I have never had the pleasure of visiting Lewiston, Maine.

I can’t wait to see it.

Lewiston may be an enjoyable place to spend a summer vacation or eat hot-buttered lobster, but these days it is better known as home to the world’s most inventive and very possibly hobbling criminal.

It is also the kind of place where grown men willingly shove electric guitars in their pants to avoid having to pay for their instrument.

Seriously.

The Associated Press on Apr. 3 reported that police were on the lookout for a man accused of stowing a Fender Stratocaster in his pants.

Two other men, accomplices in this crime, served as lookouts, police said.

A Fender Stratocaster is possibly one of the most important instruments in the history of recorded music, running a close second to that great equalizer for tone-deaf folkies and children, the kazoo.

Buddy Holly and Jimi Hendrix played Stratocasters, the latter famously setting one on fire at the end of a concert performance, which of course was no reflection on the quality of this fine instrument but just a clever scheme to avoid paying his bar tab.

Not even a consummate showman like Jimi Hendrix, so far as I have been able to determine, ever tucked a guitar into his dungarees.

There is a good reason for this.

Scientific testing conducted by Orillia Today’s consultants has demonstrated that a solid-bodied electric guitar does not sit comfortably inside the pants of a grown man, and may even lead to chronic limping and other problems, including but not limited to extended periods of social alienation.

(For the sake of comparison, the consultants are conducting followup testing with various other instruments, including mandolins, fiddles and the greatly dreaded tuba.)

Amazingly, the problem of guitar theft by pants is not a new one for the residents of Lewiston, which is situated on the banks of the Androscoggin River, a body of water that has sadly never been cited in popular American music because it sounds too much like someone battling a chronic throat condition.

The Associated Press article notes that, “strangely enough,” the music shop victimized in the recent theft “has seen the method before. A man did the same thing in 2006 but was caught as he tried to walk out.”

I swear it wasn’t me.

I paid for my Stratocaster.

She is finished in a colour known as ocean turquoise, a retro shade of blue speckled with fine metallic sparkles that shine brilliantly when the light catches it at just the right angle.

It has a whammy bar that stretches the strings impressively until they are completely out of tune, at which point I will spend the next five minutes retuning the guitar while my faithful audience – the cat – rubs his face against the corner of my amplifier.

In the interest of serious journalism, I snuck home at lunch on Wednesday to experience for myself the difficulties involved in theft-by-pants.

Jeans proved impossible, the Strat barely squeezing past the top of my ragged Levis, and khakis fared no better, the back end of the guitar wedged tightly inside my belt line.

The cat threw me a look as I climbed into flannel pajama bottoms, the wide billowy type that have as their main selling feature a stretchy waist capable of accommodating a small foreign car.

It was a perfect fit for the guitar, and entirely legal because the blinds were drawn and what someone does in the privacy of their own bedroom is their own business.

The whammy bar was a killer, though.