We fully support radiator-shop owner Rick Hollis’ right to protest, and it’s certainly his right to bring to bear whatever pressure he can in his negotiations with the city of Lewiston for the sale of his property.

But Hollis weakened his case by mixing his protest messages last week.

Two large, yellow school buses appeared on Hollis’ property on Main Street Tuesday, welcoming commuters and visitors to “Screwiston” and flying pirate flags.

The radiator man is a sympathetic character in this six-month drama. He was working in his shop last January when a natural gas blast blew out the front of the adjacent Main Street building.

He and an employee escaped, shaken but essentially uninjured, but both of his buildings were destroyed by the blast and ensuing fire.

Since then, the city has been making noises about acquiring the property through eminent domain, all the while negotiating with Hollis to buy the property. With the club of eminent domain over its shoulder, the city is definitely cast as Goliath to Hollis’ David.

In an effort to get a bit more leverage by embarrassing the city, Hollis brought in the buses.

But the real thrust of his protest message were the large “Warning” signs attached to the buses.

“109 year old gas pipes buried below ground in city may crack & explode at any time,” the signs said.

A case can be made that the city’s bargaining power over the sale of the land is coercive, but Hollis is grasping at straws when he blames the city for the blast.

The gas line is owned by Northern Utilities, and a Maine Public Utilities Commission investigation and report issued in June said the pipe had been properly operated and maintained.

A crack in the pipe, the report said, may have resulted from a small earthquake last summer. Or it could have resulted from last winter’s deep freeze. We will never know for sure.

But nobody at any point blamed the city for the pipe’s failure.

Technically, yes, a pipe in the city could explode at any time. But the last one a fire official could remember exploding was 30 years before last January’s blast.

While the risk of dying in a gas-pipe explosion in Lewiston is real, most of us are thousands of times more likely to die in some other way.

Hollis has towed his buses away, but he threatens they will return if the city does not meet his “demands.”

Let’s hope that’s not necessary. But if the big yellow buses do appear, Hollis should leave the gas-blast warnings at home.