The women who tend bar at Del’s Bar and Grill on Walnut Street have found a combination that works: cigarettes, beer and grumbling.
On Wednesday afternoon, after the five employees realized that they all had the day off, they decided to meet at Del’s.
At 1 p.m., they crowded around two small tables. Each of them had a beer, a pack of cigarettes and a gripe.
Call it therapy.
During the first part of the afternoon, the conversation revolved around the men in their lives – their jealousy, their sloppiness, their inability to express their feelings. But the discussion changed as soon as they were asked their opinion about a bill that would ban smoking in bars, taverns and pool halls.
“We’re going to lose business,” shouted one.
“I think it’s stupid,” added another.
“It’s just going to cause problems,” said a third.
Suddenly, finding globs of toothpaste stuck to the bathroom sink didn’t seem so bad.
– Lisa Chmelecki
Video wanted
If you taped Tuesday night’s Lewiston City Council meeting, Dave Gudas might want to speak with you.
Gudas, PC technician for the city, was at the control panel for the cameras at the meeting. There was a problem with the audio, and Gudas spent the first minutes trying to fix it.
“By the time I got it fixed, I realized I’d left the cameras unattended,” Gudas said. “So I paid attention to them.”
Gudas checked the videotape of the meeting about two hours in, only to discover he never pressed “play” on the recorder.
Officially, it isn’t a problem. The city keeps an audio record of all the council’s public meetings. But city staff likes to keep copies of the video as an informal record, Gudas said.
– Scott Taylor
Fashion statement
Sabattus Elementary School Principal Beverly Coursey adopted an alternative look recently by going with purplish-blue hair like a punk rocker.
“I’m getting a lot of reaction,” Coursey said Monday while wearing a blue dress and a necklace of aluminum tabs on a blue ribbon.
Back in October Coursey pledged to dye her hair if Sabattus students realized their goal of collecting 228 gallons of aluminum tabs by May’s end. The students ended up collecting 233 gallons. The tabs will get recycled for cash to assist medical costs and research of burn patients in Maine.
“The students are very excited about it,” Coursey said. “They know they’re helping a lot of burn victims.”
So how long will Coursey keep her wild new look? “It’s supposed to be temporary dye,” she said, with hope in her voice.
– Seth GoldenPicture 1.
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