A down-on-his-luck man in tattered clothes stood outside an Auburn grocery store, helpless against the frigid night, holding out a feeble hand.

The begging man stared without hope, clutching a small but poignant cardboard sign: “Desperate, need food, need hope,” it said.

Such is the sign of the times.

For many, things were not so great in ’08.

It is hard to argue otherwise.

From start to finish, something was off-kilter in 2008, anything but business as usual.

For many middle- to low-income families, it was a painful year in the pocketbook. A majority of folks – personified by the working class in Auburn – struggled to pay the bills.

On Dec. 1, the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research made it official: The American economy has been in a recession since last December.

What took them so long to figure that out?

Auburn had been hemorrhaging small businesses and jobs for many months; strip malls and business suites emptied out; regulars abandoned sit-down restaurants.

Brewer Chrysler closed shop, a victim of company-wide consolidation. Cavanaugh Ace Hardware, a fixture in the community for 121 years, closed its doors.

Layoffs persisted. Downsizing continued. Another costly Boeing strike came and went. Longer lines appeared at the local food bank, where tireless volunteers struggled to keep the shelves stocked.

And an ugly strike between a freight company and its angry truck drivers continued.

The economy never got better. Projects stalled. Downtown redevelopment moved slowly. Holiday sales sagged. Our newspaper got smaller.

The sour climate, the deepening recession only highlight a forgettable year for many.

There has been little to like about 2008 – a year that brought us bailouts and bare baristas, outrageous summer prices at the gas pumpand sticker shock in the grocery aisle, mud-slinging campaigns and mavericks, a lingering war and deadly gang activity in our neighborhoods.

It will be remembered for destructive hurricanes, a councilmember’s ill-advised sign-gate episode, the awful state of collegiate and pro football, the flight of the Sonics, a sliding Green River Bridge, and an inconvenient, year-end winter blast from Mother Nature.

It also will be remembered for those who passed. We lost a brilliant, prominent doctor in a plane crash. We lost an adorable, courageous 6-year-old girl to cancer. We lost a young man – who had a passion to help youth in Pacific – in a senseless shooting.

We lost a friendly local drag racing icon and businessman, and the thought-provoking, 101-year-old Mrs. B.

Tragically, we also lost a 2-year-old tot, trapped inside a submerged car in the Green River, victim of a horrible accident that will forever haunt the 16-year-old driver. The other passenger, a 13-year-old boy, was never recovered from the cold and cruel waters, bringing no closure to the grieving family.

All the bad luck and disappointments of the past year can dim spirits as we turn to tomorrow. But perhaps it can pose as a challenge to stand up and try again.

With new national leadership and new ideas, we can only hope to ride out this storm, regain our feet and truly believe that better days are ahead.

If anything, ’08 tested our resiliency.

Sure, the year gave us many wonderful things, but it left us considerable heartache.

It left its mark, its mess.

Now it’s time for ’08 to go. It’s time to push forward, however difficult that might be.

’09, show ’08 the door.

Good riddance.