100 Years Ago: 1924

Stanley Pike of East Jay was held up and robbed of about $42 Friday night in a lonely spot on the road between Jay and Livermore Falls. This community which had not entirely recovered from the excitement of the wholesale breaks and robberies of a few nights ago, is stirred up anew.

Friday evening about 10:30 o’clock, Mr. Pike was returning home in his automobile. About an eighth of a mile from the home of Wallace Dow there is a wooded road that turns from the right, off the main road leading to Jay from Livermore Falls. At this spot, Mr. Pike was driving his car slowly, when a man jumped on the running board with a revolver, and ordered Mr. Pike to drive into this wooded road. Mr. Pike did as ordered and when off the main road was told to get out of the car and to put up his hands.

At this point Mr. Pike put up a fight and said he knocked one fellow down, and struck the revolver from the bandit’s hand, but a third party hit him over the head with a club.

Mr. Pike lay unconscious there for about two hours, when he regained consciousness, he found his hands tied behind his back and a gag drawn through his mouth. He then rose to his feet and walked to the nearest house and from there was taken to Dr. C. R. Smith’s office in the village. He found upon examination that he had been robbed of about $42, which was on his person.

50 Years Ago: 1974

Bandleader and composer Duke Ellington died early today in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City after undergoing treatment for pneumonia. He was 75. Ellington, who had been hospitalized for several months for a respiratory infection that developed into pneumonia, died at 3:10 a.m., according to a hospital spokesman.

Ellington had been unable to attend celebrations for his 75th birthday in New York last month. The celebration brought together 35 jazz groups and soloists in a tribute to the jazz master.

25 Years Ago: 1999

Black flies and big business. Typewriter troubles and feminist reviewers.

Novelist Carolyn Chute’s description of the annoyances, resentments and rebelliousness in American life is writ large and small in her conversation, same as in “The Beans of Egypt, Maine” and her other writing.

Nature’s pests are to be expected here in the hills and valleys of western Maine. But the social and economic pressures she sees to keep down the poor and less privileged – “the Wall Street religion” – draw stern rebuke from this prophet of populism.

Chute says she hopes the violent class warfare drawn darkly in her latest book, “Snow Man,” doesn’t come to pass, even as she suggests with a shrug it’s already under way. “People are either in despair or they’re angry. And some people are speaking out.”

Rejecting ideology of the left or right while seeking common interests among the downtrodden, Chute says working people bypassed by prosperity have nothing to lose but their cheerfulness.

Her philosophy sounds much like Snow Man Drummond’s, as when he tells his two more cultured lovers with a sneer: “It ain’t left or right. It’s up and down. You’re either up or you’re down. That’s all there is to it. OK?”

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

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