100 Years Ago: Sept. 28, 1911
• It is really too bad that there cannot be a crosswalk somewhere on Sweden Street. The rains this week have made the road very muddy, but nowhere on Sweden Street can a crosswalk be found. No blame can be attached to the road commissioner, who has done all possible with the small appropriation allowed.
• Potatoes are at $1.50 per barrel today.
• Those interested in the construction of a government post office in Caribou will be pleased to learn that the Aroostook Realty Company have received a check for the land sold to the government from the Records property on Sweden St.
• The starch factories in the county have received but a small run of starch potatoes thus far this summer, the farmers absolutely refusing to waste their time handling starch potatoes while the high price for potatoes continues to exist and some of the farmers have found a ready market for their starch potatoes at a higher price than that which the starch factories are able to pay for the product.
• Work on the Caribou Public Library is progressing very satisfactorily.
75 Years Ago: Sept. 24, 1936
• The grand opening of Hackett’s Department Store will occur Sept. 26. The store supercedes the Alice Dainty Shoppe, which has been doing business as a ladies’ apparel shop. The new large store has been completely modernized in every respect and is very attractive and up-to-date. Every department is stocked with new fresh goods just received from the New York and Boston markets. Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Hackett, are the proprietors.
• Mr. and Mrs. Norman Holts of Perham, held their wedding reception Tuesday evening of last week at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Holts. There was a large attendance of relatives and friends, the gifts were many and useful.
• The first perfect score to be made by an amateur on the Northern Skeet Field in Caribou was chalked up Sunday by Parkin Briggs of Caribou.
• The Merchants Bureau of the Chamber of Commerce met Monday evening to discus several matters of important to merchants of the town and they decided to keep open all retail stores certain evenings throughout the harvest season. Beginning next Monday stores will be open Monday and Wednesday evenings in addition to Saturday evenings until Oct. 24. This is for accommodation of those who find it difficult to get in to do their shopping during the daytime.
• Fred Giberson has purchased a truck for use in trucking wood and potatoes from the Giberson-Crossman farm in Caswell.
• There have been six cases of chicken pox reported in Perham recently and four new cases of measles.
50 Years Ago: Sept. 28, 1961
• The Caribou Business and Professional Women’s Club, in connection the observance of national BPW Week, has announced that Elizabeth Hitchings, a teacher at Caribou High School, has been selected Business Woman of the Year.
• Torrential rains yesterday washed out the potato picking in the area, and a good percentage of the thousands of laborers in the fields came to town to get in some extra shopping but the big harvest sales blow-out is when the Caribou Board of Trade will stage its annual “Diggin Daze.”
• A Catholic cemetery in Stockholm has taken on a “new look” thanks to the effort of a Stockholm citizen and his three sons. Abandoned and neglected because of a wet and partially inaccessible location, the cemetery has been converted to a beautiful resting place by Edwin J. Bossie, who was appointed chairman of the Cemetery Improvement Committee. Letters were sent to all having relatives buried at the location and though the response was gratifying, only enough money was received for a few loads of gravel for a new road, bulldozing the lot and paints and stencils for markers. Bossie began his improvement in the children’s corner. He and his three boys used sleds while there was still a crust on the snow in the spring and hauled out 58 cedar poles which they had cut. They were later peeled and driven into the ground marking the places were 58 children were buried. The markers were given three coats of paint as were the pine cross pieces on which the name of each child was stenciled in black.
• Waitts, Inc. held its annual fall fashion show Tuesday evening at Hotel Caribou. Models included: Miss Barbara Higgins, Miss Sharon Dow, Miss Nancy Chase, Mrs. Jack Mayo and Mrs. Boynton of Loring AFB; and Mesdames Peter Johnston, George Shipley, William Anderson, John May, Verne Byers, Leland White, James Hagood, Sheldon Scott, Frederick Johnson and O.P. Pierson.
• The Caribou Junior Chamber of Commerce is reporting good results with its annual Light Bulb Sale. The campaign is now in full swing with Jaycees making door-to-door calls at local homes. They sell their bulbs in bargain packages. Proceeds from the sale go toward the Jaycees’ fund for Babe Ruth Baseball, which they have been sponsoring for many years.
