It was Feb. 27 and it had been one mean winter.
A series of snowstorms over the past two days had crippled the Twin Cities and the rest of the state. A foot of snow fell during the first storm. Nine inches fell in the second.

Mountains of snow 30 feet high lined the sides of some roads. Some reported drifts of up to 8 feet deep and 10 feet of snow covered some parts of the frozen Androscoggin River.

Rural roads and secondary highways were impassable. Coal dealers were nearing the end of their supplies and wood for burning was scarce. Around the country, 85 people had died in the storms.

Trains and trolleys ran sporadically and postal carriers were out on snowshoes. In Auburn, a Linn tractor used to plow roads had broken down. In an effort to open some of the roads, a crew of 100 men were out with shovels.

Norway undertaker Leroy Spiller was on his way to Hebron Sanitorium when his hearse became hopelessly bogged down in snow in West Minot. Spiller abandoned the hearse and set out on foot. He returned hours later with a sleigh.

Right behind the snowstorms was a blast of frigid air. At 7 a.m. in the morning, the temperature in Lewiston was recorded at 24 below zero. The air warmed dramatically over the next few hours, though, climbing to 18 degrees before noon.

That was still too cold for Edward and Theresa Finegan. The elderly couple had to be carried from their home when flames ripped through an apartment building at 133 Spring St. Three families scrambled out into the cold in the 6 a.m. blaze that started in a stove funnel.

In Lewiston, firefighters were arguing that they needed more substations. At the time, they were using a home on Pettingill Street to keep horses and sleds to be used for fire response in that end of the city.

The harsh winter was taking its toll on the health of Mainers and marketers were there to help out. In the Lewiston Evening Journal, a reader would find nearly a half-dozen ads for lozenges specially designed for coughs and cold.

Ludens were selling for 5 cents a box. Vick’s promised to control bad breath in addition to clearing up cold symptoms. Father John’s and the Smith Brothers claimed their cough drops were enriched with crucial vitamins.

But really sick people had a better option in Pierre Carter’s Medicine for Coughs and Colds. A fancy ad boasted that the product was concocted of cod liver oil, rum and honey. Mmmm. That’s a party any time of the year.

Crime wave, ’34 style

It was 1934. If I had been around to work for the Lewiston Evening Journal, there’s no doubt some evil editor – probably a chain-smoking man in a gray fedora – would have insisted I get out there and produce weather features.

In a very 1930s way, I would have whined mightily about this: “Look here, see? Weather stories are lame. Lame, I tells ya. What people want to read is crime, see? Crime, I tells ya. There are a thousand stories in the naked city, see?”

And with that, I would have been off to investigate such crime adventures as the cigarette thief with many names.

It seems a man who was going by the name of Arthur Weymouth was pinched while stealing smokes from the Elmer White Store on Minot Avenue in Auburn. A pack of cigarettes cost roughly a dime a pack back then but Weymouth stole them anyway. Probably saving up for a fedora.

Anyway, the Auburn cop who took Weymouth in thought the suspect looked familiar. Lewiston Police Capt. Joseph Picard was called in to help with the investigation.

Picard immediately recognized Weymouth from a similar heist back in 1920, when the butt fiend stole smokes from the Cloverdale Store on Court Street. Only back then, Weymouth went by the name of Frank Melder.

Further research revealed the cigarette thief had been stealing smokes for years. He stole them as C.A. Nelson, R.C. Stacey, Carl Nelson and Ralph Melvin McIntosh. Cops might have charged him with exceeding the legal limit of aliases, but there was no such crime at the time.

Instead, they employed the latest techniques and compared the suspect’s fingerprints with prints from the earlier crimes. No computers, no FBI database, just a tiptoe through the file cabinets to come up with the earlier prints. Arthur Weymouth and his many aliases were busted and sent to jail.

A young lady from Lewiston ran afoul of the law while hanging out with cohorts in a Boston apartment. When police raided the home on the city’s South End, they found a .38 revolver and a blackjack.

The 19-year-old girl was picked up on a parole violation and ordered to serve six months in the House of the Good Shepherd. The newspaper article did not mention whether she was wearing any sort of hat.

OK. So crime in February 1934 wasn’t exactly out of control in the Twin Cities. There was a ton of snow, disabled hearses and horses hauling firefighters. Boots and his Nite Hawks were jamming at the Auburn Hall and you could get in to see the show for 15 cents.

What’s my point? I don’t have one. I accidentally selected the wrong reel of microfilm while researching something in the newspaper library. I found myself scanning the headlines from 1934 and became absorbed. What can I say? Crime isn’t exactly out of control in February 2004, either, and I’m bored. Bored, I tells ya. Bored silly, see?

I also have a scratchy throat. Does anyone have a lozenge?

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.