovoked vandalism – directly across from the police station – followed by a pang of guilt and an act of contrition.

People won’t act like that once the 13 comes down. Oh, no. No one will act irrational in a place with such a boring designation as Exit 80. Trash will be placed neatly in clean garbage pails and then whisked away by crews who whistle while they work.

Call me strange and morbid (like you haven’t already, you wacky letter writers), but I wouldn’t want to live in a place like that. I like people who succumb to occasional fits of bizarre behavior. I live for nights when the entire city seems to suffer from collective befuddlement.

Perhaps we have city leaders with exactly 13 numbers in their names. But, no. The city administrator has only 11, the police chief comes close with 12 but the mayor himself can only muster 10.

So, that’s it. It’s over. The ominous, numerical heritage of the city I love is history. Don’t worry about me, though. I’ll find work. I’m thinking of moving to Salem, Mass. You know? I think they have a witch as their city symbol.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. Grousing aside, unless he wants to add his middle initial to his byline, his name falls short of 13 letters by one.