When I drove into town to pick up my mail Wednesday morning I found a pleasant surprise in the mailbox. Former Bangor Daily News stablemate Herb Cleaves of Whiting, who in his retirement cranks out a well-written take-no-prisoners column for the weekly Downeast Coastal Press of Cutler, had sent me a pre-Thanksgiving care package.

Included were several editions of that fine newspaper, along with a yellowed old news clipping – my BDN political column of June 17, 1972 – that Cleaves had salvaged from the files of this newspaper’s former Machias bureau. He had highlighted a quote from a candidate for the Legislature from Bangor – a man who shall remain nameless this time around because it seems like the humane thing to do, as you shall soon see.

In response to a questionnaire which the newspaper had sent to all legislative aspirants, the candidate made it perfectly clear what was bothering him most: “One major problem is that of surmising the extent of the diversification when attempting to introduce legislation relevant to the heterogeneous electorate as a whole,” he wrote.

In his accompanying note, Cleaves suggested that the wannabe legislator – who, to no one’s surprise, never made the cut on Election Day – “is just the kind of wordsmith the bureaucrats at Fortress Augusta could use these days.”

The candidate’s words – every bit as inscrutable today as they were 34 years ago – became a sort of cult classic in the newsroom after they were enlarged and enshrined in the Words-To-Live-By Hall of Fame that occupied most of my office bulletin board. There they resided for years alongside such sage advice to young newspaper reporters as “There Is Nothing So Insignificant That It Can’t Be Blown Out Of Proportion,” and an editorial comment on management’s philosophy concerning getting out a daily newspaper in a time of steadily shrinking news space: “All The News That Fits, We Print.”

As I write on this Thanksgiving morning of 2006, it strikes me that there are many things for which to be thankful, not the least of which is that I am not now, nor will I ever be, a politician forced to surmise the extent of the diversification when attempting to introduce legislation relevant to the heterogeneous electorate as a whole.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in this business over the past half-century, it is that no earthly good can possibly come from aiding and abetting the heterogeneous electorate as a whole – compatible ongoing review mechanisms and systematized incremental third-generation capabilities notwithstanding. Trust me on this.

Gazing out my front windows in the ungodly quiet on this holiday morning when everyone is off to grandma’s house for a clear shot at the mincemeat pie and candied yams, I am mindful that I should also be thankful that I don’t live any nearer the new-look Mars Hill Mountain than I do. Even from my million-dollar view some 30-plus miles to the north, the landmark twin bubbles on the southern horizon – now festooned with a couple dozen giant windmills reaching toward the heavens in the name of progress, clean power and environmental bliss – resemble a really big pin cushion. Not that the mountain doesn’t still have the power to mesmerize from afar.

On this Thanksgiving weekend I remain eternally grateful that I am not a professional athlete forced to make do on a salary of a mere $22 million a year for playing a little kid’s game while the stiff playing alongside me is pulling down $25 million per season for doing essentially the same job. I can’t even begin to convey to you how horribly such a travesty would damage my self-respect and stunt my potential for growth as a human being. As well, I am thankful I am not O.J. Simpson, still running himself ragged searching for the person who brutally murdered his ex-wife and her friend years ago, and aging noticeably in the process.

I am thankful, too, that I am not the puritanical snitch with no appreciation for the absurd who ratted on those two Zamboni drivers out in Boise, Idaho, earlier this week. The city recreation department employees were fired from their jobs after they drove their squat, rubber-tired ice-grooming machines from the skating rink where they were employed to the takeout window of a Burger King establishment a half-mile away for a post-midnight snack.

Show me a hockey fan who did not chuckle upon reading that story in Thursday morning’s newspaper, and I’ll show you a member of the heterogeneous electorate as a whole who gives the rest of us a bad name.

Kent Ward lives in Limestone. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.