I can be easily distracted when I’m looking through old newspapers, magazines and books. I’m side-tracked by all kinds of things that bring up unexpected memories.

That’s what happened recently while I was searching for an elusive nugget of information in the Auburn Public Library’s microfilm files of the Lewiston Daily Sun.

I can’t resist slowing down for a look at every movie page I come to. So, I decided I might as well turn this obstacle to my attention span into the particular object of my search.

The summer following my 1958 graduation from Edward Little High School seemed like a good target. What was going on in L-A? Would I be reminded of some movie I saw way back then that’s reappearing now on the classic movie cable channels?

The newspaper’s movie pages were absolutely filled with ads some 50 years ago. We may have more screens today, but the advertising space then was devoted to large illustrations like the lobby photos, and some were pretty lurid.

There were numerous dance halls, popular restaurants, and theaters – the Strand, Empire, Ritz, Priscilla, Community, not to mention the Lewiston, Auburn and Lisbon drive-ins and their occasional “Carload for $1” specials.

The possibilities for an evening out ran the gamut from a horror flick to a nationally-famous band or vocal group.

Walt Disney’s “Peter Pan” had been released just before the Fourth of July.

Kirk Douglas was starring in the acclaimed film “Paths of Glory” at the Ritz Theater. That was several years before the Ritz’s days of X-rated film screenings and its current transformation into The Public Theatre where top-notch stage presentations have replaced the silver screen.

Bear Pond Park was featuring a “Cowboy Variety Show” every weekend. If a longer road trip was in order, the ads heralded the Four Aces appearing on The Pier at Old Orchard Beach. A few weeks later, the Count Basie Orchestra was scheduled to play there.

The American Savoyards were opening their sixth season of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at Monmouth’s Cumston Hall. Thanks, to my father’s love of music, my brother and I saw just about all of the G&S plays there. At least one Gilbert and Sullivan production is still produced there every year.

Lakewood Theater in Skowhegan was presenting Skedge Miller (not a big name, but a familiar TV actor) in “The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker,” and a road company of “Damn Yankees” was bringing that popular musical to Maine a few weeks later in the summer.

Now, that was an ad that rang a bell for me. I had seen “Damn Yankees” on Broadway a couple of years earlier and I wanted to see how it compared. I thought I would never forget details of events like that, but for the life of me, I can’t remember if I saw the Lakewood production or another regional show.

I flipped the old Lewiston Daily Sun pages to Aug. 21-22, 1958, to see what was happening this day so many years ago.

Page one headline – “Arab Nations Reach Accord on Middle East” and “UN Approves Arabs’ Plan for Mid East.”

It was late in August and the drive-in theaters were pitching their “Dusk-to-Dawn” shows. The local papers also told about preparations for the annual fair, the harness racing and the World of Mirth Midway at the Lewiston Fairgrounds. Over many years, my grandfather and grandmother entered garden and floral exhibits, preserves and quilts in the fair competitions. Our family still treasures one of my grandmother’s first-place, postage-stamp quilts.

For all the ease of transportation today, and the multitude of entertainment options, it seems the variety – and, yes, the quality – was so much better back then. I hope our grandchildren are able to look back on today and feel the same.