YESTERDAY …

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(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – April 17, 1998

KENDUSKEAG – Kenny Cushman of Kenduskeag put his long kayak into the stream that meanders through town and explored Six Mile Falls.

Not that Cushman, the area’s top kayaker, isn’t familiar with the notorious stretch that turns into a canoe graveyard once a year during the running of the Kenduskeag Stream Race.

It’s just that he isn’t used to seeing all the darned rocks.

After a couple of weeks of warm weather and virtually no rain, the Kenduskeag seems to have lost much of its bite. As a result, many of its teeth are showing in ways that paddlers rarely see.

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BANGOR – Peter Poliakine is a businessman. He wears a businessman’s suit. He has a businessman’s handshake. He takes notes. He makes eye contact. He wants you to know he cares. He wants you to care.

For Poliakine, the new executive director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, that means he wants you to be interested in music. And past that, he wants you to be interested in the prestigious history of the community orchestra – interested enough to want to buy tickets and give donations and make all the philanthropic moves of a good patron of the arts.

25 years ago – April 17, 1983

BANGOR – The rehabilitation of Bangor, both its downtown area and environs, has not been generally studded by wise decisions. At the moment the future of the business nucleus of the city looks decidedly precarious as old companies like Cortell-Segal’s and Sleeper’s either relocate in the mall or vanish completely.

Dr. Deborah Thompson, a consultant for the Bangor Historical Preservation Commission, said she too has deplored the sweeping changes that resulted in the city’s center looking much like London during the blitz when renovation was well under way in 1965.

One of the disasters of the vast changes that altered the face of Bangor was the Bijou Theater, a delightfully baroque house with such embellishments as cherubim and seraphim.

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BANGOR – Members of the Bangor Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dedicated their meetinghouse on April 10.

Construction of the building at the corner of Grandview Avenue and Essex Street began in the winter of 1978 and was completed in May 1979.

Richard Nickerson, former bishop who supervised the construction of the meetinghouse, spoke at the service. Nickerson said Bangor has had an impact on the growth of the church in northern Maine.

The Center Street meetinghouse was bought by St. Joseph Hospital in 1979. The building now serves as a school of nursing, with several offices also located there.

50 years ago – April 17, 1958

BANGOR – A major power failure at the Tibbetts Street substation of the Bangor-Hydro Electric Co. plunged parts of Brewer, a good part of Bangor and surrounding towns on both sides of the Penobscot River into darkness.

Service was out from 9:22 to 11 p.m. when Hydro crews transferred and rewired a transformer, re-establishing power via the submarine cable to the western half of the west side of the city and the West bank towns of the Penobscot.

The NEWS composing room ground to a stop and the lead pots cooled rapidly as The NEWS missed its first press deadline at 11 p.m. for upstate delivery. Editorial crews worked through the blackout with lanterns and candles, and copy was available for the composing room crew as soon as the machines were ready. Despite a delay of an hour and a half, the paper rolled off the presses in time for delivery to all subscribers

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BANGOR – A 3,984-mile cross-continent trip from San Francisco will end in Bangor today as one of two Studebaker Scotsman caravans completes its national “mile-a-thon” contest.

Bangor is one of two eastern terminals in the cross-country tour which started March 30 in San Francisco. The other caravan is scheduled to reach Miami tomorrow in the final lap of the 4,240-mile trip.

Both caravans are composed of a two-door Scotsman sedan and a pickup truck. The miles per gallon figures to be reached by all four vehicles will be the basis for the national contest, which has attracted thousands of entrants eager to guess.

A welcoming committee will include Mayor Galen Cole and City Manager Joseph R. Coupal Jr. The caravan will bring gifts to city officials from the mayor of Willow Springs, Mo., the only community in the United States visited by both caravans.

100 years ago – April 17, 1908

CARMEL – The interior of Hotel St. Elmo is receiving a fresh coat of paint and paper. John S. Ryan is doing the work.

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BUCKSPORT – The three-masted schooner Margaret B. Roper, Captain Frothingham, having completed repairs, has sailed for Frankfort to load stone for New York.

F. O. Rogers finished loading the second car of potatoes and will begin loading the third car. The spuds are coming in quite freely and in fine condition.

The seven, 10-inch Rodman guns from Fort Knox were brought across the river on the schooner Robert W. They were loaded on the cars to be taken to their future homes. Sgt. John O’Rourke, in charge of Fort Knox, has had the supervision of shipping the guns, and Lewis Hopkins and Charles Coohoon the contract to take the guns from the Fort and load them on the cars on this side of the river. It was quite a heavy piece of work, as the guns weighed 71/2 tons each, but they got them over and loaded without any serious trouble.

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BANGOR – The golden era of the apartment house has apparently dawned in Bangor, after having been much desired for a very long time.

Richard H. Downing has purchased from Mrs. Fanny H. Stone the property at 148 Essex St. and will erect there a three-story, six-flat apartment house, with every modern convenience, including janitor service.

There will be hardwood floors throughout, handsome finish and each apartment will contain six rooms. The neighborhood is most desirable and the apartments will probably be spoken for long before the house is finished.

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BANGOR – When dawn lighted the early morning scene of the fire in Broad Street, people wondered how the firemen had been able to check the flames in the teeth of a gale. They did it by pluck and obedience and the guidance of one of the best chiefs who ever wore a fireman’s uniform. For, at no time during the memory of the present generation, has there been more danger of general conflagration.

If the flames had spread a little farther, the game would have been all up, for there would have been nothing else to throw at it. That is what two strong reserve engines are for – to put a final punch after ordinary resources are exhausted. Engine 4 furnished two streams, Engine 5 furnished two streams and six more streams were run from hydrants. Ten nozzles in all were drowning out the flames after the second alarm was sounded.

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DEDHAM – George Moore, who has been sawing wood with a gasoline engine in East Bucksport and vicinity for several weeks, has returned home.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin