WILTON – The Franklin Memorial Hospital Auxiliary will sponsor a raffle all day on Friday and Saturday, Aug. 1 and 2, at the Blueberry Festival. They plan to be located at a site near the paint shop. A one-seater Old Town kayak will be raffled.

Quilt show

WILTON – Wilton Blueberry Festival activities at the Wilton United Methodist Church include a quilt show from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Aug. 1 and 2, in the church sanctuary.

A lawn sale will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday on the church lawn and blueberry muffins, coffee and ice tea will also be available.

On Saturday, a luncheon will be available all day. The menu includes grilled hot dogs, meatball subs, lobster and seafood salad, chicken salad rolls and a choice of blueberry desserts, such as pies, cheesecake with blueberry sauce, blueberry cake with lemon sauce and wrapped blueberry cake pieces.

In case of inclement weather, the church dining room will be available for the luncheon diners.

Banquet, auction

RANGELEY – Rangeley Lakes Chapter of Ducks Unlimited will hold its first annual banquet and auction starting at 5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 2, at the Rangeley Inn. The event will be the first one for the chapter that started in March. Members plan to make it an annual event.

The door prize will be an Old Town canoe. Items to be raffled include a ladies table, a green wing table, knife lover’s table, prints, guns, decoys, DU chairs and tables.

The event is open to the public. Prices for members are $70 a couple, $50 for singles and $25 for Green Wings. For more information, call Chick at 864-5115.

Historical Society

STRATTON – The Dead River Area Historical Society will host a demonstration of the telephone system used in Stratton until the 1950s at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 2, at the Historical Society building at 170 Main St.

Anna Smart, operator of that system, worked for Somerset Telephone Co. and will present a program on the use of it.

She worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for a dollar an hour and moved up to $1.50 when she took over 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., which were the busiest hours of the day. At that time, $1.50 an hour was considered a good wage.

The company provided a bed for the late night workers. Around 10 p.m. the switchboard would quiet down so the telephone operators turned off the system and set an alarm. Any calls that came in after 10 p.m. set the alarm off to wake the operator, who then had to stay up until the call was finished.

Smart will tell about private lines and party lines and how many short rings or longs rings it took to contact people and share information about how things were in the not too distant past.

Anna Bean Smart lived in Dead River as a small child then moved to Flagstaff until it was flooded. At that time she moved to Stratton and finished her schooling then married Bill Smart. They have two sons, Robert and Bryan. The Smarts now live in Cornish.

For more information, call Mary Henderson at 246-2271.