Popular John McDonald, a renowned storyteller and humorist from Maine, passed away recently.

Several health issues, according to McDonald’s publisher Islandport Press, led to his death at age 78.

Islandport released a statement calling McDonald a “leading disciple of the traditional form of dry humor and Downeast storytelling” who helped bring it back in style during the 1960s.

While pitching his first book in the early 2000s, McDonald had been writing a weekly newspaper column since the 1990s. In 2002, he released his first book, “A Moose and a Lobster Walked into a Bar,” which was a compilation of his newspaper columns, as well as some original material and transcriptions of his stories that had previously only been told orally. It shot to the top of the best-seller lists for books about Maine and became a runaway success in Islandport.

Apparently, locals in Islandport knew McDonald “was known to use it as currency, sometimes successfully convincing local shopkeepers to accept signed copies of his book “in trade” for gasoline and other commodities by keeping a case of those books in his car at all times.

McDonald published other books and a CD collection of his works.

To prepare for his nearly 30-year run as presenter of “The John McDonald Show” on WGAN radio, McDonald worked as a radio DJ and a newspaper reporter.

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