Page 6 - Spring 2026

The Children of Houlton

By Leonard Smith

Editor’s Note: This article was sent to us for publication in the North Star Magazine by David Lawrence ’60. He received it
from his cousin, but he or his cousin didn’t know who the author was. Ironically, I received this same article from the author.
If Mr. Smith or someone that knows him could send me some additional information on his background, I would like to
acknowledge him more in the Fall/Winter ’26 issue. Enjoy this trip back in time- truly a gift from the author. (Photos by the
editor.)

There’s a particular kind of cold that only Aroostook
County children know. Not the cold that hurts—the
cold that wakes you up, makes you feel alive, turns
your breath into tiny clouds of possibility. That’s the
cold that raised us. Twenty below, and we’d still be
outside until our mothers called us in, our cheeks
burning red, our mittens frozen stiff, our hearts full of
a happiness we didn’t know we’d spend the rest of our
lives trying to find again.

We grew up thinking the whole world was like
Houlton. We thought every town had neighbors who
showed up with casseroles when someone was sick,
who plowed your driveway without being asked, who
knew your name and your business and loved you
anyway. We thought everyone grew up with unlocked
doors and summer nights that stretched on forever,
with nothing to do and everything to do, bored in the
most beautiful way possible.

Market Square was our universe. We didn’t need
shopping malls or theme parks—we had each other
and these streets that held every important moment of But here’s what they don’t tell you about leaving: you
our lives. First kiss behind the Temple. First heartbreak can move your body three thousand miles away, but
on a bench we can still picture. First job, first car, first your soul stays right there on those wide-open roads,
time we realized that being from a small town in in those endless fields, under that particular quality of
northern Maine meant something, made us different, light that only exists in northern Maine. You can spend
gave us a foundation that concrete and chaos could thirty years, forty years, fifty years away, and still wake
never shake. up homesick for snow that squeaks under your boots.
Still measure every new place against the yardstick of
Some of us left at eighteen and swore we’d never come home and find them all wanting.
back. The job opportunities weren’t there—not in the
‘60s, not in the ‘70s, not ever really. We scattered like We had nothing, some say. Poor as dirt. No
seeds in the wind: down to Bangor, out to California, opportunities, no future, nothing but long winters
all the way to Florida where the winters don’t bite and and short summers and the same faces year after year.
the sun doesn’t hide for months at a time. We built But we had everything that mattered, didn’t we? We
lives in places where nobody knew our parents or our had safety. We had community. We had the kind of
grandparents or that time we did that thing in eighth childhood where you could disappear on your bike
grade that everyone still talks about.

6 www.houltonalumni.com