Schemengee’s history is as colorful as its murals of dogs shooting stick and cheating at poker. The pool hall’s former owner, it’s said, bore an uncanny towheaded resemblance to one of the Shmenge brothers, an accordion-toting polka star played to late-night comedic perfection by Eugene Levy in the 1970s.

A few months after Levy’s debut, Waters got the last laugh by opening Schemengee’s pool hall in Lisbon. It later moved onto Lincoln Street in Lewiston, and was purchased about nine years ago by David and Cathy Lebel. The mural came along in 2005, courtesy of local artist Clint Magoon.

“He had a picture in one hand and a paintbrush in another,” remembers David Lebel, who paid Magoon a sizable commission to permanently depict the canine hustlers and hucksters onto the concrete wall. At the time, he says, Schemengee’s had six years left on its lease…until the city bought the building.

Now the building is coming down, brick-by-brick, to make way for sewer improvements.

This deconstruction has removed the pool hall’s roof, exposing the remarkable mural Magoon painted during the 2005 Great Falls Balloon Festival, during which he even invited patrons to take a lick with his paintbrush, says Lebel.

Historical significance is an arbitrary notion. Perhaps, if painted during the 19th-century, the Schemengee dogs would be regarded as pristine examples of early American recreational art, by one of our region’s noted masters. But given the mural’s relative infancy, it’s instead destined for the wrecking ball without a peep.

Which is a crying shame, because the Schemengee’s mural is a real one-of-a-kind. It represents great work by a talented, respected local artist – one of Magoon’s recent works is the splendid etched memorial at Lewiston High School – made possible through the support of a small, community business.

But David Lebel can’t do anything. Even if a battalion of steeplejacks rigged and raised the wall away, there’s nowhere to place it. He’s reopening Schemengee’s at 551 Lincoln Street in mid-December, inside a renovated warehouse, where several tons of painted concrete just won’t fit.

It should have a place though. With Museum L-A, Lewiston-Auburn has shown the talent to make a fantastic space to preserve the artifacts of its history. This mural might only adorn a pool hall wall, but it’s a neat piece of L-A kitsch that should merit a better fate than becoming a pile of oddly hued rubble.

If there’s a creative solution out there for saving the mural from demolition, we’d like to hear it before it’s too late.

Every dog has its day, after all. Schemengee’s deserve many more.