Many moons ago in downtown Lewiston, I saw a man get into a fight with a trash bag. He was hauling the overstuffed Hefty down Park Street, toward Chestnut, when the bag split and some greasy garbage spilled out. Enraged, the flustered fellow gave the bag a petulant yank which caused more trash to come […]
Mark LaFlamme
Posted inMark LaFlamme
Talk of the town: The autumnal squash that shall not be named
Drained Many of you good, probably drunk people have sent me your photos of the canals in Lewiston, which were recently drained. I appreciate all the images of busted computer monitors, bent shopping carts, sad-looking boots, bald tires, wrecked bird cages, ancient TVs, ugly sofas and doorless microwave ovens scattered half-buried in the muck at […]
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Talk of the town: Bleep Blips are good, too
The Mad Dog barks at midnight Somewhere in Lewiston, a man walks into convenience store, grabs a bottle of liquor off a shelf, downs it and promptly passes out on the floor. Now, I ask you: is that even shoplifting? I mean, the drunken fellow never left the store with the goods. As far as […]
Posted inMark LaFlamme
Talk of the town: Leaving lurid messages on your answering machine
Black cord fever When I was a young fella, I used to go out to the bars all night and then come reeling home with the drunken notion that 2 a.m. is a great time to make phone calls. All lit up and gregarious, I’d call ex-girlfriends, old buddies I hadn’t seen since kindergarten, distant […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: A reluctant glimpse of the future
Here’s how it’s going to go down. Winter is going to come early this year and it’s going to come with attitude. After a 2015-16 season of mild temperatures and little snow, the 2017 version of winter will be a bad mother, back to assert herself as the bitter-cold destroyer of fun and good moods. […]
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Talk of the town
Pantsless at Shaw’s It happened in Lewiston because Lewiston is like the half-naked capital of the state, am I right? A shopper was reported to be inside the store wearing a shirt but no pants, which to me doesn’t violate any laws whatsoever. I mean, the sign on the door does say “shoes and shirt […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: No animals for you. Ever.
I get it. I really do. I mean, the woman abandoned her dog in the bitter midpoint of winter, leaving it to wander off to a cold and lonely fate. Through the magic of surveillance video, we all got to see how callous and cruel an act it was. We all got to experience the […]
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Hand over the goldfish and no one gets hurt
Moolah As I was leaving 8th District Court the other day, a clerk came running out of the courthouse to give back the debit card I had used to purchase an affidavit. Boy, I got lucky there. If she hadn’t been the honest sort, she could have kept my card and treated herself to all […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: Live and uncontaminated by bull
Some days, I hear my reporter’s notebook weeping from the depths of my back pocket. For two decades, he was the perfect solider, rounding up details about fires, murders and downtown scrums, gobbling up awesome terms like “fracas,” “brouhaha” and “donnybrook” and then unleashing them upon our readers. Pile driver in Kennedy Park? Into the […]
Posted inMark LaFlamme
Talk of the town: Just a simple ‘what th…’ will do
‘Stranger Things’ Have you been watching this weird Netflix series? I found it fairly unmemorable with one key exception: In episode 7 at the 20-minute mark, a man receiving a beat down delivers what I consider the perfect “What th…” moment. It’s a thing of beauty and I think you should tune in if only […]