100 Years Ago: 1923

A copper still and coll, a barrel of mash, some beer, a little “moonshine” and a barrel of empty bottles were seized by Deputies Levesque, Maloney and Dobbins at 96 First Street, Auburn yesterday afternoon.

50 Years Ago: 1973

(Sun Journal photo) DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS…It’s obvious that Billy Robichaud of 103 St. Croix St., Lewiston, has a problem, and it’s quite obvious, too, what the problem is: should it be a pie, or jack-o-lantern? The 138-pound ‘punkin’, which stands two feet high and is six-feet-one inch in circumference, was brought to the Robichaud home by a member of the family who bought it in Delaware. Billy, who is 4, knows this size pumpkin would make a lot of pies – more’n a young fellow like him could wade through in a month of Sundays, for instance. And yet, it would also make the biggest jack-o-lantern on the block…something a fellow could take great pride in. The problems a young man has…

25 Years Ago: 1998

A collection of children’s books from the 19th and 20th Centuries has been donated to the University of Southern Maine’s Glickman Family Library through a bequest by the late Barbara Winn Adams of Maryland.

The books were left to USM to be used by teachers, parents and authors of children’s books, according to the donor’s daughter, Susanna Adams. The Edith C. Rice Collection, named in honor of a children’s librarian in Arlington, Mass., that Winn Adams knew in the 1920s, consists of approximately 2,100 volumes, including a number of first edition volumes and first U.S. editions. Winn Adams had told her daughter that Rice had inspired her to read and later to begin collecting children’s literature.

The gift, appraised at $23,500, will become part of USM’s Special Collections in the Glickman Family Library.

The collection includes first editions of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Men,” Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie,” and works by authors J.R.R. Tolkien, Antoine de St. Exupery, Beatrix Potter, A.A Milne, C.S. Lewis, Walter de la Mare and a number of famous illustrators, such as Maxfield Parrish and Maurice Sendak. In addition to children’s fiction (nearly 1,500 titles), the collection is strong in folk tales from around the world and has an additional focus on young adolescent literature.

The material used in Looking Back is produced exactly as it originally appeared although misspellings and errors may be corrected.

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