Monday nights (continued)

Lee, who has owned Ray’s Candyland traveling fudge shops for 35 years, has run three times for what he calls the "clown council" and has been defeated soundly every time, losing most recently to David Jacobs in the 2002 District One race by a ratio of more than two to one. After this last defeat, Lee vowed he will never run again.

"I put myself out there to the people of South Portland and if they’d wanted a change, they would have elected me," he says.

Lee jumps up suddenly to grab the remote to see if a council re-run is on the city public access channel SPC-TV. When he discovers listings instead he returns to his seat and continues petting Fred, whose sleepy eyes droop as Lee reiterates his dedication to the underdogs of South Portland. In 35 years, Lee says only a bad case of the flu and cancelled meetings have kept him from the chambers. And he plans to continue attending meetings until he draws his last breath.

"I’m not a quitter," he says. "Right or wrong, I have a right to my opinion and so does the council. Although, sometimes I think I’d have more luck walking across the street and talking to that telephone pole."

Lee leans back in his seat and crosses his legs. He begins to reminisce about his first visits to Portland, back before he got into the fudge business, when his previous job would take him out of his hometown in Massachusetts and around Southern Maine. He remembers driving through the narrow beachside avenues in South Portland’s Willard neighborhood and being struck by its beauty. He says he thought it was the prettiest place he’d ever seen, like Shangri-La. But now that he owns property in Shangri–La and Shangri-La’s city council keeps ignoring his input and spending his hard-earned money on stuff he doesn’t need, well, Lee’s opinion of South Portland has changed.

"It’s crappy," he says, as his weary cat yawns and rolls over. "Just crappy."

If Monday night were a person living in Portland, it would easily be one of the most boring people you’ve ever met. It would not fly out of the city much (Airport Limo Taxi and Livery and Jetport Taxi both report Mondays are by far their slowest night of the week for passengers going to and coming from the jetport). It would be loathe to take the bus (Kim Plaskett, a spokesperson for Greyhound Bus Lines, says local Monday ticket revenue is the lowest of the week). It would stay inside hanging out with its lame friend Sunday Night (according to an informal survey of a handful of Portland nightspots including Una, RiRa, and Brian Boru, these two nights are often the slowest of the week). And so therefore it would not need a cab (ABC Taxi says Mondays are easily the slowest during the winter). And it may feel frisky (Video Expo reports steady sales throughout the week), but most likely it will just fall asleep early (Nomia Boutique is closed and Condom Sense reports reliable, though unremarkable, sales).

Monday night would also be sick as a dog. According to Michael Bauman, Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Maine Medical Center, Monday nights in the ER are the busiest of the week. On average, 156 people come to the ER on Mondays, compared to 151 on Sundays, the second busiest day. And, when they arrive, they’re sicker than patients on any other day of the week. The ER admits, on average, 22 percent of patients on this day compared with 19 percent on Sundays. Monday ER patients tend to arrive with more serious health complications, like congestive heart failure and shortness of breath, says Bauman, who suspects that people aggravate their health problems by avoiding the hospital on the weekend, which causes the rush at the start of the work week. The tide of ER patients intensifies on Mondays, as with most days, during the evening and nighttime hours.

"People are sicker on Monday nights [in the ER] than on any other night of the week," says Bauman. "Folks just like to stay home on the weekends."

Eric Leduc, 22, actually prefers the crowd on Wednesday nights at Portland’s Yankee Lanes bowling alley to that on Mondays, but he shows up at the start of every work week from September to early May to play 10-pin with the guys anyway. Leduc is a member of the five-man team Beech Ridge Motor Speedway, which is named after the Scarborough business which sponsors the team. He’s the youngest of the players in Beech Ridge and is among the youngest in the Monday-night league, which includes 131 men and women, most of whom are roughly his parents’ age. Leduc is one of the best players in the league and counts the night he bowled an 800 as the best Monday he can recall here. That September night, Leduc says word got around that he was reaching the 800 mark, which has only been matched a handful of times at Yankee Lanes, and dozens of bowlers stopped their games to gather around and watch him throw. This pressure unnerved him, he says, made him wish he could just get it all over with whatever the outcome.

"When I scored the 800, everybody was clapping and cheering. They announced it over the intercom. And then, everybody went back to their games," says Leduc. That night, Leduc’s high score meant he won "a lot of money" from the players’ pot. He was very happy, he says.

But most Mondays here at Yankee Lanes are comfortably predictable, if inherently competitive. There are 16 teams here on Monday nights, with names like Talking All Trash; Bud, Sweat, and Tears; and Generation Gap.

Leduc pays $15 a night to play in the league, which he has been a part of since 1998, and adds a few extra dollars into a winner’s pot. If he’s one of the high individual scorers or on a team of high scorers for the night he can win money from the pot. On a good night, Leduc figures he can make about $50 to $60 from his bowling, on a bad night, well, he just loses the $15 registration fee. Winning some extra money is nice, he explains, but getting out is really the reason he comes here.

"It’s a night out," he says.

Leduc is a gregarious guy able to be distinctly gentlemanly one moment and as loud as a football player on a winning streak the next. Nestled in the dark hair peeking up from his chest to his collarbone is a gold chain with a small lobster charm attached, a memento from Leduc’s summer job as a lobsterman. During the colder months, Leduc works as a mechanic (or "pin chaser") here at Yankee Lanes.

Leduc has had trouble convincing his friends to come out and bowl with him and he says a lot of young people aren’t interested in the Yankee leagues. But Leduc has been entranced by bowling since he was nine years old, when he used to come to the alley with his parents and spend his time watching the best bowlers in the building, studying their form — how they threw, where they threw, how they walked and stood. Finally, at age 16, Leduc picked up a bowling ball himself and hasn’t looked back since. He joined his first league that year and began honing his characteristic throw, an extra hitch of the arm across his body just before release, which teammate Bob Farr says puts enough spin on the ball to power it into the pins harder than anyone else in the Monday league.

But Leduc says that spin is part of the reason he has to wear a brace on his forearm when he plays. A few years ago, he spent some time trying to eliminate his hitch, but after awhile he just gave up. The proper way is the right way to go, he says, but it also made him lose more than 20 pins off his average and he just "got sick of losing."