The Magic Man

Is alive and well, collecting returnables and defying time and space in Portland instead of Lewiston. I know this because more than a dozen of you got in touch to tell me so. You called and sent me e-mails, found me through Facebook or sent snail mail. Everybody knows the Magic Man.

The reports were unvarying. You’ve seen him strutting up Forest Avenue in a windbreaker and shorts on his never-ending hunt for bottles and cans. The bandanna that has become a part of his character is on his head and the plastic bag is in his hands. One woman saw him striding along a sidewalk beneath an overpass. Another spotted him near Hannaford wearing shorts in spite of the cold. I saw him myself, on Congress Street, looking both spry and unimaginably old.

That’s our Magic Man, all right. We know his name now, but no need to use it. He is magic and should be addressed as such. He can be in two places at the same time and there are many of us who have experienced the phenomenon.

And yet, now he’s in Portland instead of Lewiston and no one knows why. Maybe Lewiston turned bad for him – he was beaten by a group of men a year ago, you know. Pummeled and knocked to the ground as he traveled the downtown streets with the bag in one hand, a 40-ounce beer in the other.

For long years, the Magic Man rode the Lewiston downtown like a pirate sailing the high seas. But now he’s moved on to a different ocean and the loss is ours. To me, this dude with the hard eyes and the weathered face was a crucial ingredient in the personality of the city. We’re already missing the Lady Who Twirls, and who has seen the Woman on the Ancient Bike lately?

Lose too many of these phantoms of the street and the very definition of the city becomes blurry and dull. The essence of it starts to fade like old pictures not properly cared for. We can only hope that our runaway phantoms come back – just appear on Park Street or Pine with no clues to explain their absence, like cats who wander for weeks and then return to the back porch looking for food.

And it could happen any day because that is exactly what phantoms do.

The Flag Man

Some of our phantoms move on forever.

The Flag Man, a hearing-impaired gentleman who used to roam Lewiston pointing to the heavens and handing out tiny flags, has passed away. He died on Sept. 11, a day when our flag is waved most heartily. If the timing isn’t appropriate, it’s at least ironic.

The Flag Man had been deaf all his life. He could not speak aloud, but if you met him on the street, which I had since 1994, he would direct you to the sky as his way of telling you that everything would be OK.

He was 79.

The Patriot

To avoid confusion, the man who climbs trees like a monkey to hang flags around Lewiston and Auburn will henceforth be dubbed The Patriot. He is still among us and has more of his secret work planned.

Magic Man immortalized

This just in. Local band The Blue Khakis has written a song about the mysterious bottle collector. Safe for work, probably. It can be found here: vimeo.com/8062669

Yawn Ball

Baseball is over for another season and it went not with a bang but a whimper. The most exciting part of the whole World Series was Brian Wilson’s beard, and I think we should all grow one in his honor. Even the women.

Tricked out

I stayed home for Halloween for the first time in a decade and what did I get for that sacrifice? A total of three trick-or-treaters, the last two of them being roughly in their 30s. Worse still, I left my jack-o’-lanterns all lit up at the end of my driveway all night and in the morning, they were still there. What’s up with that? In my day, those things would have been stolen and smashed in the street within minutes. Instead, I have to dispose of them myself and I hate to do it. There’s just something about tossing a thing with a face into a trash can that troubles my dreams. Thanks for nothing, well-behaved youths.

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