This may be the most important letter you will ever receive. Please read it carefully,” screamed the message on the envelope from some nonprofit outfit calling itself Project Vote Smart.

The overhyped come-on was signed by “Senator” Mark Hatfield of Oregon and “Senator” William Proxmire of Wisconsin, even though it’s been years since either man was a member of the United States Senate. (Yes, I know the drill – once a United States senator, always a United States senator in title, perks and the genuflections of serious social climbers of all political persuasions. But still. Whatever happened to truth in advertising?)

Not wanting to miss the proposition of a lifetime, promoted by two guys who obviously grew so fond of the title of United States Senator they kept it like the Clintons kept the White House furniture, I ripped open the envelope. And found … nothing.

As the most important letter I’ve ever received it doesn’t rank up there with, say, my U.S. Army draft notice – that routine free ticket to adventure and glamorous world travel which arrived with a “Return Receipt Requested” sticker attached lo, so many years ago. And I don’t know as it will cause me to be any smarter in the voting booth the next time around, which – along with prying loose some cash from my wallet – I presume is the object of Project Vote Smart. But it certainly was the best dun letter I have received all week, no doubt about that.

However, we haven’t gathered here this morning to discuss Project Vote Smart’s empty-envelope fund-raising snafu. Not while Project Play Smart – otherwise known as the annual Eastern Maine High School Basketball Tournament for Classes B, C, and D – holds center stage in competition for the natives’ undivided attention and walking-around money. Any promotion butting heads with this baby here in The Real Maine is doomed from the start.

Tournament Week began yesterday at the venerable Bangor Auditorium with a trickle of games that will turn into a flood of more than 40 before boys and girls playoff champions are crowned a week from now. Then the Class A tournament schools and their partisans come to town.

By March 10, when it’s pushing midnight and the last state championship has been determined, basketball fever here where life is as it ought to be will have pretty much subsided. Next fall, the kids and the coaches and the fans will be champing at the bit to begin the process all over again.

Say what you will about us, we do love our traditions. And among the greatest of traditions – topped perhaps only by the seasonal dodging of potholes and swatting of blackflies – is Tournament Week, easily the best show in town; the biggest bang for the buck. Tournament time is when the natives of 10 counties look winter’s potential for cabin fever straight in the eye, say to hell with you and the sorry horse you rode in on, Chummy, and take off for Bangor and a week of endless basketball games and other diversions in a catharsis that will carry them through to mud season.

They will arrive from the hinterlands in uninhibited droves, in cliques and claques, by bus, by car, on foot and by monster pickup trucks towing trailers loaded with snowmobiles. Shopping mall managers and owners of area restaurants and pubs and lodging places and what passes for our dens of iniquity will rub their hands with glee as they contemplate the beautiful sound that cash registers make when operated at full-tilt. And though every last basketball fan will entertain visions of his team taking a championship trophy home, most will leave town disappointed.

No matter. They’ll hoot and holler and carry on in behalf of civic pride and the home team until their kids are sent packing by some outfit that is a little quicker, or plays better defense, or can spot up and shoot the lights out, or is simply more talented. Then they’ll root for The Next Best Thing left standing, provided that team comes from their neck of the woods – old rivalries and bad blood notwithstanding. Regional bragging rights, after all, are better than no bragging rights whatsoever.

When the last ball has been dribbled and the final whistle has sounded they’ll head back to the coastal villages and inland mill towns, to the crossroad hamlets and the wannabe cities, their batteries recharged and their energies focused on one shining goal: Sweet revenge at the Bangor Auditorium come next February. Life doesn’t get any better than this.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.