Hardly a day goes by when I’m not asked one question or another about the working girls of downtown Lewiston.

You know the working girls. They stand on the corners along Pine and Ash, trying to look sexy in five layers of winter garb. They offer a sly glance as you drive by in the midwinter slush. Are you interested? Not interested? Are you a cop?

The people who write me have a variety of opinions about the working girls. Some are supportive — it’s the free market, after all, and the streetwalkers are just providing services that are in high demand.

Many despise the ladies, many pity them and many others are nothing but indifferent.

I got a letter in my mailbox last week that does absolutely nothing to add clarity to an already murky matter. It starts with a man of about 70 who, after the death of his wife, decided to take a walk on the wild side.

“He cashed in his life insurance,” the man’s daughter writes, “and said he wanted to have fun.”

Fun for a 70-year-old you might imagine would be golf or a cruise off the Alaskan coast. Fun for this fellow happens to be the shabby, exotic thrill of sex from strangers on the Lewiston streets.

“My elderly father has been with several girls and has spent thousands and thousands on these girls,” the daughter writes. “Over $15-20 thousand in less than a year.”

My initial reaction to this? Good for the randy coot, doing what he wants in his declining years. It’s his money, after all, and it’s not like he’s stepping out on the missus to get a little something on the side. This is a man who for seven decades did exactly what was expected of him.

“He was married for 41 years and my mom was his first girlfriend to my knowledge,” his daughter tells me. “He’s a good father, was a good supporter, and a real nice guy. It’s sad that he got so lonely to go to these types of girls.”

If you value liberty and freedom of choice, which I do, it’s hard to take a harsh stance on a lonely fellow paying for what makes him feel better.

But ah, prostitution is almost never so simple. Critics will invoke concepts like drug abuse, human trafficking and potential violence in the seedy underworld of the sex-for-money trade.

Maybe the old-timer knows the risks. Maybe he recognizes that life is short and getting shorter all the time, and what are a few risks compared to that? But it’s one thing to understand the consequences and another to suffer them directly.

“My father now has contracted genital herpes and there are no words to describe my feelings about this alone,” his daughter writes. “Who knows what he will get next.”

His family has yelled at him. Police have warned the man about his proclivities. His taste for the working girls goes on unabated and the tangled web gets more tangled still.

“Excuse this,” his daughter writes, “but he’s acting like a teenager who got laid for the first time. We had him checked for dementia and it was negative. The doctor says he has depression. He lied to the doctor saying he has had no contact with the girls. His STD test said otherwise. He also filed a false police report due to his credit credit company contacting him for suspicious activity. After the police investigated it showed he gave one of the working girls his card.”

The family would like to see police involved in a more effective crackdown on prostitution in downtown Lewiston. They’d like to see some arrests, even if one of those arrested is their own father.

This ain’t “Pretty Woman,” clearly. Chances are almost nil that this fellow is going to find true love out there in the dirty slush of Pine Street — not love without the ever-dangling price tag, anyway.

“We monitored his calls for a while and one particular girl would call him 40 times a day,” his daughter writes. “We reported this to adult protective services last year and there was nothing they could do. If he wants to give her money that’s his choice. We do control his money to a certain extent, but our hands are tied. We have told him: you know, if you stop giving her money she’ll stop calling you. He doesn’t believe it.”

So who’s right and who’s wrong here? Who in this sordid story should be punished for what both government and church have declared a sin?

I ask only to give you something to think about on your slushy ride to work. Something to consider as you ponder your own retirement years — and the matter of what you’ll do to fill those empty hours when they come for you.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can let him know who’s wrong or right at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com. 

Read more of Mark LaFlamme’s columns at SunJournal.com/Mark-LaFlamme

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