It was an afternoon just like this one. Only it was March instead of September and I was 20 years younger. I didn’t have any stupid gray hair in my goatee, which was fine because goatees hadn’t been invented yet.
It was an afternoon somewhat similar to this one. I had recently moved to Lewiston with a schoolteacher. We shared an apartment on Nichols Street and all was right with the world. You know, except for the fact that I didn’t have a full-time job, had a habit of staying out in the bars all night and sometimes couldn’t find my way home in the wee hours.
Other than that, it was just peachy.
In 1994, I worked a series of jobs in Lewiston and Auburn. For a few weeks, I sold magazines over the phone from a dingy office above what is now Gritty McDuff’s. It’s a real pity the bar wasn’t there back then because I was horrible at selling things over the phone and would have been no less effective from a bar stool. Or, you know, passed out cold under a table. I mean, I completely sucked at selling magazines over the phone.
For a week or so, I poured plastic into molds at Jones & Vining in Lewiston. Only, most of the plastic didn’t make it into the mold at all but went directly onto my shoes and onto the shoes of my co-workers who, for some reason, never grew to like me very much.
I worked a month or so at White Rock Distilleries where I was responsible (I think) for straightening labels on bottles as they came down the line. Guess what? I sucked at it. Those bottles come down the line way too fast. I mean, what’s the hurry, man?
I applied for a job at Simones’ but never heard back. That’s kind of hilarious because if there’s one thing in which I had experience, it was hot dogs. Don’t think I’ve forgotten, Jimmy. Very hurtful.
People always ask how I ended up with a career in news reporting. It’s always a temptation to make up an exotic story because the truth is just mundane and embarrassing: My girlfriend kicked me out so I answered an ad in the newspaper. On an afternoon sort of like this one.
Me: “Hello, I’m calling about the ad for freelance writers in the (sound of frantic pawing through newsprint) Lewiston Sun Journal Connecting You With Your Community since 1887. I feel I’m the right person for this job.”
Editor type who turned out to be the veteran newsman Tim McCloskey: “What kind of experience do you have?”
Me: “Well, sir, I’ve always enjoyed connecting people with their respective communities and I once got an A on a high school paper I wrote about herpes.”
Guy who turned out to be Tim McCloskey: “When can you start?”
The first story I wrote for the paper was about an 80-something woman who built her own greenhouse. It was published on my birthday. I celebrated by looking for an apartment.
My second story was about an art show at USM, a piece that was considered (by my mother) as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
For my third assignment, McCloskey, a complete weasel, sent me to a School Committee meeting, at which point I decided I no longer wanted to be a news reporter. I mean, I recorded every word uttered during that 18-hour meeting with a little recorder I bought just for the occasion. I talked to a dozen school officials about what had transpired during the meeting. I consulted with my ex-girlfriend, the teacher, and I stayed sober for the entire thing. I still didn’t have a freakin’ clue what “attrition” meant or the significance of the stupid mill rate, which I’m still not sure is a real thing.
I did the best I could writing that story (from home, on an electronic typewriter), but in the end, I needed help from the paper’s education reporter, which at the time was Mark Shanahan, a fellow renowned for having the coolest hair in Maine journalism. It was terribly deflating (my work on the School Committee piece, not Shanahan’s hair.)
Me: “I quit.”
Tim McCloskey: “Perhaps you would like to try your hand at covering the police beat.”
DING, DING, DING! Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
The very first real assignment I got on the cop beat was about a local man who had been wrongfully accused of murder in Florida. He was ultimately cleared of the crime and retreated back to Lewiston. I was sent to his home to interview him about the ordeal and the ensuing piece was printed on the front page. When I walked into the corner store the following morning, to buy beer and Butterfingers, the sense of pride I got seeing that story on the newspaper rack was indescribable. Swept by a feeling of runaway glory, I asked the store clerk what she thought of the news piece that so dominated the headlines.
“Uncomfortably derivative of Grizzard and much too dependent on the inverted-pyramid paradigm,” she said. I started shopping at another store.
I started freelancing in March 1994. In September, they offered me the job full-time. It came with grown-up benefits like health insurance and a 401-something-or-other so I had to take it. Ecstatic, I went out and bought a Rolodex, some fancy pens and a bunch of new ties, some of which I actually wore for the first month.
Twenty years ago, I was enamored with my position at the paper. You have to understand the context: When you’re pouring hot plastic onto your shoes one day and writing for the front page the next, it’s easy to think you’ve hit the jackpot. Twenty years, man. In some ways it feels like only two or three. In others, it feels like 50. Time flies when you find yourself homeless in Lewiston.
Now if you’ll pardon me, I have to go dye my beard.
Mark LaFlamme is (still!) a Sun Journal staff writer, and has yet to spill any sort of molten liquid on his adoring co-workers. Email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.
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