So, I’m riding up Scribner Boulevard in Lewiston when I come across a common yet suddenly alarming sight. There, standing in front of a neatly adorned house, a small army of inflatable ghouls lean toward the roadway. There’s a 6-foot polar bear next to a grinning snowman of equal stature. There’s a giant, smirking Santa obediently holding his place in the line. Across the street, a massive inflatable frog stands alone, gazing hard at the troops, delivering silent commands with huge frog eyes.

Hold your position, boys. Just a little longer… You gonna eat that fly?

Every year they descend on our community, these lawn adornments, growing in number with each new season. Frosties the Snowmen, Santas Claus and Winnies the Pooh. Whole platoons of these airy soldiers fan out across the city, a militia we abet unknowingly, not suspecting they may someday rise up and strike us down.

We see them as adorable novelties filled with harmless hot air, just as we once saw Rush Limbaugh (high-five me on that one later). We let them take over our yards each Christmas and before you know it, we will hear a collective hiss in the night as the hot-air beasts come for us in our beds.

Scribner Boulevard is always a thought-provoking place.

Later. I’m wheeling up Central Avenue out toward Greene, the only motorcycle on the street as night comes down. Many minutes have passed, yet I’m still thinking about the inflatable army and even keeping an eye out for more of its commandos. At that moment I realize that I haven’t just become bored in recent months, I’ve become demented. It is, after all, just a short step from musing over inflatable assassins to wearing a tinfoil hat and preaching to people on street corners.

I don’t want to be that guy. I look terrible in a sandwich board.

And so, startled by this stream of ideas out of Tim Burton Hell, I’ve decided that maybe we do need a casino in Lewiston. A big, bright casino, pumping with life to add sparkle and flavor to a place that has become bleak and bland.

I’ve not studied hard over casino debate, I admit it. I’ve only heard the ballyhoo between those who are wildly opposed – “Gambling will bring to Lewiston all those things we’ve never had, like hard drinking, violence and prostitution!” – and those who are in favor – “My wife put password protections on my home computer and now I have nowhere to play five reels!”

I’ve also not calculated how a casino might affect things like the mill rate, uniform crime reporting or revenue reimbursement because I have no idea what any of those things are. I only know that to a city whose motto appears to be “We’d come up with a motto if we could just stop yawning long enough,” the glitter and throbbing excitement of a casino would do what an energy drink does for that pencil-sketched guy in the Red Bull commercials.

Throw up an obscenely sprawling hotel. Build an off-ramp from the turnpike (so long as it doesn’t disrupt any all-terrain trails) right to the center of the action. Send bikini-clad ladies out to the street to lure in business (in cold months, replace bikini-clad ladies with Wacky, Waving, Inflatable, Arm-Flailing Tube Man) and get the adrenaline of this sleepy place cranked up.

Right now, we all get super pumped about things like the Impressively Large Christmas Display on Vista Drive and the yearly arrival of Smokey’s Greater Shows. Imagine: that kind of excitement all year long!

We are a community in desperate need of a night on the town. Bring on the casino and high times, including all-you-can-eat buffets and really cheap prime rib, right outside your door. Not to mention the chance to turn that boring one-spot into clanking thousands.

I imagine a day when traffic on Longley Bridge is slowed to a crawl because of an influx of enthusiastic strangers, not because there’s some wicked-good stuff in at Marden’s, as is often the case today. I imagine brightly lit windows in the shops along Lisbon Street, instead of a long row of empty spaces patronized only by rats and dust. I imagine new faces, bright with excitement in the buzzing downtown, rather than the familiar frowns of the tired and bored.

I imagine Wacky, Waving, Inflatable, Arm-Flailing Tube Man would probably join the ranks of the Ornament Army, and that dude could do some damage. So now I’m all turned around on the issue again.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can share your thoughts on the inflatable army at [email protected].