Flying Saucers! Well, not that kind...

Hi everyone!  While things have been quiet here on the blog, I've been busy fitting in research around my foolish work schedule (too much overtime, bleah).  But in my delvings, I found a couple of things the other day that caught my eye.  I thought you all might like to see them too.  😄 

I'll transcribe the article in case the images don't load.  This one is from a winter 1958 article in the Bangor Daily News.

Warning Issued to Coasters By Old Town Chief

Old Town Police Chief Robert Lee reported today that one motorist who spotted a "flying saucer" while driving along Brunswick Street today was terrified but the chief reports it was no joke.

The "flying saucer" was a small child riding atop a saucer sled coasting from a steep bank across the busy street.  Luckily, he was not struck.

Lee issued a warning against such dangerous practices asking parents to tell their children not to use any grades for sliding that might end up in a street or intersection.

And in another winter issue of Bangor Daily News I found this photo, from two years later in 1960, which aptly illustrates the irresistible joy of sailing through the air on FLYING SAUCERS!!!

Caption reads:   

FOR REAL "FLYING" SAUCERS -- The man on the business end of a shovel might not display the enthusiasm for the season's snowfall that these two youngsters do.  But Mark Pooler and Susan Purinton of Bangor, both 11, beam with joy about the whole situation as they sail out into the air on their flying saucers over a bank of the wonderful white stuff.  (NEWS photo by Maher)

I hope everyone is having a great winter, and enjoying all the white stuff out there.  Before you know it, spring will be here! 

Bangor's Victorian Rowdies

Bangor Daily News ran a great piece this past Monday on the wild times some local lads had back in 1908!

Bangor High boys had rambunctious night in 1908
By Wayne Reilly
Monday, May 26, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

"HIGH SCHOOL BOYS HAD WILD NIGHT," declared the headline in the Bangor Daily News on the morning of May 15, 1908. "Threw Students Into Watering Troughs, Paraded Streets, Besieged Windsor Hotel ... Police Were Kept on the Jump." ...

Bangoreans were used to riots of all shapes and sizes. Usually these events involved a few drunken sailors and loggers or a crowd protesting a liquor raid. Occasionally, a small army of noisy University of Maine boys marched through town on their way to the theater.

Usually, a half-dozen big cops with nightsticks took care of things. But the ragtag mob of high school boys, reported at 200 strong, that charged about the streets of downtown Bangor for three hours one spring night a century ago was as unusual as it was humorous to everyone but its victims — and the school board.

While the newspaper reports never explained exactly what touched it off, the riotous behavior apparently had to do with hazing freshmen by members of the school’s military cadet program. The rioters were upperclassmen. A few friends must have accompanied them, because there were only 60 cadets regularly enrolled, according to Principal Henry White’s report that year. Their targets were a handful of freshmen who ran through the streets of downtown Bangor like scared rabbits chased by a pack of dogs.

Events began early in the evening after the school’s battalion of military cadets was dismissed from drill in the high school yard on Harlow Street, (where the Abbott Square parking lot is located today across from the Bangor Public Library). ... Hardly had they finished when members seized one of their number and drenched him under the pump that supplied the school’s drinking water.

A procession then formed for a march up the street to the watering trough in East Market Square (where City Hall is today). Another freshman was produced and ceremonially dunked. From there, the students swept across the Kenduskeag Bridge and on into Haymarket Square (where the KeyBank complex is today across from Pickering Square).

A third freshman was thrown into the local watering trough. "This time the victim was about half-drowned, only the tip of his nose showing above the sluggish water," wrote the Bangor Daily News reporter.

The crowd of onlookers was growing, and the police were becoming quite interested. "Patrolmen Meade and Reagan came up from the [Devil’s Half] acre and interfered," the newspaper reported.

Instead of breaking up the festivities, however, the boys retreated up the street to the Unitarian Church at Union and Main streets, where they met up with yet another snag — a popular police officer described in the Daily News as "Handsome Dan Kennedy, Beau Brummel of the police force and custodian between 6:30 and midnight of the destinies of upper Main Street."

... They headed back downtown to the Nickel movie theater on Central Street, where another freshman was hiding inside.

"They wanted to go in, but Manager Forrest had opposite views and the sight of four patrolmen and a half-dozen unsentimental ushers drawn up across the entrance to the big lobby had a quieting effect," reported the newspaper. Meanwhile, the freshman, who was apparently a bit sharper than his fellows, slipped out a side door and, eluding his pursuers, ran up the street into the nearby Windsor Hotel at the corner of Harlow and Franklin streets.

Discovering how it had been outwitted, the student mob surrounded the big hotel. A huge crowd had assembled to watch the antics. Hotel staff blocked the doors. Students ran up fire escapes expecting to find their prey in one of the rooms. "For a little while affairs assumed the proportions of almost a real riot," commented the reporter hopefully.

Half an hour later, the boys realized they had been outwitted again. With the help of hotel staff and a police officer, the intended victim had been dressed up in the head chef’s white apron and coat. With the collar pulled up high, he had walked out the door, pushed through the crowd and disappeared into the evening.

...

Read full article by clicking link here: [Source]

Perished twice in a week

I was pleased to make the acquaintance of Matthew Barker, editor of an Irish historical newsletter, last week when doing my regular stint at the Maine Historical Society. If we are lucky, we will see a lot more of him on our site as time goes on -- I hope to convince him to add his two cents to the mix here. Meanwhile, he passes to us an interesting article he found in an old issue of Portland's bygone newspaper, the Eastern Argus, about a peculiar case of the resurrection of a young Irish girl of Bangor, Maine.

The Irish Girl Who Went to Heaven

We get some singular facts from the Whig, of the case of the Irish girl, at Bangor, who our readers will recollect, being attacked a few weeks since with the cholera and apparently dead -- while her father went for a coffin, revived and told a wonderful experience of heaven -- whither she averred she had been, and of having seen her mother and friends in that happy place, and predicting the death of more friends. Here is the sequel to that touching picture:--

Although at the time of the seeming death of this child it was not supposed that her aunt Lynch was dangerously il, she not having cholera but attacked with dysentery. But she died the next day as stated.

On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Daniel Warren, a very worthy religious man, who has been much among the cholera patients, and feeling perhaps a little moved by curiosity, called to see the little girl, and addressing her cheerfully and told her that she appeared better and would soon be well, and get out in a day or two.

"But I'm going to mother again at four o'cl'k," she quietly and softly said.
"When, to-morrow?"
"No, to-day."

Mr. Warren endeavored to turn her attention to hopeful prospects of recovery; but the little sufferer was fast sinking away -- the death rattle was heard, and she soon ceased to breathe, her pulse stopped, and the fixedness of death was impressed upon her beautiful countenance. She was dead!

Mr. Warren looked at the town clock, in the distance, from the window, for there was no clock in the house, and it was four o'clock.

While pondering upon, to him the singular coincidents in this case, and about half an hour had passed when new signs of life appeared and again the spirit of the sweet girl returned. She asked for water and said she was tired and sunk away into a quiet sleep.

Since then she has been gradually recovering, but her elder sister who watched her so tenderly and who would so willingly have accompanied her to live with her blessed mother in heaven, was the next day taken with the cholera and the following day died and was buried.

...

Such are the simple facts in the case which we leave for the present without comment or attempted explanation.

Source: Eastern Argus, Portland, Maine, October 15, 1849

Tunnels Unearthed in Bangor

Some interesting items are emerging from the subterranean world of Bangor, as recorded by the Bangor Daily News. I wonder if the Bangor Explorers Guild has been in yet?

PHOTO shows Stephen Wintle of Facility Management Group Incorporated peering into a tunnel which was discovered in the basement of the Penobscot County Courthouse. The four foot deep tunnels snakes under the building and was used for ventilation. Photo taken Friday, March 28, 2008 for the Bangor Daily News by Kate Collins.

Bangor: Courthouse work yields surprises, hazards
By Judy Harrison
Friday, April 04, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

BANGOR, Maine - Murphy's Law has been hard at work in the basement of the Penobscot County Courthouse. Since renovations began last fall, the century-old building has revealed a few hidden secrets and more hazardous material than expected.
...
The latest discovery (a system of tunnels that appears to have been part of the original building's ventilation system> came last week when workers removed the concrete floor. The original building was completed in 1833. The tunnels are not on the plans for the courthouse that was constructed between 1901 and 1903.

Davis speculated that the system might have been left over from the original courthouse built on the same site. It was torn down when construction on the current building began as the 20th century dawned.
...
The entire concrete floor, several inches thick, was removed by hand, a few chunks at a time, in wheelbarrows last week. A new concrete floor is expected to be poured later this month once it's determined how to keep the ventilation system from being filled in, according to Collins.

"When they peeled the onion, they found more things that we did not know existed," Collins said. "We found silica that had to be removed along with more asbestos and more lead paint. One of the bigger secrets is that we've found more tunnels that we didn't know existed."
...
As the project began last fall and the walls came out in one room, old steam pipes and a tunnel, believed to have been installed when the building was completed in 1903, were uncovered. They have been sealed off.

They appeared to go under Court Street to the former YMCA building. That building was constructed in 1890 and replaced in 1970 with the current structure.

...
The tunnels yielded yet another unwelcome surprise -- several 5-gallon cans that contained a chemical that has yet to be identified. In addition to testing the cans, soil in the tunnels where they were found will be tested for contamination.

From a historical perspective, the finds have been exciting but sometimes a little scary, Collins said.

"We've truly peeled back the onion skin and we're making it a much better place and a safer place," he said. "One of the things we found was an electrical conduit laid in the floor that had rusted away. There were exposed live wires under the floor. That's simply too dangerous."
...
Read full article here: [Source]

92-year old surprised by early obituary

There's nothing like reading your own obituary in the paper to get your attention!

Wrong Maine woman declared dead in obit
By Aimee Dolloff
Saturday, December 15, 2007 - Bangor Daily News

BANGOR, Maine - Anne E. Hathaway was somewhat shocked Friday when a friend called to see if she was still alive.

The Orono resident’s obituary had appeared in Friday’s Bangor Daily News. The information in the short obituary and the list of death notices was correct, except for the part about her being dead.

The deceased was actually Ann Hathaway of Bangor.

Both women had made advance funeral arrangements at the same funeral home. When pulling the file for the deceased Ann Hathaway, the funeral home employee didn’t realize there were two women with very similar names and grabbed the wrong one.
...
At 92, Hathaway admits she’s no spring chicken but said that she’s not dead yet.

"I just laughed," Hathaway said. "I went to the pearly gates and opened the door and they didn’t have any strawberry shortcake and they didn’t like the way my hair looked."
...
"It’s just a matter of us checking the vitals a little more carefully," a funeral home employee said Friday.

To read the full story, please click here: [Source Photo by John Clarke Russ of the Bangor Daily News.