Dear Nanna;

It’s me again. Can you believe it’s the end of September already? I’m wicked sad about that because it means summer is done. I know when it started, I wasn’t very happy to be in Lewiston. Remember how I got scared because people were saying Lewiston was a dangerous place to be? Heck, even the Fourth of July was quiet around here. Everybody went down to the bridge between Lewiston and Auburn and watched fireworks. It was wicked fun. There were policemen there, but they hardly had to do anything at all. 

They said there were going to be a lot of fights here, too. I swear, I didn’t see none at all. I don’t know why people make things up about Lewiston. They’re always saying how bad it is. But I was here all summer and nobody even tried to sell me a funny cigarette or anything. People are always exaggerating about Lewiston. I don’t care. I had a wicked fun summer. 

They have these canals here that go right through the city. They are real deep and everything and you can’t swim there. But in the middle of the summer, they drain all the water out of them, to clean it or something, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s really fun when they do that. You can do down there and stand on the bridge and look at all of the stuff that was underwater before. I should have written down all the stuff I saw. There were shopping carts that were all bent and rusty and there were bicycles that were missing wheels. I saw a whole bunch of old boots, a refrigerator, a bird cage (there wasn’t a bird in it, ha ha!) and a lot of other stuff like that. There’s this wicked weird man who works for the newspaper and he wrote a big, long story about when they drained the canal. He thought it was fun, too. He said they found a spaceship down there in the mud, but I think he was making that up. I hope so! 

They have this big park right in the middle of the city, too. It’s called Kennedy Park and it’s named after some dead person. They have a pool and a place where you can skateboard and things like that. It’s not a very big park but everyone said I shouldn’t go into it, especially at night. They said people there will beat you up and steal your money or even kill you there. That’s stupid though because the park is right across the street from the police station and what kind of dummy would beat you up or kill you right where the police can see it?

I went to the park one day and there wasn’t anything scary there at all. A bunch of kids were playing soccer. There were all kinds of ladies pushing babies in carriages and things like that. Old people sit on benches there and sometimes they fall asleep. I got scared one time because this old man looked like he might be dead and I was afraid I would get blamed for it. Then some stupid kid threw a Frisbee real hard and it hit the old man right in the head. The old man started yelling and swearing and everything so I guess he wasn’t dead. Ha ha!

I’ll bet you were worried about me during the hurricane. Don’t tell anybody, but I was massively scared of it at first. I was scared because everyone kept saying how it was going to be wicked bad, like maybe the worst in a long time. They said if you didn’t save up some food and water, you could starve to death because it was going to be real hard to get any of that stuff once the storm came. Batteries, too. I tried to buy a package of batteries at one of the dollar stores and some woman yelled at me because it was the last package they had. She was wicked mean. She was so ugly, I thought a hurricane would turn right around once it saw her, but I didn’t say that out loud.

It was confusing. On the TV they kept saying things like, “We’re evacuating the whole state of New York but nobody should panic.” That didn’t make any sense to me at all. They kept talking about things like wind shear and outer bands and all of that mumbo jumbo. They kept talking about the eye of the storm and I was thinking, I’m not real worried about the eye. It’s the fangs and claws that scare the heck out of me.

So, anyway, when the day came, it was windy and raining really hard. I kept asking people when the hurricane was going to get here because I wanted to know how much time I had left to live. But people were wicked grumpy. They kept saying, “Oh, the storm fizzled out before it reached us” and things like that. They were trying to act like they were happy the storm didn’t come, but I think they were really disappointed. I don’t know why they should be disappointed when they have all that food and all those batteries piled up in their kitchens.

Anyway, Nanna, it was like the storm was just enough to blow away the last parts of summer. Now you see school buses everywhere and little kids are getting all dressed up for school. People who have boats are putting them away. You don’t see so many tents in backyards anymore. The leaves are starting to turn weird colors and you can see your breath in the morning. 

Summer is over and I feel like I could cry. I guess you can come and get me now, Nanna. I’ll just stand out here and wait for you, even though it’s a little chilly at night. I know you’ll come for me, Nanna. I just hope none of those big, bad Lewiston people get to me first.

Ha ha!

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. He’s still waiting for his Nanna to pick him up. If you see her, email [email protected].