Yesterday …

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(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – Nov. 22, 1997

BANGOR – Reading Stephen King’s best novels has always been like riding a scream into a nightmare – he startles your worst fears into revealing themselves and pushes forward with such great skill you are forced to confront them with a quickening heart.

His 23-year career as a novelist is unprecedented. With his recent publication of “The Dark Tower IV: Wizard & Glass,” King has now published 27 best-selling novels under his own name, six best-selling novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, five best-selling collections of short stories, one best-selling work of nonfiction and nine screenplays.

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VEAZIE – The removal of flashboards in the Veazie Dam should have no impact on surrounding areas, Bangor Hydro-Electric officials said.

Flashboards, which raise the height of the dam, capture water pools behind the dam. The water then runs through the energy-generating turbines, creating more energy and making the dam more efficient, spokesman Bill Cohen said.

25 years ago – Nov. 22, 1982

BANGOR – Terry Steel works with iron. A blacksmith originally from the Washington area, he operates Steel Forge in the western Maine town of Bridgton. But his biggest project to date is going up in Bangor. It’s a wrought iron fence, 270 feet long, being installed at the West Broadway home of Stephen and Tabitha King.

Steel says Mrs. King first approached him about the fence a couple of years ago after seeing his work in the Bridgton area, where the Kings used to have a summer home.

“Steve wanted the bats,” Steel says of two iron animals flying above the posts on the main gate. The gates also feature a spider web motif. The scroll work and pickets for the fence were pounded out by hand.

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BANGOR – “Why does the city of Bangor need a new slogan to represent us to the world?” asked Louise M. Prince in a recent NEWS letter to the editor. “Bangor has had a wonderful slogan from way back in history. And the ‘Queen City of the East’ is just as fine a name now as it ever was.”

Prince was excoriating the Bangor Junior League’s theme and logo contest, whose winning entry was “Bangormania!”

Why Bangor is called the Queen City could be fodder for another contest, but choosing a winner might prove impossible – the answer seems lost in antiquity. Entries might read something like this:

. Bangor is known as the Queen City of the East because the lights circling the Bangor Standpipe, overlooking the city, resemble jewels in a crown.

. Bangor is called the Queen City thanks to a line in Henry David Thoreau’s “The Maine Woods.” Referring to a trip north through Bangor in 1846, Thoreau wrote, “There stands the city of Bangor, 50 miles up the Penobscot … like a star on the edge of night, still hewing at the forests of which it is built …” In later years people corrupted the famous line until it read “like a diamond on the edge of the wilderness.” Diamonds are linked with royalty, hence the Queen City.

. Bangor is nicknamed the Queen City of the East because its location on the Penobscot River, magnificent residences and extensive commercial activities have caused it to become outstanding among cities in Maine.

. Historian Jim Vickery believed Bangor was called the Queen City because it was second to Portland, the King City, a reference to Maine’s first governor.

Judges could discard entries one and two since the Queen City reference appeared in print before the completion of the Standpipe in 1898 and Thoreau’s trip in 1846.

50 years ago – Nov. 22, 1957

BANGOR – The Bangor Junior Chamber of Commerce by popular demand has brought the Metropolitan tenor Norman Kelley to Bangor and will present him in concert at the John Bapst auditorium.

The program to be offered is varied and should display the versatility credited to Kelley. He arrived in Bangor accompanied by Miss Elsa Fiedler, concert pianist and accompanist.

This will be the tenor’s second concert in his hometown area. His first, last June, was a triumphant success.

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BANGOR – The Jewish Community Center Theatre Guild entertained at a midnight party at Pilots Grill in honor of the cast of “For Love or Money.”

A beautiful gift was presented to Mrs. Milton Lincoln, who directed the play so skillfully. Officers of the guild who arranged the party are Mrs. Morris Rubin, president; Mrs. Philip Ingeneri, vice president; Mrs. Leo Kupsenel, treasurer; and Mrs. Philip Gotlieb, secretary.

Among those attending were ushers at the two evening performances: Kathy Viner, Sandra Gass, Bonnie Silver, Lois Ingeneri, Susan Braverman, Marilyn Stern, Toby Slep and Dawna Atkins, all members or pledges of Chi Omicron Phi sorority.

100 years ago – Nov. 22, 1907

BUCKSPORT – The Christmas tree business is one of the industries in this section that bring in to the farmers quite an amount of money for what is almost worthless. Each fall large numbers of these are shipped from here on the cars to New York and Philadelphia. A number of teams are now hauling them in to the station here and they will begin before long to ship them away.

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BANGOR – Wilbur H. Bowen, a rural free delivery carrier, is a crack shot with a stone. While Mr. Bowen was coming through Holden, he espied a partridge upon a fence. He picked up a stone, hurled it and struck the bird in the throat, killing it. And he has the bird to prove it.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin