100 Years Ago: 1920

Horses racing down Congress Street neck and neck, old time river drivers bobbing logs in a race through the rapids, and two well known Central Maine  businessmen are principals in a toe to toe boxing match, are among the multitude of original features that are being planned for the Rumford  Merchants’ Annual Street Fair that starts Monday, August 23. Though the fair is nearly two weeks away, the various committees are working night and day to bring about an early completion of the plans.

50 Years Ago: 1970

Harry Thistle of Auburn is the man who has been up there with the birds in the area of the High Street Congregational Church steeple for the last few working days. Thistle, a painter employed by painting contractor David Smith of Poland has been putting a new coat on the church steeple. He expected to be at the very top of the steeple today. Inadvertently in Saturday night’s Journal, a picture showing Thistle at work, identified him as Smith, the man with whom the church officers contracted to get the job done.

25 Years Ago: 1995

Tom Tatham and Taron Robinson had trouble sleeping when they first came to stay with the Hayes family.  It wasn’t a boogeyman under the bed or shadows on the wall upstairs in the Hayes’ big farmhouse cape on West Auburn Road that scared them. The two 8-year-old boys from New York City weren’t sure what might come in through the open windows, besides the sound of chirping crickets and the cool evening breeze. “The things that we enjoy and appreciate … other people may not have the freedom or luxury to enjoy, said Lincoln Hayes, who, with his wife Priscilla hosted the two boys for two weeks this summer.

The material used in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared, although misspellings and errors may be corrected.

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