In separate but connected (at least to me) events last week, South Carolina Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings announced that he would not seek re-election, and the Maine Press Association announced its annual awards.

Taking the last event first, for the 32nd year in a row, the MPA awards did not include my name in its awards column. To increase the pain, one Peter McDonald, a reformed private detective and former longshoreman from the Charlestown docks, won a second place for an opinion piece in the Camden Herald. I believe it was the second piece that the actor-author (now award-winning columnist) ever penned for the newspaper.

Since 1971, like a nervous actor awaiting the latest reviews, I have awaited the annual MPA awards to see my name. Hasn’t happened yet. Once when I asked editor (and expense account handler) Joe Brooks why I was never even entered in the annual press Demolition Derby despite my best efforts. He gave me some advice. “Shave your beard, change your attitude and stop insulting the editors.”

As much as I wanted an award for the wall of the Cobb Manor den, all of these steps were rejected out of hand as being far too extreme.

I believe that I was just unlucky and that I had a big mouth.

Hollings is part of that story.

The seven-term senator billed himself as an architect of the “New South” and was famous for a Southern accent so thick that he was once introduced by Ted Kennedy as “the first non-English speaking candidate for president.”

Fritz decided to run for president in 1984 and brought his road show to Rockland where Rita and Ron Melendy hosted a fund-raiser on their estate at Pen Bay Acres. In the press pool with Hollings was my old hero, one Sander Vanocur, an NBC correspondent. I once watched Vanocur do a live broadcast from the Boston Globe newsroom.

Pretty impressive.

I thought that Vanocur had aged terribly since I saw him do the Boston broadcast.

When a tardy reporter arrived, (probably one of the persistently late Portland Press Herald staff), I informed him of the presence of the national press corps including my former hero.

“Sandy Vanocur is here, but the years have not been kind to him,” I said.

When I looked around, Vanocer was standing about four inches from my elbow, staring at me.

I don’t think that helped my reputation.

(Shortly after his appearance at the Melendy estate, Hollings crashed in the New Hampshire primary, getting only 3.5 percent of the vote, just ahead of Alan M. Cranston with 2.1 percent and just behind George McGovern at 5.2 percent.)

My reputation didn’t get any better a few years later at the First Annual Moxie Festival, at the Union Fair.

The Harvard-educated Jeff Nims was doing taped interviews for radio station WRKD, about the distinctive flavor of Moxie, supposedly invented by a local doctor. When Nims aimed his microphone at one Union Fair visitor and asked about the Moxie taste, I stepped into the interview and stated for the microphone, “It makes me gag.”

Nims did a little gagging himself.

A few minutes later, when he had cut off the interview as soon as humanly possible, he explained that this was one of the first “live remotes” that the station ever attempted.

Unfortunately, my “gag” gag went out over the air to the WRKD audience, which probably numbered in the low hundreds, given its weak broadcast strength at the time.

Another, largely undeserved blow to my reputation.

I feel like Bob Hope waiting for his Oscar.

Maybe the Maine Press Association will give me an award next year.

Then, and only then, can I face Peter McDonald.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.