Friday afternoon finds me trying to coax words out of a scuffed wooden bench. Come on, bench. Just tell me a little bit, completely off the record. Nothing. The bench ain’t talking. It’s a pity because if these parts of Androscoggin County Superior Court could talk, oh the stories they would tell. They wouldn’t be […]

‘Rethinking Auburn’s Downtown’ A headline from Monday’s paper. Yeah, that’s what I do every time I get caught in a string of red lights coming down Court Street. I “rethink” things, using an array of four-letter words to really nail down those thoughts. Trying to get into or out of Auburn some days is like […]

I think I related, at some point in our long, strange journey together, that I once desired to be the great boy detective Encyclopedia Brown. Even made up my own sign offering to solve neighborhood mysteries with my amazing powers of deduction and such. The sign went like this: “Encyclopedia Mark Now On Duty. No […]

Paradise by the drugstore light What’s up with the house on East Avenue in Lewiston, the one sort of tucked away behind Rite Aid and across the street from CVS? It’s a nice looking house that looked like it was abandoned in the middle of the night. Probably haunted. Why else would somebody move away […]

Left turn, Clyde I sure do appreciate the new turning lane at Route 4 and Lake Shore Drive. Formerly, if you were on a motorcycle and waiting to make that turn, you learned to pray. There’s nothing like the feeling of a cool lake breeze blowing over you as a 16-wheeler bears down on your […]

I used to have this dream of living over a bar on the seedy side of a big city. Write all day, drink all night, generally live an unexamined barfly life. Why not, right? In the cities, there is no such thing as closing time. Want a plate of eggs and hash browns at 3 […]

Isn’t it weird That in 2015, you still see commercials plugging “new and improved” toothbrush technology? We can land ships on comets yet we’re still working on a stick and some bristles to clean our choppers? And don’t even get me started on toilet paper. Mr. Charmin perfected it 30 years ago. Why are they […]

Baltimore is going off. Bottles hurled, windows smashed, trash set ablaze and flung in the street. Stores being looted, cop cars stomped, fists flying in all directions. Meanwhile, the real protesters are shrinking away in horror, their signs in tatters, their cause lost beneath the roar of mindless violence. Here, we have just more roving […]

You know how I feel about you, right? You’re my bud. My gumba. If you were to invite me to your wedding, family reunion or Parcheesi/key party, I probably wouldn’t go, but I respect you enough to send along a credible-sounding excuse. Probably something about embarrassing foot odor. That one is solid. We’re pals, you […]

Comfy cozy OK, enough! You broke me! The rumors you heard were true, I DID show up at a crime scene last week wearing a pair of household slippers. I ran up and down Pine Street in Lewiston in a pair of fuzzy, frilly slippers donned to keep my toe-toes warm in the chilly April […]