People-watching can be a very rewarding spectator sport

In small-town rural Maine, two Saturday night rituals were once commonplace: baked beans and homemade brown bread for supper, followed by a drive into town to park the family Hutmobile at a strategic spot on the main drag for socializing and people-watching purposes.

Observing the passing parade of humanity from a front-row seat seemed to be great sport for the adults. That it may not have been the Saturday night recreation of choice for the gaggle of kids stuck in the back seat with ants in their pants and a bag of penny candy as pacifier was of no consequence. In later years, when they, too, became Highly Trained Observers with an appreciation for serious people-watching, this childhood head start would be recalled with fondness. Then they’d thank their elders for holding them captive as the dandies and the drunks, the belles of the ball and the shady ladies of the night, the rowdies, straight arrows, hell-raisers and Bible-thumpers passed before their

woefully innocent eyes on those Saturday night sidewalks of yore.

And so it was that I arrived at the Bangor Auditorium earlier this week well prepared for my mission to observe the masses assembled for the annual high school basketball tournament and cabin fever blowout. Highly Trained Observer meets Down-Home Mainer to catalog the genus for future sociologists.

The parade of humanity at a typical tournament session, I have found over the years, includes about the same ratio of flotsam to jetsam that you’d find in, say, a day spent at the annual Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race now that the adults in charge have banned booze from that testosterone-charged springtime run for glory.

The specimens come in all ages, sizes, shapes and hues. Some show up well-groomed and dressed to the nines; some arrive looking like they just rolled out of bed in the clothes they slept in. They arrive singly, in pairs and by the busload. Most are wired with anticipation. Some few appear to be in a trance, as though on the way to the gallows. The good, the bad and the ugly are well represented in this late-February crowd out to celebrate the official breaking of winter’s back here in The Real Maine. They pretty much fall into a half-dozen categories, three of which include:

The Multi-Dimensional Rambunctious Rugrat Contingent. Turned loose by their parents to be baby-sat by the Maine Principals Association for the day, these marauding gangs of 9-year-olds never met an auditorium seat they could stay in for more than 14 seconds, tops. Little boy rugrats, fueled by the abundant sugar of auditorium fare, punch other little boy rugrats who are engaged in pulling the hair of giggling little girl rugrats. Then the entire lashup plays musical chairs so the ritual can resume with different victims, its intensity cranked up a notch.

Not to worry, however, because God in His infinite wisdom has preordained relief for adjacent old fogys who manage to stay the course: As game time nears and the crowd swells, He dispatches an auditorium employee to open up the nosebleed section of cheap seats in the very upper reaches of the building. In no time at all the word is out, and the Rambunctions Rugrat Contingent speeds off to the higher level for the tantalizing piece de resistance: the chance to literally swing from the rafters by their little rugrat toes.

The Attention-Craving Perpetual Motion Geek. This adult version of the sugar-fueled rugrat desperately needs to be noticed and is therefore constantly on the move, from his front-row balcony seat to God only knows where, and back – most generally accompanied by a ringing cell phone to impress the commoners. At half-time and between games, while normal people rise and move about, he sits stoically in his seat, his wanderlust curbed until the game resumes and his audience returns. The urge to reach out and strangle is overpowering.

The Chatty Kathy Club For Females Who Can’t Talk And Watch The Ballgame At The Same Time. These amazing women can ignore entire quarters of The Big Game involving their hometown team while offering up play-by-play details of their humdrum lives to the kindred souls seated behind them. When they finally come up for air and mistakenly glance in the direction of the basketball court the teams have trotted off for their half-time respite, not that they notice. Chatty Kathy’s male counterpart differs in that while he and his buddy yak about yarding pulpwood or hauling traps he keeps one eye on the action down on the floor. Thus, if pressed, he could most likely tell you who’s playing and what the score is. Something about the internal wiring of the species,

I suppose.

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