Thanks for the memories

To the editor:
    Let me introduce myself, I’m Bob McGee a former resident of Houlton and employee of the Houlton Pioneer Times. Hopefully this will be interesting in your bicentennial period celebration.     I was born in Hartland, N.B. in 1934 and moved to Houlton in 1939 where I attended school from first to 10th grade and then moved to Hartford, Conn. in the 1950s. Houlton is still my hometown and my friend Gerald Jackins of Lincoln Street keeps me informed which is why I know of the celebration.
    My dad was a lumberman, farmer and trucker. He cut and hauled many a hardwood log from “up on B” to the mill in downtown in the ‘40s. H was also a tractor and digger man for many farmers in the area during the potato season. I have picked many barrels of potatoes myself and can recall plainly picking potatoes side-by-side with the German prisoners and exchanging food items with them at lunch time. I have acquired newspaper articles about the prisoners and know the rest of the story.
    I will try to make short stories of the rest of my memories of Houlton. We lived most of the time in a big house on Court Street across from the hotel that is now a parking lot for the post office. I was employed by the Times about 1949 while a sophomore in school and worked in the press room inserting section “B” into sections “A” on Thursday. Real tough job. I also loaded assembled pages into dumb waiters to go down to press room and also loaded lead bars on the Linotype machines.
    My younger days as a “kid” were filled with hunting, fishing (especially ice fishing), being in the Boy Scouts (Ken Wetmore being the Scout leader after the war). I climbed Mt. Katahdin many times in the ‘40s and shot the rapids with Ken when the ice was out in the spring. I miss fiddlehead picking time, too.
    Anyway, enough of the story, I’m now retired in Florida. Thanks for the memories.
Bob McGee
Pembroke Pines, Fla.