100 years ago, 1916

The Androscoggin river is rapidly falling to a normal summer height as the result of the continued warm weather. At present there is very little water coming over the falls after the mills start in the morning, and the boys have resumed their swimming in the deep hole at West Pitch.

50 years ago, 1966
Auburn police will be giving more intensive attention to the Spring Road area in the days to come. At Monday night’s City Council meeting, Ward One Councilman John W. White requested that the police department check the traffic situation in that area. He said he had received a call from a resident of the area complaining about cars dragging and hot rodding on the Spring Road He also requested that a study be made with regard to the speed limit on the Spring Road.

25 years ago, 1991
Jesse Cook, 64. a patriotic woodworker, has been making and raising flagpoles since his youth, but the one he engineered into position Wednesday in the front yard of his Pleasant Street home in Mechanic Falls is the tallest of them all — 42 feet. Cook spotted the tree that would become the pole in dense woods on Pigeon Hill two years ago. “It was so straight. It was ideal,” he said. Rick Parent cut it down for him and Cook had it hauled home, where since 1989 he has been removing the bark, smoothing the spruce and applying a protective varnish. City Councilman A. Neil McLucas dug a hole with his backhoe; Dominic Debiase, a World War II veteran and a mason, poured a five-and-one-half foot deep concrete base; and Bill McLean made a steel steadying frame which was embedded finto the concrete. Roger Goodwin made clamps to hold the pole in place and a top cap for the eagle.

The material in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared, although misspellings and errors made at that time may be edited.