100 Years Ago: 1924

An article for November 9, 1924 is unavailable therefore an article from November 9, 1923 is being offered instead.

Twenty-five cottage owners around the shore of Lake Auburn have been ordered into court to answer to a charge of pollution of the Lake Auburn water.

Papers were served on them by Deputy Sheriff Bechard and Supt. Benj. F. Keegan of the Lewiston Water Department Thursday and Friday.

Several land and cottage owners are to be interviewed, it is understood, so that the number on whom such papers are served may be increased in the next few days.

50 Years Ago: 1974

Vivid memories of World War I battlefields and a deep and abiding love for the cavalry in a recent letter to an Auburn man breathes new and exciting life into the days preceding Nov. 11, 1918, the Armistice Day which ended the First World War and genesis of the upcoming Veterans Day observance.

The recollections come from James R. Brooks, now an 88- year-old Madison man who had moved to the Maine community early in this century from his birthplace in Northbridge, Mass. With the advent of World War I, Brooks crossed the border into Canada where he joined the Canadian Cavalry.

“I just wanted to go to war,” Brooks recalled in a telephone conversation, from his Ingalls Street home this week.

He dismissed any notion that he’d been a horseman before signing up with the cavalry. “A lazy man wants to ride rather than walk,” he declared good-humoredly.

25 Years Ago: 1999

Saying the state should be doing more to screen children and protect them from lead poisoning, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is bringing U.S. senators and national health experts to Lewiston Monday, Nov.15, to call attention — and seek solutions — to the problem.

The hearing, which will offer testimony to the Subcommittee on Public Health of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, is being held here because the city’s old housing stock makes Lewiston children more vulnerable to lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning can cause learning disabilities and hyperactivity, and can adversely affect every system in the body. It stems from lead-based paint in older homes. The paint was banned in 1978. Lead-based paint used before 1960 was the most toxic, which is why lead poisoning is most likely in homes built before then.

In Maine, about half of all homes were built before 1960; Lewiston has among the oldest housing stock in Maine.

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