If the stories we hear are correct, it looks very much as if the lobstermen along the coast would do more to protect this much sought after fish this summer than the state can do. They have formed a union and will not only decline to handle short lobsters, but they will endeavor to see that others do not. This is the best way of enforcing the law we have yet heard offered; and if the fishermen carry out this idea, they will in the end reap the benefit. It’s a good move and one deserving encouragement.

50 years ago, 1957

• It happens for the third and last time this century. It won’t occur again until 2019, some 62 years from now. What is it? Why, the observance of Patriot’s Day and Good Friday on the same day.

• Credit, the boon of businessmen and purchasers, is being looked at in a different light at an Auburn auto service station, which has this lettered on a large front window: “Use Our Easy Credit Plan – 100% Down, Nothing Each Month.”

• Ammunition exploded and whinned like revolutionary muskets at Lexington Bridge on the anniversary of that skirmish, when an oil burner exploded and caused a fire which demolished a one-story, two-room, wooded house last night at East Avenue Lumber Co.

25 years ago, 1982

• A $1 million gift has been given to Marcotte Nursing Home in Lewiston to be used for construction of its new 280-bed facility. Donated by Sisters of Charity, this represents a major gift in a capital campaign to be kicked off later this year for the new facility.

• Gov. Joseph E. Brennan has signed into law what amounts to reprieve for the Maine sardine industry, allowing the 14 canneries along the coast to continue dumping screened, oily fish wastes into the sea for the coming two years. The industry has contended that meeting the state’s clean-water standards could force them to shut down.