In writing these columns, I find that one story is always leading to another. Something of interest will lead me to look up another old newspaper. Those searches brought me full circle yesterday.

I was reading May 1924 editions of the Lewiston Evening Journal on microfilm at the Auburn Public Library because of a clipping I had seen about motoring through Turner. Purely by chance, I turned to a page with this headline: “A Former Famous Farm Now Owned By F.S. Sargent.” Complete with three photos, it told about my grandfather’s hay and wood-cutting business and much more new information about this old homestead where I now live.

But this isn’t about the things I read about old Echo Farm. I wanted to get an idea of what a day in L-A was like at the time my forebears lived here. I was looking for the unusual and thought-provoking things that were taking place – and I found some good ones.

I wrote three weeks ago about Shiloh, the controversial religious institution founded as “The Kingdom” in Durham. Here, on the front page of this same 1924 newspaper was this headline: “Auburn Klan Considers Buying Shiloh For Its Androscoggin Klavern.”

An un-named Auburn Klansman was quoted as saying the Klan wanted Shiloh “to remodel the place to suit the purposes of the KKK, there to maintain headquarters for the secret operation of the ‘Invisible Empire’ in this part of the State.”

Judge Henry E. Coolidge, who held the deed, couldn’t confirm the report of a $200,000 offer, and the purchase never took place. Nevertheless, the Ku Klux Klan was a formidable force in Maine in the early 1920s.

A few days later, the Journal published a photo of a huge night-time KKK initiation in Gardiner. The photographer, H.R. Mansur, said it was the biggest flash photograph ever taken in Maine, presumably a great flash from magnesium powder.

The photo shows 60 or more people in white robes and pointed hoods. A 60-foot-tall burning cross is in the background. The caption notes that thousands of people witnessed the ceremony.

Another headline caught my eye: “Masked Highwaymen Rob Lewiston Taxi-Driver On Road Into Norway.”

Willie Bazinet told of how, at 2 a.m. on a Saturday, two masked men (“presumably foreigners,” the story says) jumped in front of his Hudson touring car. At gunpoint, they took $163. One man sped off on a green motorcycle and the other took Bazinet’s car, which the robber wrecked and burned not far down the road.

There also was a lot of humor in the newspaper. A couple of examples bore the headlines “Passing the Beehives” and “Crowds Enjoyed Troubles of Motorists on Lisbon Street.”

A new traffic control used cast-iron disks stacked to a height of 6 to 8 inches to mark the driving lanes between curb and trolley tracks on Lisbon Street in Lewiston.

The stack resembled a small beehive and the plan confounded a lot of drivers. It was drawing crowds of people who stood and laughed at drivers.

Here’s how one reporter described the scene: “Along comes a chap with his best girl. The chap is smoking a cigaret and looking into his girl’s eyes. He shoots around the corner of Pine and off toward Sabattus with a whirl of the wheel. After him legs (Officer) Davis and hollers him to a standstill. Bobbstay Sis with her hair afloat looks frightened. Son looks weak around the gills. Davis makes the outfit back up and ‘gee’ around the corner onto Lisbon, at the same time administering an official lecture that goes like this …’Say, How do you get this way? Can’t you see them markers. Next time you pass to the larboard of one of them diskoes you get a term in Thomaston. Them are put there for USE, not for ornament. Now you go back and try that again, and come around easy.”

What did the crowd do? It jeered and gave three great resounding ‘blahs’ to every confused motorist, and groaned in disappointment when anyone got it right.

Those sidewalk crowds could have some fun these days at the round-abouts in Auburn.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can e-mail him at [email protected].