It was the ambition of Sheldon Gross, a former reporter and copy editor at this newspaper, to some day be able to write what he considered would be the all-time greatest headline ever to come out of the state of Maine – something that any headline writer would consider his crowning accomplishment, never to be topped by latter-day pretenders to the throne.

But because the stars and the planets never did align properly and no automotive repair man in the Androscoggin County town of Mechanic Falls would cooperate by falling off a ladder or down a well in a manner spectacularly sufficient to make news, Gross never saw his dream fulfilled. Thus, the headline “Mechanic Falls mechanic falls” never did find its way into the newspaper.

A pity, too, for a little pizazz in our headlines is always welcome, I think. “Mechanic Falls mechanic falls,” should it ever see the light of day, would certainly be included in my pantheon of great headlines. It would stand alongside such gems as “Small medium at large,” the old favorite often cited by the late BDN reporter and newsroom bon vivant, Jim Byrnes, as the only proper headline to place over a story about a short fortune teller who had escaped from the local hoosegow and was successfully eluding capture. Who could logically argue against that choice?

Certainly not nationally syndicated word maven, punster and best-selling author Richard Lederer, who included the headline in his smile-provoking book, “Adventures of a Verbivore,” published several years ago by Pocket Books. If it is fun with words that you seek, Lederer is your guy and this is the book.

Lederer asks the reader to imagine being a newspaper editor charged with creating clever headlines for news stories that are to run in the morning paper. “What punderful headline, for example, would you concoct for a story about a bunch of cattle placed in a satellite that is now orbiting the earth?” Lederer asks. “Your creation might read, ‘The Herd Shot Round The World.'”

If television newscaster Connie Chung were to start a teakwood business, a great headline would be “Chung In Teak,” Lederer suggests, and should a factory that makes balsa wood products go up in flames the obvious headline would be “Great Balsa Fire.” Likewise, after a factory that makes small parts for Datsun automobiles has exploded, any headline writer worth a damn would come up with “It Rained Datsun Cogs.”

And so on, and so forth.

Writing headlines, like fashioning a fine piece of furniture or training the family dog to serve drinks on the patio, is an art. Some people are good at it. Some aren’t. Sometimes, a headline writer deliberately shoots for a double meaning. At other times, the double meaning is wholly unintended and not discovered until the paper hits the street. (Oops!)

The Columbia Journalism Review, a trade magazine for (formerly) ink-stained wretches – most of whom now function exclusively via computer and many of whom wouldn’t know an ink smudge from a ketchup stain – features examples of such inadvertent headlines in a popular back-of-the-magazine section called “The Lower Case.” A treasured collection titled “Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim -and other flubs from the nation’s press” was published in 1965 by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has been reprinted numerous times since.

“Cop accused of forcing women to strip suspended,” is one headline that its creator at the Sheboygan (Wis.) Press would love to have back. Ditto, “Mrs. Ghandi stoned at rally in India,” which ran in the Toronto Star. “Nixon To Stand Pat On Watergate Tapes” was a hoot for readers of the Indianapolis Star, as was “Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder,” for readers of the Detroit News.

The Deseret News of Salt Lake City is credited with “Juvenile court to try shooting defendant,” and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was cited for “Tuna Biting Off Washington Coast.” Long Island’s Newsday gave us “Shouting Match Ends Teacher’s Hearing,” and the Register-Guard of Eugene, Ore., chipped in with “Prostitutes appeal to Pope.” A missing hyphen was the downfall of a Milwaukee Journal headline writer who penned this gem: “Man Eating Piranha Mistakenly Sold as Pet Fish.” And a headline writer for the Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif., had the bad luck to choose the proofreader’s day off to pen the unintentional double entendre, “High court OKs extra time for sex crimes.”

You’d hope that that one would have run as a sidebar to “Stud tires out,” which was the headline that the Ridgewood (N.J.) News ran over a story about outlawed studded tires. But no such luck.

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