Man, oh man. It’s time to break out the old mailbag and have a look. I like sharing my mail with readers. Letters of woe from prisoners. Letters of rage from their victims. Hate mail, love mail and everything in between.

I got nothing. A big bowl I keep on my desk to hold those reams of mail sits empty as a Saturday-morning keg. What mail I keep around here is yellowed and curled at the edges. I think those letters were written with quill pens, it was so long ago.

It’s funny how people come and go in this business. For a time, I had a dozen pen pals in the prison system. I could count on two or three letters a week and most of them were riveting. Horrible tales about beatings and suicides. Claims of corruption within the system and atrocities at lights out.

Some prisoners wrote to proclaim their innocence. Some wrote to brag about their crimes. Some wrote to call me a fleabag while others claimed to be fans.

Fickle fans, that is. Where are they now? I have nothing to put in my mail bowl, the one with the creepy hand that bends forward and croaks, “Want some candy?” when someone gets too close. The gnarled, green hand has nothing to protect.

So the prisoners have moved on. They gained their freedom and have better things to do. Or they got thrown in the hole and haven’t seen the light of day. Could be anything. It’s just funny how people come and go.

Take Bruno, for instance. Bruno was my most prolific letter writer. He was a free man but sometimes wrote like one who was caged. Insightful letters about life on the streets. Reflective letters about the way things change. Letters about mental illness, drug addiction and disease; letters about banana stands and old saloons.

Bruno was masterful. Bruno was dynamic. But we had a parting of the ways more than a year ago after I wrote something he didn’t like. I detailed the highlights of one of his letters, but misunderstood his point. That was that. There was a polite, farewell missive and he was gone. I have no way of knowing whether he is alive or dead.

It’s not just the letter writers, either. People disappear, like socks that go into a dryer but never come out.

The hooker with the heart of gold hasn’t been by in a couple years. She was, at one time, a frequent visitor with tasty information or scandalous gossip. If she wasn’t stopping to talk to me on Park Street, she was leaving cards, photos or other mementos on my car.

The dog-walking man is nowhere to be found. I haven’t heard a peep from the one-time punk turned sports coach. Consuelo is missing, Brenda is dead and the man who spoke only in grunts is God-knows-where.

Worse, the street kids I once relied on for information are grown up now. They either went on to big crimes and big time or changed their ways and became responsible citizens. Selfish twits. What about my needs?

There’s a great episode of the “Twilight Zone” called “Person or Persons Unknown.” A man wakes up one morning to find that no one recognizes him. Not his best friend, not his mother, not his wife. The whole world looks the same and yet his place within it has changed.

My situation is sort of the opposite. Lewiston looks the same, for the most part, but the faces have changed. Witness Exhibit A: a bar fight at a downtown club. When I got there, there were dozens of people gathered in groups in varying degrees of drunkenness.

Eager to find a cohort to fill me in on the fiasco, I moved from one group to another. From that group to the next. I’d never seen this girl before. That guy didn’t look familiar. Who was that dude with the purple, spiked hair? And where was old What’s His Name who makes a career out of bar fights?

I recognized no one. No one recognized me. You have to contend with mistrust and secrecy when you’re a stranger in the crowd. I’m not used to being a stranger in the crowd. But like that sap in the “Twilight Zone,” I ran around like an idiot, certain there must be some horrible mistake. Surely where booze flows and fists fly, I will have connections.

Times change, faces change. Young cops I knew years ago are now ranking officers shining seats with their backsides. Young crooks I knew before have given up the life and now sell televisions and stereos in department stores. Hard-living sources have died, sobered up, moved away or just vanished into Lewiston’s black hole.

Then there’s me, person or persons unknown, tooling around the “Twilight Zone” looking for a familiar face. A journey not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination. There’s a signpost up ahead! My next stop … ah, crap. I’m lost again.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.