Dairy cattle, Woodland, ca. 1922
Nylander Museum
Text by Rachel, a student at Presque Isle Middle School
Images by Maine Memory Network
Albert, my grandpa, was born in Caribou in 1942. He has lived there, except for the four years he went to college in Bangor.
He lived next door to a family who had a big barn and remembers running as fast as he could to get past the horses. His neighbors farmed with horses that would pull big drags with rocks piled on it. The drag would make flat paths. That looked like little roads. Albert and his friends would take their tricycles and wagons and pretend that they were driving on the highway.
When Albert was in high school, he worked at the JJ Newberry Company as a stock boy and cleaner. He also worked for his father by cutting down trees and making pulp. He and his brothers didn’t mind working for their father, but it was hard, stinky work. He got wet and slimy, and it was awful. Even the horse went crazy from all the black flies.
When he was in seventh grade, Albert had a paper route delivering the Bangor Daily News. He had fifty customers, and woke up at 5:00 AM and delivered the paper every day for six years until he graduated from high school. No bike though, because that was how one of his brothers had died.
Albert decided to attend Husson College for four years. He was the first in the family attend, even though he was not the oldest child. He came home for the summers and sometimes on the weekends.