100 years ago, 1918
Rabbits will win the war! That is the latest slogan of the food enthusiasts and a corporation of local business men headed by F. C. Tibbets and Grant Rogers, of Auburn, have set about to prove it. Under the name of the Androscoggin Food and Fur Co., several of the prominent professionals and business men of these cities have formed a pre-organization syndicate, which has contracted for one of the largest farms in New Gloucester — Grey Gable Farm, which they will stock with rabbits. The farm is between the New Gloucester station and Danville Junction — offering almost unlimited possibilities for the development of this new industry.

50 years ago, 1968
A proposal to make Auburn businesses report how much of their solid waste is recycled each year was put on hold Monday to allow time to develop a comprehensive policy on commercial recycling. That new policy could contain an ordinance change that would require any commercial trash hauler working in Auburn to be licensed and could set up penalties to ensure that haulers are not taking solid waste outside the community along with the recyclables, said Mayor Richard Trafton during a City Council workshop Monday. Bonnie Lounsbury, a member of the Citizens Recycling Advisory Committee, suggested the city must first decide whether businesses have the right to recycle by whatever means they choose or if the city, through the Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp., has any rights to the recyclables.

25 years ago, 1993
Selectmen at New Gloucester tabled a Special Amusement Ordinance to ban nude and nearly nude dancing following a public hearing that drew no comment from the one citizen sitting in the audience. Selectmen by a 4-0-1 vote tabled action to the ordinance to give the public further chance to comment on the seven-page document before voter approval at the annual town meeting in May. Selectwoman Ann Thaxter called the document “a preventative versus a reactive ordinance.”

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