Talk of the Town Ernie Anderson

Mister Blue Bird’s on my shoulder
At Cumberland Farms in Sabattus there works an extremely nice older lady named Irene. Lately, I’ve been going into the store all glum and disgruntled about this thing or that, yet by the time I come out of the store, I’m singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah even though I don’t know the words. One brief interaction with Irene is all it takes to turn that frown upside down. This lady is really putting the brakes on my surly disposition.

You kiss my mother with that mouth?
And speaking of my surly disposition, you ought to hear me late at night when I come across commercials in an Amazon Prime movie — commercials that were recently dropped into their programming in spite of poor folks like me paying $140 a year for the service. The return of ads in paid streaming services gets me swearing like Samuel L. Jackson if Samuel L. Jackson just sat on a tack. I rant and rave and cuss like nobody’s business. Irene would be disappointed, I’m pretty sure.

The drive to Cooper Spring
So, the other day, my current wife and I made our monthly trip out to the spring in South Paris to fill up our water jugs. Those of you who have been around long enough know that every time I go out to Cooper Spring, something bizarre happens, from overturned cars sitting on front lawns to vagabond dogs and dancing birds in top hats. I was so prepared to encounter more freakishness on that drive to the spring that I installed a spanking new dash cam to cover the action in high resolution. Know what happened on the drive? Absolutely nothing, that’s who. Because I’d gone out and bought an expensive new camera, the road to Cooper Spring was quiet and uneventful for the first time in years. I tell you, if I were to unhook that camera and make the same drive again, talking deer would jump out of the woods to tell me (in British accents, for some reason) about their encounters with extraterrestrials. Or something. You never know what you’ll see on the back roads to South Paris!

The balloon festival saved!
It was announced on Wednesday — or possibly Tuesday, I don’t have a calendar in front of me — that the city of Lewiston is offering to step in to save the Great Falls Balloon Festival after it was announced earlier that the festival may be canceled this year. In honor of this momentous development, festival organizers have announced that a balloon is being developed in the shape of Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline’s hair. OK, not really, but wouldn’t it be cool if that were true?

Grounded
Wednesday was a beautiful day with temperatures up near 90 degrees and do you know where I was? Trapped inside and writing about the closing of a popular Auburn beach. The irony of that was so great, I spun into a horrible depression and had to go to Cumberland Farms for some Irene therapy. I’m all better now.