Since I wrote a short blurb last week about the appearances of flags near the Lewiston end of Veterans Bridge, the clues have been piling up. But those clues come in the form of cryptic notes sent through the mail, brief messages on the answering machine and third-generation rumors that eventually blow into my ear.

The banners began appearing more than a month ago. An American flag rose like an apparition above the trees next to the bridge. Weeks later, two more flags colored the landscape like mirages.

I went in search of the first flag and found it after an hour of sweat and strain. It’s tethered to the top of a 100-foot tree through a clever setup of ropes and a pole. The person who trundled it up there, I reason, has to be of Paul Bunyan stature or gifted with the power of levitation.

The pair of flags on the other side of the roadway also appear to be attached to the tops of trees. Last week, I wrongly identified one of them as a Marine flag. The light on my telephone began blinking immediately.

“Here’s a hint for you. That’s not a Marine flag; it’s a firefighter flag.”

A second message with the same information came days later. Rumors of a retired firefighter with amazing agility began to surface soon after. Still, no one has come forward to claim the flag work.

Then Wednesday the most mysterious clue of all arrived. A package was delivered through the mail and was on my desk when I got to work. Inside were three pencils in the colors of the American flag and a short, strange note.

“Mark: The count is three.”

And it was signed, “Paul Bunyan.”

– Mark LaFlamme
Design time

Scott Lauze never planned on being an interior designer. And he certainly never planned on being a television personality.

But this week, he became both.

Lauze, a Maine native and an Edward Little High School alum, is the newest guest designer on the Home & Garden network’s “Curb Appeal” program. His first episode premiered this week.

Lauze redesigned the outside of a 1950s raised-ranch, California home, giving it a colorful makeover with new paint and a terra-cotta stained driveway.

“It was great fun,” said Lauze from his home in California.

Lauze graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick in the 1980s. He attended medical school at Tufts University and completed a psychiatry residency at Harvard University. He practiced psychiatry in Boston for 10 years.

But in the late 1990s, Lauze realized he wasn’t pursuing his passion. His calling was interior design, he said, not psychiatry.

After gaining some design experience, Lauze moved to California in 1999 and opened his own design firm.

Six months ago, a colleague saw his work and told “Curb Appeal” producers about it. Within months, Lauze had taped two episodes of the cable show that helps homeeowners make over the outsides of their houses.

Lauze’s first episode will air again on HGTV Sunday at 8:30 p.m. and Monday at 12:30 a.m. His second episode is slated to air in early November.

– Lindsay Tice
Historical ap-peal

For whom the bell tolls?

Well, about 100 years ago it tolled for thousands of people who were called to work at the Bates Mill by a colossal bell that once sat within its rooftop tower.

Then it sat for years on a side lawn of the mill complex, obscured by a sign and shrubbery. Now the bell, cast in 1867 by Henry Hooper Co. of Boston, is sitting at the entrance to the mill, waiting to greet millworkers who will be attending a reunion at the mill Sunday.

“It’s pretty neat, isn’t it?” asked Allan Turgeon, mill manager. “The minutes from the first directors boardroom contain a description of a bell.”

The bell was moved to its more prominent location Friday morning by Cote Crane Co. Turgeon said he believes it weighs about 1,900 pounds. The bell tower that once housed the bell was removed when Mill No. 2 was added to the original mill in 1915.

– Carol Coultas