WILLOW CREEK — The Route 11 Irving gas station and towing service changed hands this week, but the new owner is adding something that was never on the inventory list: a piece of town history.
Randy Boucher, 34, purchased the station from the retiring owner and has already begun renovations. The most notable addition is a framed display on the wall behind the counter showing four generations of Boucher family Ice-Out entries, beginning with his great-uncle Albert Boucher — the winner of the very first Ice-Out competition in 1927.
“I grew up hearing the story,” Boucher told the Gazette. “Albert predicted April 7 at 11:47 AM. The ice cleared at 11:52. Five minutes off. He won a dollar and eighty cents. That piece of paper in that frame is the original entry slip, passed down through the family. I thought this was the right place for it.”
The Boucher family has maintained an unbroken streak of Ice-Out entries since 1927 — a record that Randy Boucher intends to continue. His own entry for the 2002 competition, his twenty-first, is already submitted.
“My grandfather used to drive down from Houlton every spring just to watch the ice clear,” Boucher said, gesturing at the framed display. “He would bring his sons, and they would bring their sons. The Boucher name has been on the entry list for seventy-five years. I am not going to be the one who breaks the streak.”
Clara Winslow wrote a front-page feature on the new station owner, noting that the framed entry slips had already become a destination for Ice-Out tourists. “Randy Boucher understands that a gas station can be more than a gas station,” she wrote. “It can be a museum. It can be a gathering place. It can be a piece of the story that brings people to town.”