The river has been roaring again.

It happens just about every year at this time, and it’s always exciting to watch the mighty Androscoggin flex its muscle at the Great Falls between Auburn and Lewiston.

Much of the year, the Great Falls are an expanse of dry rock, but in the spring when rain and warm weather speed up the snow melt, the water thunders over the falls and the river spills over its banks. Some years, it’s much worse than others.

I have been looking through books of flood photos put out by the Sun Journal after the floods of March 11-23 in 1936 and April 1-3 in 1987.

There also was a major flood in 1885 that flooded the business section of Livermore Falls and took out a leatherboard mill and a lot of other buildings and bridges downstream.

The news photos of 1936 showed the torrents of water rushing over Gulf Island Dam at a rate of 212,000 cubic feet per second, where the previous record flow had been 60,000 cfs. The photos showed cakes of ice on Auburn’s Main Street, in front of the Roak Block, and they showed more than a dozen freight cars loaded with gravel parked atop the Maine Central Railroad trestle to weigh it down and keep it from washing over the falls.

Men were pictured on ice and flotsam risking their lives to break up jams threatening North Bridge, now known as Longley Bridge.

The photos from the 1987 flood also showed serious damage, but it was less violent. Better river flow management was yielding results. The flow over Gulf Island Dam during the flood of 1987 was 102,000 cfs, compared with an average April flow of 12,500 cfs.

There’s another side to this river that flows so peacefully throughout most of the year.

I learned a bit about it in the writings of Arthur G. Staples, whose noted column, “Just Talks on Common Themes,” appeared daily in the Lewiston Evening Journal about 90 years ago.

You can still drive near the Androscoggin’s banks in Lisbon Falls and, in late summer, see some magnificent displays of water lilies. You might marvel at this wonderful display of nature, but you probably would fail to credit the actions of a long-ago Lisbon Falls resident for this gift.

Staples tells about Edward Plummer, whom he describes as “a big man in his day who presumably had too much business to bother with flowers.”

Plummer built railroads, ran lumbering operations on the Androscoggin and supervised logging crews all the way from the Magalloway to the boom at Lisbon Falls. As he pushed the reach of railroads to the Rangeley Lakes years ago, Plummer found the time and wisdom to admire those floating ivory blossoms with hearts of gold. He brought the roots of many of these plants from distant ponds to his home, where he planted them in good ground near the river’s shore.

Staples described train rides through Lisbon Falls where boys were often seen selling the pond-lilies to travelers.

He wrote, “We perpetuate our names oftener by the acts of thoughtfulness for those who are to come after us than in any other way.”

When the river roars, we sit up and take notice, but Staples was also moved by the nearly invisible powers of the river.

He said, “I count it a special dispensation for a boy to be born on the shores of one of our four great Maine rivers.”