100 Years Ago: 1925

George W. Bumpus, for the past 24 years City Clerk of Auburn, was honored yesterday at the City building by fellow workers in celebration of his 78th birthday.

A party was held in the Water Board Office; the ladies of the building, Mesdames Roberts, Jennings, and Gillis and Miss Leach prepared a dainty luncheon.

City building workers made up the party, Horace J. Cook making the presentation of a gold pen and pencil to the guest of honor who responded briefly.

50 Years Ago: 1975

Mrs. Imelda Dufresne of 99 Birch St., Lewiston, was honored at a family dinner party given at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Emma Baillargeon, Warren Avenue, Lewiston, in celebration of her 86th birthday which was on Jan. 23.

Mrs. Dufresne was born in Lewiston in 1889 and is an active and vivacious lady, showing her self reliance by still maintaining her own home. She enjoys her hobby of embroidering pieces which she often gives away as gifts. She also enjoys television programs and keeps up with the afternoon “soap operas” and game shows.

Her opinion of the world today was summed up in a very few words, “It’s not like it used to be.”

25 Years Ago: 2000

John Coffey was steam and sweat as he pushed and pulled the long steel saw through another section of 16-inch thick pond ice Friday. Following the scored lines, Coffey and about six others had been working at the job of cutting ice into blocks the old-fashioned way for most of the afternoon.

Playing Claredon Waters at the Norlands Living History Center, here Coffey was among a group of about 20 Penn State University students who were spending two days living in the past.

The temperature hovered in the single digits Friday and a mild wind added to the chill on Bartlett Pond but the students, some of them working bare handed, were far from cold.

“If you ever want to get back to being one with nature, drop back to the 1800s and you’ll sure see,” Coffey said, wiping his brow, taking a breather from his work.

Each year for the last 18, Professor Gerald “Corky” Potter has brought a group of students from Penn State’s Shaver’s Creek Environmental Learning Center to Livermore for a taste of rural Maine life the way it used to be.

“They either love it or they hate it,” Potter said back at the barn shuffling the 80-pound blocks of ice into the ice house.

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