LEWISTON – A pristine hatbox from Peck’s department store on Main Street. An undated, three-record set called “Songs of Bates College.” The 1967 Hudson Line bus schedule of Twin Cities routes.
Even a worker’s ID button from Pepperell Manufacturing Corp., a long-closed textile mill, that shows a friendly-looking man holding number 466 to his neck like a mug shot.
Anything Lewiston.
That’s Kevin Juskewitch’s collection.
He says he got started shortly after moving to the city from Rumford in 1973.
“I love history. I love old things. I feel like I wasn’t born in ’61, I was born way back. It sounds crazy,” he said.
Most of his finds come from yard sales, antique shops and eBay. For collecting purposes, nothing’s too obscure.
There are old thermometers with company logos, old canvas bank deposit bags, calendars, glass ashtrays and more than 100 postcards, the smallest of which are the size of two stamps.
All have the word “Lewiston,” a picture of the city, or both.
Juskewitch has a 1962 Street Directory for Lewiston and Auburn, a 1957 Geiger Brothers datebook, an old sack from the Sawyer Grain Co., a wooden coat hanger from New Method Dye Works, and lots of china plates depicting the Kora Temple, Bates College, the Great Falls, the Odd Fellows House in Auburn and the Auburn Library.
He’s not a stickler.
Plenty of his collection includes the other half of the Twin Cities.
“I’ve really gone overboard; everything I see I buy, which is bad,” Juskewitch said.
He’s noticed that as the city’s population has grown, collecting Lewiston has become more in vogue. “You’ve got more people to outrun.”
For the last decade or so he’s been particularly drawn to anything depicting the W.S. Libbey Mill. Juskewitch is friends with former owner Rita Jean and was given access to records kept in the basement.
In a dozen binders, snugly fit between acid-free pages, he has old pricing sheets – a white Trojan blanket sold for $1.11 in 1936 – old employment records, cotton spools, mileage rationing records and lots of pictures.
The mill’s interior is held together by peg-and-beam construction, and during one trip inside he pried a couple pegs from the floor. They, too, are part of his collection.
He’s happy it’s getting a new life through redevelopment.
“It’s about time. I thought it was great,” Juskewitch said. “I’m kind of addicted to the mill.”
Someday, he’d love to write a book about the Libbey Mill.
Other Lewiston mills have had books written about them, he says, but not his favorite.
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