I’m a big believer in equal time, and there’s precious little of it in our all-or-nothing, buy-or-sell, believe-what-I-believe world.

So it’s impossible for me to let all these choked-up platitudes about the Bangor Auditorium enter scrapbooks and history books without at least, oh, I don’t know, suggesting that there is more to the story.

Not sure if you’ve heard, but this is the final high school basketball tournament for the edifice that was hosting them in the Eisenhower Administration. After the Class C and D state title games are played in two weeks, there will be an obligatory, non-sports spring event or two before The Yucca (next person to use the word “mecca” gets slapped) runs afoul of Father Time.

(Cough, cough) wrecking (wheeze, cough) ball.

Everything about this farewell has read and sounded like a eulogy, and fine, if that’s your thing. But I reject the notion that a celebrity roast isn’t equally appropriate.

If you listen to nothing but classic rock, if you experience righteous indignation when you can see a kid’s boxer shorts while he’s walking away from you, and if you utter phrases like “they don’t build a good automobile anymore,” hey, the auditorium was, is and always will be the place for you.

But in the highly beneficial event that you live in 2013, exist in an objective world and aren’t completely opposed to progress, you possibly can be pinned down long enough to confess that the oh-no-rena’s best days are in the rearview mirror and farther away than they appear.

It’s no coincidence that most of the I-remember-where-I-sat-and-what-soda-I-was-drinking moments being dredged up this tournament season happened 20 or more years ago. Because a truthful look at the modern era is a tale of roof leaks, power outages, broken water mains, complicated handicap access and a lack of reliable emergency escape routes.

Yes, the noise and atmosphere are one-of-a-kind in this state and impossible to replicate elsewhere. There is more to a successful basketball tournament, however, than atmosphere. A restaurant can pack all the ambiance in the world within its walls, but if the prime rib is cold in the middle and the coffee creamer is curdled, the experience is abysmal.

Say disparaging things about the two Portland playoff arenas if you wish. Cumberland County Civic Center is a cold, dark ice arena that has no business hosting high school basketball. And the Expo, though it received a fresh coat of red-and-green lipstick from the trappings of the Maine Red Claws, lacks tournament tradition and numerous other intangibles that make you feel like you’re at a special event.

When people from Bangor characterize Augusta Civic Center as unworthy to share a neighboring chapter in the basketball bible, though, it makes my head want to explode. Sorry that the truth hurts, folks, but the civic center became the premier place to watch a tournament game the day its doors swung open to the event more than 30 years ago, and it has kept that perch ever since.

My favorite lie spread by the Bangor-or-bust brigade is that Augusta fans are isolated from the action. Not true. Any of the 5,000-or-so seats in the lower two sections are a splendid place to watch the game and not miss a thing.

“You’re right on top of the action at Bangor.” Ummmmm, not unless you’re sitting in the section at floor level, and it’s worth pointing out that your seat has no back. Your reward for arriving early and being at the bottom of the noise cone is sitting in bleachers that appear to have been trucked in from any of the Class D schools in Aroostook County.

But there’s no arguing with people who have been Bangor baptized. When you deride the complete lack of walking space for spectators, the endless walk to winding sets of stairs and the purchase of concessions food in a room that still smells faintly of elephant dung from 20 Shrine Circuses ago, they retort that it is part of the building’s “character.”

Lovely, if you’re willing to accept that. We accept a lot of things in Maine, especially the parts of Maine that send most of the tournament teams to Bangor. We accept that we’re hemorrhaging jobs, that people either are choosing not to have babies or raising them south of Waterville, and that the snow may not melt until Mother’s Day.

We settle because we’re comfortable, and the good people of the Penobscot Valley and potato and blueberry country have settled for an inferior meeting place far too long in the name of tradition and history.

Next year, or perhaps the year after, I will park my vehicle on pavement where Bangor Auditorium rubble once lay. I’ll watch a game in state-of-the-art comfort. Somebody will hit a buzzer-beater or join his father and grandfather in winning a state championship for his proud rural school.

I’ll smile, and I’ll feel genuinely happy for the locals, even though they won’t yet fully appreciate what they’ve been given: A tournament venue that isn’t clinging to yesterday, and equal footing with what the fine folks an hour to the south enjoy every February vacation.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.