Turning Back the Pages

100 years ago — July 1923

LIME ROCK — Mrs. Stephens who has had charge of Rockey Dell Hotel has resigned her position.

The Fourth passed very quietly in Lakeville, many of our citizens taking in events in other towns. The Sharon celebration was carried out satisfactorily in spite of the unpleasant weather and the ball games were all pulled off in spite of the threatening weather. In all respects it proved a more than usually safe and sane 4th.

The hay crop is being gathered and is reported as very good, but the flivvers do not eat hay.

50 years ago — July 1973

The buzz of chain saws and the pounding of carpenters’ hammers echoed in Salisbury and Lakeville this week as residents and contractors worked to clear and repair damage done by last Friday’s tornado. The funnel tore a three-mile path from The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville to the village of Salisbury, uprooting and shattering well over 100 big trees but causing far less damage to homes and businesses. Power and telephone lines were cut. Amazingly no one was killed or even injured by the storm, though one guest broke her arm in a fall at the blacked out White Hart Inn.

Two sisters from Amenia, N.Y., who had been swept partially over a waterfall on Mount Riga were rescued dramatically Monday afternoon as they clung together to avoid a further plunge. They are Mary Cunningham, 18, and Jane, 11, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence A. Cunningham of South Street, Amenia. Neither of the girls was seriously injured, although Mary sustained a cut on her right arm when she struck a rock, and both suffered some exposure from being in the icy water. Many people responded to help rescue the girls, including two camp counselors from Camp Sloane.

A letter of support signed by 322 area residents was sent this week to Steve Blass, pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The letter, circulated by the Canaan Chamber of Commerce, told Blass, a former Falls Village resident, that the mark of a true champion is the way he fights his way out of a slump, and that Canaan is as proud of him today as it was when he was making better headlines. Steve and the Pirates are having a tough year to date in 1973.

Only 11 days remain before Domenic’s Fruit Store of Railroad Street in Canaan becomes the first tenant in the Canaan Union Depot now under renovation. Domenic Macchi said this week that he will move his store to the station on July 16.

A new feature at the Falls Village Recreation Center is a fenced enclosure for little children. The idea is that the younger ones can play in safety while Mother has a chance to swim or teach her older children without keeping a fearful eye peeled in the toddler’s direction.

25 years ago — July 1998

Air Force Airman Jeffrey Fowlkes has begun his training as a security forces apprentice at Barksdale Air Force Base at Bossier City, La. He is the grandson of Evelyn and Raymond Fowlkes of Farnam Road in Lakeville and is a 1997 graduate of Housatonic Valley Regional High School.

One of the last tasks Polly Fitting might undertake before officially taking leave of the Douglas Library this week is issue a library card — to herself. In her 34 years as librarian there she has taken home books for her own reading with the initials “PF” written in where a card number should have gone, because she never needed one. At a reception in her honor last week she said she would either have to get herself a card or sneak books out, because she plans to devote a good deal of her retirement time to reading, something her job, ironically, has prevented her from doing as much as she would have liked.

Shareholders approved the reorganization of the Salisbury Bank and Trust Co. as a wholly-owned subsidiary of a newly-created holding company, Salisbury Bancorp, at the bank’s annual shareholders’ meeting on Saturday. This is the first restructuring of the bank since 1925 when the Robbins Burrall Trust Co. merged with the Salisbury Savings Society to become the Salisbury Bank and Trust

These  items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible.