Roger Renaud remembers the day he got his first musical instrument 62 years ago. 

He was 6 years old and his father gave $150 to a man selling instruments from his kitchen on Noble Street in Lewiston. Renaud played that trumpet for 35 years.

Like most horn players in the Lewiston-Auburn area, Renaud bought his trumpet from Carroll Poulin Sr.

“We all went to Carroll’s,” Renaud, a saxophonist for The Moon Dawgs, said. “He was a landmark for many years.”

Poulin opened Carroll’s Music store out of his Lewiston kitchen in 1945 before moving to Court Street in Auburn. Poulin owned the shop for 45 years before his son took the business over and moved it back to Lewiston.

Selling and repairing instruments was a good business to be in back in the 1950s and ’60s, said both Poulin, 94, and Renaud, 68.  “There were a lot of musicians back then,” Renaud said. An organized union of L-A musicians was 200 members strong.

Poulin’s shop was sort of a gathering place for many of those musicians. Renaud remembers “going down to the shop on Fridays to talk to the guys.” “It was like going to a toy store,” Renaud said. “You dream but have no money.”

“I really miss that,” Renaud said about no longer having a store that caters to the horn players and wind instruments. Carroll’s Music Center closed in 2009.

Poulin may no longer own the store, but musicians still stop in to visit him. Renaud went over to Poulin’s Lewiston home recently to shoot some pool, and the table was quickly covered in horns, not pool balls.

Poulin’s instruments are no longer for sale. He collects them and puts them on display in “The Museum.” “I collect anything with sound effects,” Poulin said.

Many students got their first taste of music from Poulin. “He taught a ton of kids,” Renaud said. Poulin would visit the schools with his instruments to get kids excited to join the band. “Carroll was always there, he always helped the schools”.

Poulin remembers students asking, “How do we get to Carnegie Hall?”

“One word: Practice,” Poulin would say. “That can get you anywhere.”