Those long, yellow school buses evoke pleasant memories, don’t they?

Not the ones that were parked on Main Street this week. Those are mean machines. They look just like the rigs that carried you off to school, but there the similarities end. These are buses of protest. These are buses of rage. Yellow exclamation points parked end to end in a dusty lot at the side of the road.

That Rick Hollis knows how to make a statement, doesn’t he? He took symbols of innocent youth and arranged them to shout his frustration. Red warning signs against the soothing yellow. Skulls and crossbones flapping in the wind.

You know the story. Hollis parked the buses on his former Lewiston Radiator Works property in downtown Lewiston. He did so because he feels the city cheated him through shady negotiations for his land. He showed them, all right. Those menacing buses loomed in the much-touted gateway to the city.

You have to hand it to the guy. That’s the way to express dissatisfaction. You don’t sit around and mope about things. You don’t whine and complain to anyone who will listen. You take what you have at your disposal and find a way to make a statement.

As children, we stomped our feet, threw crayons and refused to finish our potatoes when we felt we were being wronged. As teens, we smashed windows, broke bottles or scrawled filthy words on brick walls.

And as adults, most people are still not very adept at creatively turning anger into action. I know this because I talk to a lot of angry people on the newsroom telephone. Many of them feel the newspaper is a perfect place to lodge their complaints. Unable to express unhappiness on their own, they call screeching to demand satisfaction.

Unfortunately, reporters are not hired guns. We relay the news but as a rule, do not become involved in it. We will listen to an irate caller, but that does not always mean a story is forthcoming. News is something our readers will need or want to know. That does not always include the knuckle-biting frustrations of every Joe with a gripe.

A man called us over the course of several nights recently and insisted we put a story in the paper. He was angry because he felt he had been treated inappropriately by the police who had arrested him.

So far, so good. We do report on complaints about the police from time to time, mostly through court cases. A fellow sues the cops over alleged abuse, we’re there with a story.

Unfortunately, the man on the telephone wanted to skip a few steps. He had not made official complaints about the incident or taken steps to hire a lawyer. Apparently, he thought a news story would move that part of the process along. He wanted to air his complaints in the press instead of a courtroom. And he wanted it right now.

“I told you people the other night that I want something in the paper. You need to make this happen. I want to see something tomorrow.”

Two problems here. First, we don’t get bullied into writing a story if there is no news. Second, the caller does not get to dictate when and how a story is written. This guy was blowing his stack in the wrong direction. He was sitting on his hands and hoping someone else would do the heavy lifting. I hear out my share of stack-blowers. I’m always willing to listen to an interesting story even at full volume. People call to vent about their child-support payments. They call to yell about their loud neighbors. They call to tell me about their ex-husband’s new girlfriend who just may be smoking pot and beating her dog.

“Put that in your Sun and Journal,” these people say, so incensed that they’ve hearkened back to a time decades ago when we had a daily and an evening paper.

It’s anger and it’s understandable. But more often than not, it’s not news. And that’s why I was impressed when Hollis took it upon himself to make his statement. Who needs the stinking press when you can spray-paint a couple of buses and park them in the busiest parts of the city?

I have no idea whether Hollis is justified in his complaints, but I admire his style. He went about his protest quietly and yet the result was loud. No need to place frantic phone calls to late-beat reporters. The press came to him.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.

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