Here’s an ugly secret about Street Talk: If I don’t write a column for a week or more, I completely forget how it’s done. I mean, where are the ideas supposed to come from? Dreams? The ether? The Lewiston canal?

I forget, so today I’m scrambling. I’ve emptied out drawers and flipped through notebooks, looking for the instructions I’ve surely left for myself for these kinds of emergencies. “How to Write Street Talk,” it would be called, but damn if I can find it.

Not to worry. There’s plenty going on in the world today, am I right? Why, as I speak, the final convulsive moves along the long, hard campaign trail are wrapping up. We’re finished with candidates desperate for attention crawling right inside our mailboxes and pleading for us to put them in office. Seeking offices from dog catcher to governor, these people were more desperate than ever to tell you exactly what you wanted to hear.

YOU: “What about big government?”

CANDIDATE: “You want big government? I’ll strive to make government so big, it will eclipse the moon!”

YOU: “No, I want smaller government.”

CANDIDATE: “You want it small? I’ll make it so small a deer tick could wear it as a tattoo.”

YOU: “What about the borders?”

CANDIDATE: “A fine bookstore. I will work tirelessly to bring one to your city.”

YOU: “No, I mean the U.S. borders.”

CANDIDATE: “You want them open? I’ll open them and keep them open with one of those cute door stopper thingies that looks like a sleeping cat. You want them closed? I’ll slam them shut and put chairs in front of them. Borders? What borders? Ha-ha!”

And so on and so forth until said candidate offered to rake your leaves or babysit your children. Hope you totally took them up on it, too, because now that the election is over, you’ll never hear from these people again. Your mail to them will go unopened. Phone calls will never be returned. Get your leaves raked, my friends. And if they miss a single leaf, threaten to vote for the other guy.

Of course, by now it’s all irrelevant. Today (type in name of winning candidate to appear worldly and prophetic) is governor, the bear vote (prevailed/was defeated) and (Samson/Lajoie/Lafrance) is the new sheriff in Androscoggin County. Exactly as I predicted, which will come as no surprise to regular readers of Street Talk, who know how politically shrewd I am.

The most important development in all this, of course, is that the political mailers will cease to overflow our mailboxes. How many times have you come home in recent months, excited to see something shiny and potentially fun in your box only to discover that it was another tree-killing sheet of smear campaign literature, each more puerile than the last? Joe Blow is soft on welfare. Jane Blow doesn’t shave her armpits. Gertrude Snodgrass totally has cooties, and I know what you are, but what am I?

It was a ridiculous campaign: loud, annoying and replete with cheap tricks and cheesy propaganda, and even with all of that going on, I doubt that I could get a full column out of it. I mean, really. What is there to say?

The World Series is over. Baseball is done for another six months, and I know you’re all waiting for me to wax pathetic poetic about the joys and agonies of the Kansas City Royals amazing run, but I’m just not ready. Won’t be ready any time soon, either. I still weep at random times of the day, sometimes out of glee, sometimes out of defeat. My therapist says I’m making great strides. Of course, my therapist is a pile of laundry with a baseball cap sitting on top, so take that with a grain of salt.

Halloween is over, too. I’m not completely sure what I was for this one. Gas mask, yellow slicker and glow-in-the-dark hands. Toxic man? Hazmat guy? Visitor from the future? Who cares, when you get right down to it. At least I got candy.

To recap: The election is over, Halloween is over, baseball is over and I’ve forgotten how to write a weekly column. Now comes November like creeping death. It’s dark, it’s cold and all good things are on ice for half a year.

Other than that, though, everything is fine.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer who welcomes winter like a (baited, trapped, hounded) bear. You can email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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