Mill River Smoke: Stories and Essays

In an age in which a famous Hollywood actor can, without a twitch or twitter, or the slightest fear of being taken to task, remark to an interviewer that he was so eager to heroically portray a man commonly known, by those whose lives he touched in the most direct of manners, as "The Butcher of la Cabana", because he had a "cool" name and a "cool" style of dress, it is easy to tire of the shallow sea of publicized, and then often repeatedly echoed opinions modern communications technology leaves us awash in. There are, however, still a few Marc Munroe Dions rowing about that sea. There's no mistaking that he is, in large part, a writer of opinions, but fortunately for us they are his opinions; untouched by the Hollywood set, the "ivory tower" set of academia, or the pollsters which inform politicians of the season's most fashionable stances. In Mill River Smoke he shares with us essays (opinions) and stories (laced with opinions), which have been kept well-grounded through many years as an old-fashioned newsman working in the largely blue-collar city of Fall River, Mass. covering crime, local politics, and "the stuff on page 3". They've also benefited more than a little in terms of developing a healthy sense of dark humor and for some of life's more film noire-style absurdities.

"Maybe two years ago,", he writes in What are You Lookin' At?, "I was standing in a cold parking lot while the cops tried to talk an armed, criminally-inclined man out of a motel room. The guy in the room, who was wanted on a variety of third rate motor vehicle charges, had decided that threatening to kill his girlfriend and her child, as well as himself, was a reasoned response to the threat of maybe three years in jail." "I'm a newspaper reporter.", he continues, "Out in the parking lot with me was a television reporter who was wearing a lovely teal green outfit but didn't know the police chief's first or last name. At one point in the evening, she said something to me about "that cigar or pipe or whatever it is." I was indeed smoking a pipe, and I took it out of my mouth and held it up where she could get a good look at the thing. "You don't know if this is a cigar or a pipe?" I asked her. "I don't smoke, " she said. "I don't bowl," I said, "but I know the difference between a bowling pin and a bowling ball."'

And so it goes, through 132 pages, sometimes comical, sometimes tragic, and sometimes equal measures of both, in addition to a foreword and afterword by Rick Newcombe and Marty Pulvers, respectively.