NORTH STONINGTON, Conn. — It may have been April Fool’s Day but it was no joke on April 1, 1968, when Jim Tillinghast took a job with the town Public Works Department. He was 44 at the time and had worked a variety of jobs, doing carpentry, installing septic systems and even, as a teenager and young man, working at the old woolen mill in Ashaway. “The foreman knew me pretty good, and he just kept after me,” Tillinghast said, explaining how he came to be a town laborer. Almost 48 years have passed, and Tillinghast, now 90, is still on the job, working full time. “He’s the first one in in the morning and the last one to leave at the end of the day,” said Don Hill, the interim head of public works.