At a meeting of the Lewiston Fire Commission last evening it was unanimously voted not to grant the use of one of the steamers of the department to the Lewiston Baseball Association to pump water from the canal into the South End grounds for an ice skating rink. The request was made by the officers of the Association and was considered at length by the Commission, but it was finally decided that as the fire engine is public property it could not be used consistently by private persons to flood grounds for a skating rink to which admission will be charged.

50 Years Ago, 1956

• The Androscoggin County Registry of Deeds soon will go into the photostatic copying method for recording deeds and other documents to speed up work in the registry, it was decided yesterday at a meeting of the Androscoggin County Commission.

• Tremendous increases in farm mechanization all down the line were reported today by the Census Bureau. It’s a story of more tractors, trucks, cars, combines, corn pickers, balers, milking machines, power feed grinders and, in sequence, the near doubling of the productive capacity of the men on the farm between 1940 and 1954.

25 Years Ago, 1981

• Currently, the government is $23 million short on loan funds because some 50,000 health professionals, including 5,716 doctors, have not repaid their low-interest government loans. An aide to committee member Sen. Charles Percy, Illinois Republican, has estimated that as many as 5,000 students preparing to be doctors, dentists, optometrists, pharmacists and nurses have been denied government loans this year because of the abuses of past recipients.

• The Cincinnati Bengals and the Dallas Cowboys clinched division championships Sunday, while the Miami Dolphins and the Buffalo Bills guaranteed themselves at least wild-card berths in the National Football League playoffs.