You can't pay for the lights with that. Shortly thereafter, things began going downhill. She ticked off a list of events that have hurt her business. But others, such as the closing of Loring Air Force Base an hour north and the steep decline in Canadian business, are unique to northern Maine. Houlton's location at the end of Interstate 95 on the Canadian border is symbolic of so much in rural Maine.
Trucks rumble through town, raising dust on a landscape reminiscent of the Midwest.
Houlton is the shopping center for southern Aroostook as well as the county seat. Once part of the state's rural heartland, where picture post cards boasted potatoes as big as the wagons they sat on, Aroostook County exists on the margins of the other, poorer Maine today. Her store is now for sale. But the people, who refer to it simply as The County in tribute to their pride and independence, have slowly been disappearing for decades. Every year since 1989, business has declined at Desrosiers' clothing store.