View Full Version : Millinocket and St. Agatha, Maine
I guess I just jumped into some sensitive threads without even introducing myself, so I'll do that now.
I grew up in the UP of Michigan, near the Wisconsin border. I lived in Iowa for about a year before moving westward to Southern California, where I remained for twelve years. From there I went to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, minutes from the Mexican border, where I worked as a paramedic for twenty years. I married for the first and only time at the age of forty-eight, and my wife and I moved to Maine in 2001.
Other than EMT and paramedic school, I have attended various colleges for varying amounts of times, never sticking with any one thing long enough to earn a degree, the longest being a Bible college, which resulted in my working as a youth minister for a couple of years.
Apart from working several odd jobs after high school, mostly while attending college (I was a tow truck driver for a time, and one of those annoying telephone solicitors), I was a paper bag machine operator and adjuster for twelve years, then went back to school to become an EMT and paramedic after the paper bag business went bottom up. I have worked pretty much every position in EMS, including being the program chairman of a state college EMT program, then starting my own ambulance company with a partner. For the past decade or more, my wife and I have done various tasks online, including web design, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, and web directory editing, earning a sometimes frustratingly sporadic but generally sufficient income.
We own a home on a half acre of land in Millinocket, which is near the geographic center of Maine, and a hundred acres of undeveloped property near St. Agatha, which is in northern Maine, near the Canadian border. We are currently in the process of building on our St. Agatha property, and hope to eventually move there, at least for much of the year, although there are no available utilities and the road leading to our property becomes a snowmobile trail in the winter.
Welcome Kfander, so nice to have you!
Nice to see you, and glad you've jumped right in. I personally find the threads in the Dailies and Challenges forum to be very fulfilling and an excellent way to get to know some of the people on the boards.
Sad Eyed Lady
7-2-11, 8:31pm
Welcome, and glad you are here!
kfander,
I had to say hello to anyone who is living in Millinocket, Maine. By choice! My parents were from Millinocket, lo these many years ago....I haven't ever lived there but my aunt and cousins are still there. I am curious as to your reasons for choosing Millinocket and St. Agatha (which I have no geography for....adjacent to Quebec or New Brunswick?). I am currently living in New Brunswick, after a few years in Bangor, and thirty years in other parts of the US.
I hope you enjoy the forums...I think this is a great online space. And best of luck in St. Agatha! Winters are, well, you know, having been around for ten years.
My wife didn't want to live in Texas, where I had been for more than twenty years. I thought about moving back to the UP of Michigan but things had changed so much there that visits always left me feeling depressed. Yet, I wanted to move back to snow country. Knowing that Maine was very much like the UP of Michigan, we toured the state, looking for places we'd like to live, and houses that we thought we could afford.
We had $25-30,000, plus I knew that I could sell my interest in the ambulance company to my partner, so we thought that would make a good down payment on a house. We drove through much of Maine, including Dover-Foxcroft, Milo and Brownville on Route 11, but turned around there without going as far as Millinocket. We also drove to northern Maine, in the areas around Houlton, further north, and then west along Maine's border with Canada. Plus, we spent some time driving the backroads in western Maine, in the Rumford area.
My preference was for the St. John Valley. This includes St. Agatha, which borders Frenchville, just west of Madawaska, both of which are situated along the St. John River which comprises Maine's northern border with Canada. Edmundston, New Brunswick might be a good reference point for you, since it's across the river from Madawaska, Maine.
My wife preferred the Dover-Foxcroft area, since we had both agreed that we'd rather not live in a large city, not that Maine has much in the way of truly large cities. As is often the case, she won. After returning to Texas, we called a realtor about something in the Dover-Foxcroft area and were told about houses available in Millinocket. One of the houses had been turned into a three-unit apartment complex sometime in the 1940s, and the asking price was $34,000.
Great, we could practically pay for it in cash. We asked the realtor to send us some photographs, which she did. As it turned out, she was very honest about the problems that existed with the place, which had suffered as an apartment complex for people who partied a lot over the past several years and had some serious cosmetic problems, such as holes in the walls and doors, etc.
When we called her back, she told us that the seller had dropped the asking price to $15,000. Okay, I thought; what's wrong. We paid for an assessor in Milo, whom we had known from an online project that we'd both worked on, to go through the house to see what we might be getting ourselves into. He reported back that it was structurally sound. When we called the realtor back, she asked what we had paid the assessor, then said that the seller would deduct that $500 from the asking price, so we bought it for $14,500.
Although it's been an ongoing project, we have turned it back into a single-family home, deciding we didn't really need three kitchens, and the need for three bathrooms wasn't so great that we wanted to keep the toilet that was under the stairs.
Millinocket is a mill town that no longer has a mill, and which is a great distance from any city large enough to offer ample employment. Subsequently, houses still sell there for $20,000, and sometimes even less. Since we earn our living over the Internet, we can do okay there, while those who can't see beyond a weekly paycheck from an employer are left with few choices other than selling their houses and moving. When a third of the town is trying to sell their houses at the same time, prices tend to be on the low side.
So that's how we came to be in Millinocket. As for St. Agatha, I had never truly given up my desire to live in the St. John Valley, so when we could afford to buy some undeveloped land, we came looking up here and found a hundred affordable acres in St. Agatha, complete with bears, moose and deer, all of which appear regularly on my wildlife camera. The bear used the camera that I had mounted to a tree as a backscratcher a couple of weeks ago.
We plan to put a small camp on the St. Agatha land this summer, then developing it into something that we could live in off the grid, either temporarily or even permanently if we should ever decide - or have the need - to.
Thanks for the explanation. I live in the St. John Valley but in Fredericton, where the river is still tidal. The housing prices didn't surprise me; Millinocket has had that sort of depressed look for some time. Your house sounds great for folks who are handy and the price sure was right. Good for you to have someone local to check it out for you.
Thanks again.
Welcome from another sort-of ex-Mainiac - stationed on a ship in South Portland while in the Coast Guard for several years. Loved it! Maine is my favorite place in the world although I like the coast the best - and around Rangley Lake - and I hope to move back there permanently someday soon!!
I'm not a big fan of the coast, although I suppose I might be if there weren't always so many people there. The Maine coast, like other coasts, has become a very expensive place to live, so much so that many of those whose families have been there for generations can no longer afford to pay their taxes, and those who work on the coast no longer live on the coast. I grew up in a small town in the UP of Michigan and, although I have lived in some large cities, I am most comfortable in a small town. I like to know most of the people who I come across on a regular basis. The rural interior of Maine is much like the UP of Michigan used to be, before it became the playground for Michigan's lower peninsula.
Thanks for the explanation. I live in the St. John Valley but in Fredericton, where the river is still tidal. The housing prices didn't surprise me; Millinocket has had that sort of depressed look for some time. Your house sounds great for folks who are handy and the price sure was right. Good for you to have someone local to check it out for you.
So we're in the same Valley, only on opposite sides of the river. Oh wait, looking at the map, I can see that we're quite a ways away from one another, though. I'm actually further north than you are. The St. John here isn't much of a river. It looks like someone could walk across it in most places, and the flow is so slow that it appears to be standing still most times of the year.
On my property in St. Agatha...
http://www.miscellaneousstuff.net/bear1.JPG
In a different location on my property, the bear uses my wildlife camera (mounted on a tree) as a backscratcher.
http://www.miscellaneousstuff.net/backscratchbear.mov
loosechickens
7-8-11, 11:38pm
I saw this thread and kept thinking, Millinocket ME?, Millinocket ME? I kept thinking that town's name sounded familiar, like I'd heard it before, yet I knew I didn't know anyone there, so I finally Googled on it, and lo and behold, HERE is where I've heard of your town.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/education/27students.html
I remembered it because it just seemed like SUCH a strange story when I read it last year, and while I applauded the original thinking of the guy who was pushing the idea, really thinking outside the box, as they say, I found it difficult to think that Chinese students would want to come there. It didn't seem exactly like a hotbed of diversity, pretty "white bread", in fact.
SO.....curiosity killed the cat....Do you know how this worked out for the high school there? Were they actually able to lure students from China to come there and pay a lot for the privilege?
So interesting.....after some years in northern PA, I don't care if I ever see snow again in my life.....these days, in various places where we find ourselves, sometimes we can look at mountains around us with snow caps, but avoid the stuff like the plague right where we are, hahahaha. We search out "perfect weather", and with few exceptions (maybe a several day trip into ski country, and that's even unlikely since we don't have any winter clothing any more), I'm content to just watch snow on TV or beautifully arrayed on mountaintops looking scenic around me.
Interesting story of how you managed to land there, though. Besides perfect weather, we prefer a lot more diversity of population, availability of various ethnic foods, etc., but perhaps, if the Chinese students have come, you'll see more diversity there, too. Very interesting.
SO.....curiosity killed the cat....Do you know how this worked out for the high school there? Were they actually able to lure students from China to come there and pay a lot for the privilege?
Locally, that is a very controversial program, not due to reasons of ethnicity or xenophobia, for the most part, but due to the expenses that will be incurred in trying to implement it. The interests of the school are related to its budget rather than for the sake of diversity. Millinocket is a mill town without a mill, so the town's budget has been reduced dramatically over the past few years, with every level of municipal government taking a hit, even as the school budget has continued to rise, this despite the fact that student enrollment has gone down considerably, as people leave town for work elsewhere.
The school came up with the Chinese scheme as a way of not having to accept a cut in its budget. They got the idea from a couple of Maine private schools that had implemented a similar program, the key difference being that these were private schools with a proven record of superior education, while Millinocket (as much as I love the town) has been closer to the bottom than the top in testing results. Millinocket students don't even speak English well, let alone Chinese.
In order to accommodate the Chinese students, rather than taking a cut in its budget, the school has signed a two-year lease to take over an entire hotel in town, has purchased a new boiler system, and pretty much used the program as a reason for purchasing everything else that its budget would never have otherwise allowed them to afford, at taxpayer expense.
It's a controversial program, and I'm on the side that thinks it's going to be big waste of taxpayer funds but, largely since I'm working on building a new home in St. Agatha, I'm not in the mood to get politically active in opposition to it, as I have in the past on other issues. Millinocket is a nice place to live but it takes several years before people in town will accept someone "from away", which is often used to describe someone from elsewhere in Maine (I have even heard someone who moved to Millinocket from East Millinocket being referred to as being from away), so I'm not sure how at home a group of Chinese students will feel. My guess is that they'll hang out with one another, while the locals stick with their own. There's a lot to do here if you enjoy wilderness and snow-related activities, but the nearest department store or theater is sixty miles away.
Maybe it'll work out. So far, although we've paid for our school superintendent to visit China twice now, we have had no Chinese students.
Wow, I hadn't heard about the Millinocket-China connection. I do know that my nephew in central Maine took Chinese as his language in school; this was not an option when I went to school there (French or Latin only). I think that the state in general has tried to look outside (way outside) for resource options as things have always been financially difficult. Doesn't mean it will work, of course.
the bear photo and the video are great, though. Thanks for those! And yes, Fredericton lies way downriver, below the huge Mactaquac dam that provides electricity for much of New England. The river is still tidal here (did I say that already?). The St. John has an enormous watershed, despite being a small river upstream your way. Interestingly, the river has an alluvial plain in this part of NB that my partner the biologist tells me is the only one in this part of the continent. So the St. John is an important river for a number of reasons. Down here it has been known as the Rhine of North America, which might be a bit overblown, but all my relatives who drive here comment on the beauty of the river.
sorry if I sound like the tourist bureau! I hope your building plans work out just as you hope and that the bears remove themselves from your new home!
My wife may disagree, but I'm actually hoping that the bears remain. I think I have caught two different bears on my camera. We have a hundred acres, about a third of it being dense cedar swamp, so I'm thinking there's room for all of us there, although I expect they'll move across the road to the area we plan to keep wild, which is most of our land. On that property, I am thinking of digging a shallow and a deep pond, not for swimming or other recreational activities, but to help to sustain the wildlife on our property. Our land is bordered by a small brook so they are not without a water source, but I think it would be enhanced by a couple of ponds. I might stock the deep pond with fish, but there will be a shallow end and I won't be fencing the wildlife out of either of them. Did you know that moose have been known to walk to depths as deep as fifteen to twenty feet, and can stay underwater for a long time, feeding off of submerged plants, before having to come up for air?
loosechickens
7-9-11, 8:41pm
Thanks, kfander, for the "rest of the story" about the school system's scheme to bring in the Chinese students. I kind of had that impression from reading the article, mostly because that area sounded very similar to the rural, northern PA area where my sweetie was raised, and where we lived for some years before beginning our nomadic life.
That area of PA had much the same lack of diversity, high unemployment, population with little experience of other cultures, difficulty in even accepting spouses from "away" that married hometown young people who had gone out of the area for schooling or jobs, and met their spouses there. You had to live there for many years, and even if you lived in the same house for fifty years, if you were from "away", it was still the "old XXXXX house" (whatever local person had owned it before you).
The school system had the same lack of funding, and not the greatest track record in quality of education, yet the people in the area were great boosters of their home area, and kind of suspicious of anyone who came there from "away", even if "away" was somewhere else in PA.
And, I tried to imagine how a bunch of Chinese students would have fared there, and it just didn't seem like it would have worked out.
That area, after many years of being a backwater, has now been discovered by the oil and gas industry, and is in the center of the huge Marcellus Shale gas deposits, so it is undergoing upheaval, big influx of gas workers, increased crime and drug problems, environmental dangers, etc. They would have been a lot better off with Chinese students, I think, than the gas money....... ;-)
It sounds like a beautiful place, though.....I loved that area of northern PA, although it wasn't a really good fit, and even my husband, who grew up there, found it difficult to live there as an adult after living as an exchange student in Bolivia, going to college in Washington D.C. with a Junior Year Abroad in Madrid, Spain, and years of another life. Finding connection with the people he went to high school with, as adults, was not easy, and during the years we lived there, found that most of our close friends were people who had come there from "away".
We were only about fifty miles south of Ithaca NY and Cornell University, so when the lack of diversity, political differences and lack of ethnic foods got to us, and it felt like the whole world only ate iceberg lettuce and ate Wonder Bread, we would escape to Ithaca for the day and get a "fix"......
It's still fun to go back every few years....in 2009, we took the motorhome back east and spent the whole summer there, connecting with family and friends again, and it was nice, and certainly beautiful, especially in the fall, but I don't think I could ever live there again.
Your place sounds beautiful, and since your business is internet connected, you don't need to be dependent on that local economy, so can just focus on enjoying the area. You sound as though you'd probably fit in there politically, too, which is always a help.
Thanks for getting back with the rest of the story about the Chinese kids....I was intrigued when I read that article, and it had stuck in my mind ever since. Probably because the area sounded so very much like our area of northern PA, and my feelings about how an idea like that would go over there.......
I haven't been here for awhile, so I thought I'd catch some things up. As for the Chinese students in Millinocket, the school board budgeted for 60 Chinese students, including a lease on an entire hotel, where they were going to house them. They ended up with three Chinese students and I don't know if they have the run of the hotel or if they're making other arrangements. My understanding was that the board had taken out a 2-year lease on the hotel, however. Several people told them it was a stupid thing to do, but that's what you get when decisions are made by people who aren't gambling with their own money.
On a more personal, positive side, I don't know if I mentioned that I had been diagnosed with cancer. I have completed treatment for that, opting for radiation rather than surgery. I won't know for awhile whether I am cancer free, but will continue with the assumption that I am.
We now have a camp on our one hundred acres. Built by the Amish, the exterior is completed, with a metal roof, but I'll be completing the interior in the spring, which will involve insulation, partitioning and interior walls.
My favorite bear made it through hunting season. Although we aren't allowing hunting on our land, our property is surrounded by wooded land on which hunting is allowed. I'm not opposed to hunting, but prefer to see my wildlife on camera, by the way. For a month and a half, beginning about a week into hunting season, I didn't see any bears on my wildlife cameras, and was afraid that my favorite bear didn't survive the season. However, shortly after hunting season was over, he is back. He was probably hiding out deeper in the forest for the duration.
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