100 years ago, 1917
Since 12 o’clock last night, Sheriff Stevens has been in charge of affairs at the County Buildings. The rumsellers have also been preparing for Stevens. since Saturday and late last night practically all of the bar-rooms had been cleared and the stocks stored away for safe keeping. Local rumsellers and gamblers know Stevens. And Sheriff Stevens knows the local rum-sellers and gamblers. He knows the tricks of their trades and the places where they are plied. It has in general been taken for granted that the lid would go down after midnight of Sunday and stay down for an indefinite period.

50 years ago, 1967
Coburn School on Bates Street, Lewiston, is where piece-meal renovations have been made over the years and where the city would spend another $40,000 within six years under a three-school plan proposed by the Finance Board and Mayor-Elect William Rocheleau Jr. The mayor-elect has said that Coburn, Wallace and Dingley schools should be fixed up before they are condemned. At Coburn, about $10,000 was spent in the late 1930s. The windows on the first floor were installed about 15 years ago. A third floor, leaking and allegedly a fire hazard, was removed 10 years ago.

25 years ago, 1992
The front steps of Auburn’s last remaining one-room schoolhouse are gone, the windows boarded over. A faded sign above the door summarizes the tiny building’s past: “School District No. 4, West Auburn, 1843-1950.” No one wants this 148-year-old building on Boothby Street, no one knows quite what to do with it and few people seem to care about its local historical significance. The School Committee voted in September to turn the property over to the City Council, which is likely to consider its fate at a meeting early in 1992.

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


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