Colley

Colley was born into a very religious family and they were religious to the point of fanaticism. His entire family didn’t just go to church on Sundays like most folks; they went to church three times a week and twice on Sunday. If they weren’t there to pray, they were there to work. They were responsible for keepin the small church clean and orderly while the Reverend, their father, sat in his office and waited for messages from God.

Colley’s father, Alfred, was a minister in the small Pentecostal Church, which was located just a few miles down the Masardis Road from their home. His father, a tall, gaunt man had brown eyes that blazed with a religious fervor that consumed his very soul. His grandfather, George, had been a pretty decent farmer and when he died, he’d left everything to his son, Alfred. But, his only son and heir wasn’t interested in farmin, it was easier to be a preacher and the farm had gone to wrack and ruin in a heartbeat. His father would have rolled over in his grave if he could have seen his rich, farmland lying fallow, year after year and fallin to hell.

The only crop the Rev was interested in growin was in his church. He ran a pretty tight ship and that was puttin it mildly. He had total control of his family and his church. He was good at what he did and that was givin orders. He gave the orders and left it up to his wife and children to carry them out. If his wife dared to mention that there was very little food, no money with which to buy more and another child on the way, the Rev would simply roll his eyes towards heaven and say, “The Lord God will provide.” The subject was closed.

By the time Colley was born there were already three daughters ahead of him. His father took one look at the newest child and that was that. He was left totally in his mother’s care. From birth on, Colley was indoctrinated into the Holy Roller religion. His mother would gather up the small children and walk the mile and a half to the church for the worship services. She’d send the older children down to the very first pew to sit and wait until she’d finished greetin all the church members then she’d march the small boy down the aisle ahead of her to join her other children in the first row.

If Colley made the slightest sound during his father’s preachin or dared to cry, he was immediately taken to his father’s office where there was a tiny coat closet. The offending child was placed on the floor of the closet and the door was firmly shut. No matter how hard he cried or how long he screamed and kicked the door, the small boy soon learned that no matter what, no one was goin to come and let him out. He soon learned that he must be quiet when he was in the “House of the Lord” and he was there most of the time.

As Colley grew, he could cite chapter and verse of the bible at the drop of a hat. All that he needed to hear was a phrase or a word and the memorized litany would roll verbatim off his tongue. Colley’s father took this as a sign that his son was both blessed and gifted and he would sigh and roll his eyes towards heaven. That was the only time that his father really paid any attention to him. He was a “preacher to be.”

By the time Colley got to high school, he had the reputation as bein strange, not in a bad way but in a religious way. Kids avoided him like the plague because he had the tendency to preach at them. He was holier than holy and he never made a mistake. It wasn’t too long before he’d acquired the nickname “Rev,” just like his father.

He’d stand in the gym and listen to all the talk that swirled around him and make snap judgments about the other kids, based on his own religious teachings. If he heard something that was profane or shockin, to him, he’d walk right up to the offending person and say things to them like “God is watchin you.” Or “Don’t you know that it’s a sin to take the Lord’s name in vain?” Or “The only place you are goin to go is Hell!” Colley was about as popular as a pimple on your ass!

Colley lived about five miles from Ashland High School on the Masardis Road and as he grew older he became involved in sports. It was nothin for him to run the five miles home after basketball practice each night and it wasn’t too long before Colley had developed into a really good runner.

By his sophomore year, Colley was a pretty good athlete and Coach Grant pressured him to join the varsity basketball team. Joinin the team was almost the death of Colley. As soon as his feet hit the hardwood floor, all the other players had one goal in mind and that goal wasn’t to win the game; it was to try and do something that would make Colley lose his cool. He was tripped, elbowed, cussed, harassed, fouled and molested to the point that Coach Grant finally stepped in and told the other kids to leave him the friggin hell alone and “play” ball!

Colley didn’t have a lot of talent in regards to basketball but there was one thing that he did have and that was control. After years of sittin in the dark in a small, broom closet at church, he’d learned that no matter what life handed him, he could stuff it way down deep inside and it would never surface again. He had learned that as long as he was “in control” he was ok.

Colley especially hated the road trips. Whenever the team had an away game, Colley would wait until the coach had boarded the bus and then he’d get on and look for a seat as close to the coach as possible. The away games were pure hell for him because the coach couldn’t see all that the kids did to him on that dark, unlit bus ride.

The other players stole his duffel bag and took out all his gear and threw it out the windows or tied it in such knots that most of the time; he couldn’t get the knots out before the game started. He took to wearin his sneakers all the time because if he left them in his locker or in his bag, they’d disappear. The kids thought that if they harassed him enough, he’d quit basketball but he never did.

By the time he was a senior, the other kids had grown used to him. They still didn’t like him all that much and they still harassed him from time to time but they pretty much left him alone because they’d grown tired of harassin him and gettin no reaction and they now had other more pressin matters to deal with.

It was now nineteen sixty-four and Vietnam was staring them in the eyes. All the seniors knew that unless they could come up with a real good excuse, like leukemia or dying prematurely, they were going to be shipped off to the killing fields of Southeast Asia as soon as their diploma hit their sweaty hands.

Everyone was stunned when they walked past the Ashland High School principal’s office about a week before graduation and saw Colley sitting in front of the Army Recruiter. What the hell would a “holier than thou” person like Colley be doin talkin to the recruiter, they all asked each other.

On June twelfth, a hot, humid night in nineteen sixty-four, Colley was handed his diploma and at eight am the next morning, he was on a Greyhound bus headed south. He’d been in the “Army of God” for as long as he could remember and now he was in an entirely different army, the U.S. Army.

He sailed through basic training just fine and no matter what his drill instructors did or said, they couldn’t break him. He took it all in and waited for more abuse to be heaped on him. They’d never seen anyone like him. They tried every tactic they could think of and he didn’t flinch, waver or crack. He just stuffed it down and buried it along with all the other abuse he’d endured all his life. This was nothin new to him. All the instructors agreed that if any man in that unit had to be captured, they sure as hell hoped it was Colley because he would be the one that the enemy wouldn’t be able to break. “That son-of-a-bitch ain’t human,” one drill instructor said to the others.

At the end of basic training, Colley didn’t even go home on leave. He simply boarded the first military plane headed for Nam and he was gone. His ever-present bible was immediately replaced with an M-16 rifle. He had a new protector now and not only did he leave Maine behind; he left God behind too.

Twenty-four hours later, he stepped off the plane into Hell. The land had such a lush greenness that the color almost hurt his eyes and the heavy, wet air was permeated with smells that he’d never smelled before in the crisp, clear air of the county. Napalm, jet fuel, Agent Orange and the smell of death, were immediately imprinted upon his memory in his brain. He knew he would never get that smell out of his head for as long as he lived.

Colley was quickly loaded aboard a helicopter and flown south to the Me- Kong River Delta. His instructions were, “Hunker down in a rice paddy and if anything moves, blow the son-of-a-whores to hell!” Colley was good at taking orders and his perfect record in heaven was soon shipped down to be forever recorded in Hell.

Two years, eleven months and fourteen days was the length of time that Colley spent in Hell. He saw sights that inflamed his mind and he quickly stuffed them down, down deep inside and in the dark of night if those memories came crawlin up like a long, black snake, he’d take a deep breath and beat them down again. It was the livin that bothered him; he could deal with the dyin.

It was a warm, fall day in late September, nineteen sixty-seven when Colley returned to the county. When he’d left, he’d had the demeanor of a saint. All the years of being a bible thumper and a humble servant of the Lord had made him seem young and vulnerable. Now, he was six feet tall and twenty-one years old but inside he’d felt like he was a hundred and fifty. He was no longer vulnerable either. He walked with the assurance of a man who’d met the enemy and kicked his ass! He didn’t swagger but he walked in the boots of a man who’d witnessed what evils the world held and he wasn’t a man to be messed with. The left side of his uniform was filled with row upon row of bars and medals. He’d paid his dues!

It was just before noon when the bus finally rolled into the station in Presque Isle. He walked down Main Street for a short distance and went into a used car dealership where he rented a brand-new red, Corvette. He threw his gear into the seat and headed for Ashland. He drove quickly down the Presque Isle road and slowed down as he came to the sleepy, farming town of Mapleton. “Things haven’t changed all that much,” he thought to himself. “Hell, I could be gone a hundred years and things in this part of the world would still look the same.”

He pulled into the rest stop at the bottom of Haystack Mountain, took off his jacket and tossed it into the bucket seat. He took a cold beer out of his bag, shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans and started up. After about forty-five minutes of straight climbing, he reached the top. This was one of the things that he’s promised himself when he was back in Nam. If he made it home all in one piece, he was going to climb this little anthill and drink a cold brew at the top.

He pried the top off the bottle of beer and flicked it over the edge of the rocks. Then he brought his hand up, shaded his eyes and looked to the south. He saw the majestic snow-covered peak of Mount Katahdin off in the distance.

Colley turned west and looked in the direction of Ashland and all he saw was a vast forest of green stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see. A slight, cool wind blew from the south and Colley could hear the ever-present sound of a chainsaw as it ate its way through the virgin timber of the county. “Some friggin things never really change,” he muttered to himself as he took another swig of the cold beer.

He found that going down was a littler harder than the climb up and his heart leapt into his throat a couple of times when he misjudged the trial. When he’d finally made it back to the bottom, he opened another beer and leaned against the car to drink it. He drained the bottle and chucked into the bushes at the side of the trail, checked the time and headed for the “vet.”

He floored the new Corvette and flew up the Presque Isle Road into Ashland in a couple of minutes and came to a stop at the corner of the Presque Isle Road and the Masardis Road. He sat where he was for a moment and looked at the front of Jimmo’s Grocery Store and his mind went back to all the nights that he’d stood on that corner after late basketball practice, in the mind-numbing cold, thumbing a ride home. “Nights when the mercury slid three clapboards below zero too,” he laughed to himself. After enduring the hell and heat of Vietnam, for nearly three years, he wasn’t really sure what had been worse, the heat or the cold. One was just as bad as the other he guessed. It just depends on your point of view.

He turned left and slowly made his way up the Masardis Road towards home. He couldn’t get enough of lookin as his eyes took in the long fields of potatoes. He’d forgotten how green the potato plants really were and God knows, he’d picked enough of them! He slid over the small bridge that spanned Squaw Pan Stream and made his way around the corner towards Masardis. It wasn’t long before his old home loomed up in the distance and he was surprised to feel a lump in his throat. “There’s nothing like goin home,” he said to himself as he wheeled the car into the dirt drive.

An old dog, asleep on the porch, pulled himself up off the floor and came slowly down the steps as Colley drew to a stop in front of the house. Nearly three years and he hadn’t written a letter. He didn’t know if they even knew what had happened to him. A wash of shame slid over him. “Well, it’s kinda late to worry about that now,” He said to himself as he eased himself out of the low vehicle and walked slowly over to the waiting dog. “Hi, Sunny.” He said softly as he knelt down and rubbed the dog’s head. The old dog shook all over with excitement as he finally recognized the visitor.

Suddenly, the screen door opened and his mother stood there in the cool, darkness of the shed. The once tall figure was now stooped and she walked hesitantly with the aid of a cane. “Sunny, come Sunny,” she commanded and the old dog reluctantly turned away to do as he was told. Colley dropped his hand and waited for his mother to recognize him. She shielded her eyes against the noonday sun and looked at him for a long moment and then she turned back towards the kitchen door and her words trailed in the air behind her. “Well, God does protect fools and children after all,” And she went inside and the screendoor banged shut behind her.

Colley smiled at hearing her words and headed for the house. His mother stood with her back to the door and she was stirring something in a pan on the stove. Colley walked past her and over to the table that looked out on the backfields of the farm. He was shocked at the way everything was so overgrown with popples and brush. He couldn’t tell where the fields started or ended anymore. All that hard work that his grandfather had done to clear this farm at the turn of the century was all gone now to wrack and ruin.

His mother turned and looked him over real good and then she walked over to the table and set a plate in front of him. He looked down and saw that it was filled with home fries, two eggs and toast. She poured him a large mug of black coffee and slid that across the table towards him. Then she pulled out a chair and sat down. He started to eat and waited for the inevitable questions that never came. His mother, ignored him, sipped her scalding coffee and looked out at the land.

Colley cleaned off his plate with a last piece of toast and tipped back his chair until it was resting on two legs. “So,” he said, “Is dad asleep or what?” Hearing this, his mother slid her brown eyes around until she was looking directly at him. “Well, I guess you could say that.” She answered. Hearing the vagueness of her answer, Colley looked at her. “A lot can happen in three years Colley,” She said. “Father died in May of “65’ and we buried him behind the church. The girls are scattered all over the place. Emma and Gerta are married and live in town and Emily lives over to Presque Isle.”

Colley felt his face turn red with shame and he dropped his gaze. His mother resumed her vigil at the window. “How long are you stayin?” she asked without looking at him. Colley cleared his throat and replied, “I’m out of the Army for good and I’ve paid my dues!” Hearing the finality in his voice she said, “You probably have and then some. We saw all that was goin on over there on the nightly news and I’d of worried more if I had known for sure that that’s where you really were.”

Again, Colley felt shame slide across his mind. “You know Colley, father always thought that you’d take over the church someday and he never did get over the fact that you just up and left without a word to anyone. We were never really sure what had happened to you.”

Hearin this, Colley shifted uncomfortably in his chair and then he said. “Mum, I know that I appeared to like all that religious stuff but it really wasn’t what I wanted to do. I’d heard it all my life and I had a gut full. Father always insisted that I’d be the one to take over the church but I couldn’t do it. So, I decided to go before father suspected that I wasn’t interested. I didn’t really intend to join the army if the truth be known. It could just as well have been the Navy or any other branch. But the army recruiter just happened to be there that day and I made my decision and that was it. I signed up and the rest is history.”

“Well son, I’m just glad that you’re home and all in one piece. We can discuss what you’re going to do with yourself later on.” With that, she pushed her chair back, stacked the dishes in her hand and headed for the sink.

“Pretty snazzy car sittin out there if you ask me,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s not mine mother, I just rented it in Presque Isle and I have to take it back in a week or so. I should know what I’m going to do with myself by then.”

Colley spent the next couple of days visiting his sisters and his old classmates and it was on his first Saturday night home that was to change his life forever. He’d gone into town about noon and had ambled over to Michaud’s Restaurant to have a few. Just as he was about to take a long drink, a large hand slapped him on the shoulder. Startled, he swung around and looked into the wild eyes of one of his old classmates, John Gordon. “John, you old son of ah bitch! What the hell are you doin home?” “Same as you Rev, same as you!” Colley looked up at him. “You mean to tell me that you were in Nam also? Where were you?” “Me? Hell, I was stationed up along the 49th parallel in the DMZ. My unit was in charge of settin sensors. Hell man, we had a body count of over twenty thousand during the Tet offensive and they weren’t all ours if you get my drift.”

With that, John slapped twenty dollars down on the bar and signaled to the barman for a bottle of Chivas Regal. When the bottle came sliding down the bar, John twisted off the top and poured the raw liquor down his throat in one swift move. He never even swallowed. “How tha hell did you do that?” Colley asked him. “Rev, you learn a lot of things in that hellhole that you ain’t never gonna use in real life but this is one thing that I learned that I can use forever!” And he lifted the bottle and poured the liquor down his throat. “You see, my friend, if you don’t swallow, you can drink and not make a sound, because a slight sound in the DMZ can get you real dead in a hurry!”

Now that Colley had a friend, he spent the next month in a drunken frenzy. His mother, shocked at her son’s deterioration, tried to talk to him but once she realized that he wasn’t about to listen, she gave up. Colley spent his nights in drunken stupor and his days in bed. One day slid into another and his mother kept hoping and praying that someone or something would change Colley and in the end she was sorry that she’d prayed.

It was the night before Halloween and the moon in the county was large and round and looked like a big pumpkin floating across the night sky. There was a hint of frost in the air with the wind out of the north and folks said that there’d be snow on the ground by mornin. Colley zipped his jacket up to his neck as he waited on the corner of Main Street for John to pick him up.

Just as he was about to give up, he saw the familiar blue Charger round the corner by St. Mark’s Church and head his way. John opened the door before he’d even stopped and Colley jumped in. John gunned the motor, wrenched the wheel and suddenly, with a screech of tires, they were headin back up Main Street towards Station Hill. John didn’t stop for the flashing red light at the intersection; he tore around the corner on two wheels and down over Station Hill like a bat outta hell. He flew up the Portage Road and on up through the small settlements of Winterville, Eagle Lake and Wallagrass towards Fort Kent like a man on a mission. And if the truth be known he was.

They sailed into the main street of Fort Kent and hit every bar until all the drinks they’d had and bars they’d tried, melted into one. At the start of the evening, Colley had tried to slow down John’s drinking but after a while it became too much of a struggle and he gave up. Colley, knowin that he’d probably have to drive home, tried to go easy on the booze but John, noticin that Colley wasn’t matchin him drink for drink, began pourin it on. And it wasn’t long before Colley was just as drunk as he was.

When they finally staggered out to the car around three, Colley argued with John about who was goin to drive and John pulled rank on him. He grabbed Colley by the neck and said, “I got your ass up here in one piece and I can git you home!” He opened the door and shoved Colley into the passenger side and stumbled around the car and fell into the driver’s seat. He fumbled with the key for a couple of minutes and finally got the car started. Hearin the sound of the motor, John leaned over and punched Colley in the arm. “See ole buddy, jist lay back and good ole John will git you home in a jiffy.”

The ride back wasn’t all that different from the ride up to Fort Kent. The trees and miles still flashed by in a blur and John’s driving hadn’t improved one dite. John kept his foot pressed to the accelerator and the miles flew by and it wasn’t too long before they were pullin into the outskirts of Ashland.
Colley slid his sleeve up a notch and checked his watch, three forty-five. They’d made the trip back in a little under forty minutes! “God!” he thought to himself, “We didn’t drive all them miles, we flew!”

They slowed down just a dite as they cruised through the Main Street of Ashland and the minute they passed Jimmo’s Grocery Store, John floored the car and they went tearin up the Masardis Road. All the places that Colley had hitch-hiked past all his life flew by, the Pike homestead, the Rafford place, the McKays, the Old South School site, the Winslows, the Cowetts, the Howes, the Bragdons, the Davenports and the Colbaths. Places that he hadn’t thought about in a long time. Some of the old homesteads were in pretty good shape and others were listin just a dite towards Sawyers.

Just as the Old Pentecostal Church loomed into view, he reached over and grabbed John’s arm. “Slow down a little, will you buddy. I want to take a look at the place where I spent most of my life.” John stepped on the brakes and the car slowed to a crawl. Colley looked at the small, neglected building, for the longest moment and then he turned to John and gave him a “thumbs up “sign and then he said. “I’ve got my answer man; I know what I’m goin to do with the rest of my life.” John looked over at him, “And what’s that goin to be, my man?” Colley laughed and replied, “That’s for me to know and you to find out! I’ve got a debt that I have to pay, that’s all.” John floored the car and they tore down the road like the devil himself was after them, and he was.

The car was goin so fast as it tore down the Masardis Road that the engine sounded as though it were screamin. John saw the short bridge that spanned Squa Pan Stream loom up in front of them and by then it was too late. The car became air-born and flew over the bridge and head-on into the trees on the other side of the bridge.

Neither man ever knew, what hit him. John was dead in an instant and Colley would never be the same. Folks said that the car was travelin so fast that it impaled itself in the trees. When they tried to pull the wreck out of the trees, it wouldn’t budge. They had to cut the car off the trees with blowtorches.

Colley, with severe head injuries, was airlifted down to Bangor and spent nearly six months in the trauma unit of Bangor General Hospital. When he finally came home, he was a totally different man. He couldn’t talk and he had a great deal of trouble walking and he couldn’t stay home. He wandered the roads of the county over and over again. He could be found standin by the road anytime, day or night, with his thumb stuck out, lookin for a ride. Folks said that if you stopped and picked him up, he’d get in and sit there without sayin a word and he’d get out as soon as you stopped. Then, he’d stick his thumb out and wait for a ride on to someplace else. Folks often wondered if he’d ever find the place that his mind, or what little there was left of it, was lookin for.

Colley is long gone now and folks say it sure gives them a start when they’re drivin down the Masardis Road late at night and Colley’s ghost suddenly looms up ahead of them in the road. Skeptics, upon hearin the story, often ask the teller how they knew it was Colley. Folks look at the disbeliever as though he were stupid and reply, “Folks around here all know its Colley. The ghost has always got his thumb stuck out; he’s still lookin for a ride.”

By Martha Stevens-David 2002

Dorothy

Dorothy Rossignol was my best friend ever since I could remember. We started first grade together and were friends right through high school. She lived with her parents, bachelor Uncle Vivan and fourteen brothers and sisters at the very end of the old Fenderson Road. Her brothers were also my brother’s best friends. If it involved the Rossignals, it involved us.

Dorothy was a tall, pale, thin girl and she wore her dark ash blond hair skinned back in a long pony tail and her eyes were a greenish blue with natural dark lashes. She had a unique sense of humor and we spent many happy hours laughing together at our brother’s expense.

We rode the bus daily throughout the school year. The bus driver would drive up the Masardis Road from Ashland until he reached the Fenderson Road. Then he’d drive to the very end of the road, turn around in the Rossignal’s driveway, pick up all the kids and then drive back to the Masardis Road. He’d then cross to our road, the old Goding Road, where he’d proceed to pick up the Dionnes, the Mountains and us. Then we’d all drive to the small settlement of Squa Pan where the bus would turn around and head back down the Masardis Road to the Ashland Elementary School and then on up to the high school. The whole trip was approximately twenty miles each way so some of us kids had a forty mile bus ride to school and back each day.

In those days, kids didn’t get to sleep over at other people’s houses like they do now. If Dorothy wanted me to come over for a visit, then we had to get our brothers, Jake and Lynwood, to agree to ask if they could stay over too. That way, each mother had the same amount of kids. So, if I went to stay with Dorothy, then her brother Lynwood came to stay at our house or vice versa. This “swap the kid” system worked out well for our harried parents.

Neither of us had a telephone. If we wanted to get in touch with each other, one of us had to walk to the other’s house to see them. If I wanted to see Dorothy, after getting mother’s permission, I’d set out to walk, run and skip the five miles to her house. This lonely, lovely country walk usually took about three hours.

The Rossignol house sat at the very top of a high hill and they could see everything for miles and miles around. They could see nearly the whole distance down the Fenderson Road to the Masardis Road and they usually saw us coming and someone would come running down the dirt road to meet us. Sometimes we’d have a prearranged schedule to meet each other half-way along the road on a given day at a given time and this usually worked out quite well.

In the summer, it was quite wonderful to set out early in the fresh morning air and see the landscape change right before your eyes. Every dip and valley seemed to have a special offering if you just took the time to notice. There were always wild flowers along the road or in the ditch. We picked fragrant white and purple violets, May flowers, yellow lady slippers and stinkin benjamins. We picked hundreds of yellow dandelion blossoms and made bracelets, necklaces and headbands out of them. We’d slip down into the grass-filled road sides and pick wild strawberries as big as our thumbs. We’d skip along the road stopping every now and then to pick up a shiny rock or pebble that happened to catch our attention. We saw snakes, frogs, toads, birds, rabbits, deer, moose and any other creature that one might find in the wilds of Aroostook County. By the time we arrived at Dorothy’s house, we’d seen and experienced so many new things that we were just bursting to tell each other all our news.

Dorothy’s house was quite different from ours because there were always more people around. Not only were there dozens of kids to play with but there were also many adults to talk to too. It was always an experience to stay at Dorothy’s house. Breakfast was an affair to remember. Mrs. Rossignol was very clean and neat and she always prepared a breakfast that would have rivaled a breakfast in any of the world’s finest hotels. She made scrambled eggs with bits of crispy, fried pork sticking out of them and hash brown potatoes sautéed with fried onions. Or, she’d fry bacon until it was crisp and then she’d crumble it all over the poached eggs, topped off with huge pat of her very own golden, homemade cow’s butter and you had yourself a treat.

She’d take a pan of biscuits out of the oven and poke a hole in the top of each one with her thumb and then she’d pour hot maple syrup, molasses, or honey into the hole and top it off with a lump of cow’s butter. Her yeast bread, muffins and buttermilk doughnuts were beyond perfection. And all of this was served with strong coffee, black tea, fresh milk with the cream still on the top and baked beans. It was a wonderful affair. All of the food was either homegrown or homemade and we’d eat until our eyes glazed over and then stagger off to have a nap and recover and wait for the next meal.

Dorothy’s father, Frank, was a gentle, soft spoken man and he used to tease Dorothy and me about all the boyfriends we were going to have when we finally got a bosom. Dorothy and I would look at each other and laugh because from the looks of our flat chests, it was going to be a very long time before either one of us had a boyfriend.

Her father and his bachelor brother Vivan had built their house and started the farm together in the early years. When her father, Frank, married Dorothy’s mother, she moved in with the two brothers and proceeded to fill the house with offspring. Her uncle lived with his brother’s family all of his life until he died when he was in his late eighties.

Uncle Vivan had a large bedroom which was situated on the second floor of the unfinished two-story house. Sometimes, if there was no one else in the house, Dorothy and I would sneak into his room to have a look at what an old bachelor’s bedroom looked like. He usually had a huge stack of “girlie” magazines piled on the wooden floor under his bed and since his bedroom was located directly above their kitchen, Mrs. Rossignol could hear if someone walked into his room. Upon hearing our feet on the floor, she’d yell that we’d better get out of Uncle Vivan’s room or else! We’d look at each other, grab a few of his magazines and run for Dorothy’s room across the hall as though the devil himself were after us. Once safe, we’d sit on the floor and look through the “girlie” magazines until we were bored then we’d find something else to do and there was always something else to do at their house.

Because she lived on a farm, we could go out and climb in the hay loft, pick apples in their orchard or play with all the baby animals. Sometimes Mrs. Rossignol would catch sight of our two blond heads going through the tall grass and she’d let out a yell, “Dorothyeeeee and Tooter!” and we’d have to go and help her do something. Generally though, we were left to do pretty much as we pleased.

Uncle Vivan’s bedroom wasn’t the only attraction in that house. There was another bedroom; her parent’s that we only got to see when there was absolutely, positively no one else at home but us. We’d wait until just the right opportunity and then Dorothy would sneak me inside. We’d carefully close the door and lean against it. This was a bedroom unlike any other bedroom on the face of the earth.

Like us, the Rossignols didn’t have electric lights at that time either and it was very dark in that room. Dorothy would light the kerosene lamp on the night stand and we’d hop up on her parent’s bed and lie there. We’d gaze about the room in awe. Her parent’s bedroom, the ceiling and the walls, was completely “wallpapered” from top to bottom with pictures of “naked or semi-naked” ladies. The entire walls and ceiling were one massive collage of pasted on pictures of women in various poses of undress. We’d look and look for as long as we dared and then we’d blow out the lamp and get the hell out of there!

We’d run up the long staircase into Dorothy’s room and throw ourselves onto her bed in a fit of laughter. It hadn’t impressed us too much but for my brothers, that was a completely different matter. After each visit to the Rossignal farm, Jake would come home and discuss “the bedroom” with Walt and Bub. “You know Walt,” Jake said, “I’d sure like to have a bedroom like that some day!” Once, I overheard my brothers telling Dad what they’d seen in Mr. Rossignol’s bedroom. Mother, overhearing, remarked. “That explains why they have such a large family!”

Every so often, a country music band would come to play in Ashland at the old opera house. The time I remember most was when Don Gibson, the famous country singer, was scheduled to play. He had a current hit called “Oh Lonesome Me!” Dorothy and I spent hours singing that song together when we walked each other home or on the school bus. Dorothy decided that she and I were going to practice so that we could enter the singing contest. We practiced and practiced and when the time came for us to enter the contest, I backed out. I just couldn’t go through with it. Dorothy entered it with her sister Florence. They didn’t win but, they had quite a good time anyway.

By the time we were fifteen or so, our lives began to take different directions. We didn’t see so much of each other because I’d left home to live with the Paul Rider family in Ashland. I’d go to school during the day and then work for the family taking care of their small children after school and on weekends. Dorothy was older than me by a year and the next thing I knew, she announced that she was going to quit school and get married! It seems that she had gone with one of her older sisters to a dance at Loring Air Force Base and she had met an airman there. I tried to talk her out of it but her mind was made up. She got married and moved with her military husband back to his home state of Georgia.

We lost track of each other after I’d graduated in 1963, when I too married and moved to Connecticut to live. My husband and I returned to Maine each year during our yearly summer vacation but Dorothy and I never managed to make it home at the same time except for one occasion.

In July of nineteen sixty-five, I became sick with viral meningitis on the way to visit my family in Ashland and ended up in the hospital in Presque Isle. Dorothy was home visiting her parents and she came to see me. She looked exactly the same except for the fact that she was pregnant with her second child. As we laughed and talked about our childhood memories, I asked her if she liked living in Georgia. She said that she liked it okay but she really didn’t like her husband’s family all that much. She said that after her new baby came, she was going to leave her husband and return with her children to her family here in Maine.

We again lost track of each other over the next few years but every time I was home, I’d go to see her parents and ask how everyone was doing. I was always greeted as though I was one of their own long lost kids and it was a happy reunion for me. But not this time, I was shocked to learn that my best friend was dead! “Dead, she can’t be! Not Dorothy!” “Oh yes, she is Tooter,” Mrs. Rossignol said sadly. “She died down there in Georgia and they cremated her and buried her before we were even told!” I went home in a state of shock and sadness.

Over the years, I heard the rest of the story in bits and pieces. Dorothy’s family strongly suspected that she had been murdered by her husband and they even hired a private detective to try to find out if it was true but they were never able to prove it. It seems that her in-laws had her body cremated as quickly as possible and there was no real evidence left.

Her parents did succeed in bringing their daughter’s body home for burial and my dear friend lies at rest in the small Ashland Cemetery, right next to her parents and Uncle Vivan. I don’t get to go home very often anymore but, when I do, I always make it a point to go and visit Dorothy. Rest in peace my sweet friend, until we meet again…

The Television

Things were a long time coming to the county or that’s the way it seemed when we were kids. Now I know that it was just that we couldn’t ever afford to buy anything new. There is an old saying that “You don’t really miss what you’ve never had” but I can tell you here and now that that’s just not so. Older folks often say that when they were kids they had to walk ten miles a day to school and back, they didn’t have shoes either and they really didn’t mind. Well, take it from someone who walked plenty, they really did mind but they didn’t have any choice in the matter.

When Uncle Hal and Aunt Cassie bought their first television set around nineteen fifty-eight, we were just as excited as they were about their new purchase. We rushed down over the hill to view this wondrous invention. We’d sit as close to the glowing screen as we dared and watch the snowy, ghostly, black and white images as though our lives depended on it.

We’d all get interested in a good detective story like Parry Mason and just as the murderer was going to kill the victim, the screen would go all fluttery and white and static would fill the room as the television signal slid away into the heavens somewhere beyond Mars. Uncle Hal, frustrated that he might miss a really important part and being unable to do anything about it, would yell a blistering epithet at the television that would have peeled the skin right off a person. Just as suddenly as the signal had left, the program would resume as though nothing had happened, leaving us wondering who the hell the killer really was. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Hal’s and Aunt Cassie’s kindness, we wouldn’t have seen a television program for four more years.

We weren’t allowed to go down to their house during the week when we had school and homework but on the weekends and holidays, nothing could keep us away. On Saturday nights, we’d rush down over the hill and watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Hour and scare ourselves half to death. Uncle Hal, knowing that when we finally left, we’d have to walk the half mile back up the dirt road to our house in the pitch dark, would wait until just before we were leaving for home and then tell us a God-awful scary story that would set our teeth on edge and our hearts racing.

As soon as the program or Uncle Hal’s story had finished and the late night news came on, we’d head for the door and begin the dark, scary walk up over the long hill for home. For folks who lived in the big cities and were used to streetlights, lots of traffic lights or just lights of any kind, it wouldn’t have been so scary. But we lived in the outskirts of a very small town in the huge, desolate Aroostook County of Maine and there wasn’t a street light or many other houses for miles around. The only lights we’d ever see were the soft glow of a distant falling star or the shifting, frightening bands of iridescent colors from the faraway Northern lights.

We’d scurry around the corner of Aunt Cassie’s house, down the circular dirt drive to the road and Walt would be off. He’d be home, in bed and asleep long before the rest of us made it up over the long hill to home. If it was Jake, me and Bub, we’d hunch over, dig in our toes and walk at a brisk pace until a leg cramp or a side ache caused us to slow down to a normal pace. It was all uphill until we got to the top where Mr. Beaulier lived.

During the day, we often snuck down to Mr. Beaulier’s barn and played in his haymow unbeknownst to him. We probably knew his property better than he did but at night, his familiar property was an entirely different story.

With the scary television program lingering in our minds, along with Uncle Hal’s frightening story, every shadow and
sound was magnified a thousand times and even the most common sound of a night owl, hooting in the trees off in the distance behind Mr. Beaulier’s barn, put the fear of the unknown into us. Somehow, the most common sounds of everyday life in the county were completely changed by the time and place and dark of night.

It seemed as though Mother Nature conspired against us on those long, cold walks home near midnight. The owls would begin to hoot, the wind would shift direction and blow out of the north and the aurora borealis would begin a dance of shifting light that made us tuck our necks in, pick up our feet and head for home as fast we could go.

For some reason, every time we got to the spot directly across from Mr. Beaulier’s barn, we were deathly afraid. We always thought that someone was going to come out of the dark barn and get us. We’d be about three quarters of the way home, sacred half to death and the skies would begin the eerie dance of the northern lights. Some folks would sit for hours and watch this mystical display of shimmering, sliding, colorful lights in the northern sky but it was just plain frightening to us. No matter how many times Dad explained that they were just light beams glancing off the polar ice cap thousands of miles away, we were still afraid.

But after a couple of days had passed, we’d forget how scared we’d been a few days earlier and off we’d go again. The magic of television was a more powerful pull than our fear of the dark and the unknown and the lights that shifted and danced in the sky over our heads.

There finally came the day when we thought we’d died and gone to heaven when we overheard mother saying to Aunt Cassie that she’d like to buy a television. When she’d first broached the subject of buying one a couple of years earlier, Dad had rejected the idea right away. His reasoning was that we didn’t “need” a television because we always went to bed so early and besides we were all “readers.” Dad had taught us all to play checkers and card games like poker and our favorite game, sixty-three. We spent many happy hours playing cards or checkers with Dad on a Saturday night. Dad said that we didn’t need a TV and that was that. End of argument.

It was nineteen fifty-nine when he finally capitulated and the only reason we finally bought one then, was because all of us kids, along with mother, picked potatoes that fall and we pooled our money to help buy a set. Thinking back, I’m sure that if Dad had had the money, he’d have been happy to buy us one earlier. Perhaps, it was just a proud man’s way of saving face.

We were so proud of ourselves on that final day of picking when we finally received our money. We had just enough to pay for the television with a little left over to buy a few new school clothes.

The very next morning mother counted the money one more time and then she hurried the two miles across the swamp to Grandfather Colbath’s house so that her father could drive her to town to buy the television. Mother walked into Collier’s Appliance Store, slapped the money down on the counter and our hard-earned television set was ours.

I’ll never forget the day it was delivered. Mother had spent the morning re-arranging the living room to accommodate the newest acquisition. She’d torn the whole room apart, washed the curtains, scrubbed the linoleum and dusted what few pieces of furniture we had. She cleared off the top of an old chest that had been her grandmothers and shoved it into the corner next to the double window. She pushed the heavy, sagging sofa across to the long wall of her bedroom and she carefully arranged Dad’s chair so that he would have the optimum view and she was done.

Tired of hearing us whine to turn on the television, she sent us all outdoors so that she could concentrate on getting everything just the way she wanted. Finally, she stood back and gave a tired, satisfied sigh. Everything was perfect, clean and perfect! She was going to wait till Dad got home to turn on the television so that he could experience seeing it come on for the first time along with the rest of us.

When she finally let us in the house, we all hurried into the living room to see our wonderful treasure. We were all discouraged when she announced that she wasn’t going to turn it on till Dad got home then she went to the kitchen to start supper. We were all sitting in the living room and it didn’t take Jake too long till he discovered that the setting sun from the Western window, reflecting off the dark glass made a prefect screen for hand-puppets. He began twisting and bending his hands into all kinds of shapes and positions and he soon had us rolling around on the floor in laughter. Mother, preparing supper in the kitchen, and hearing all the commotion, yelled at us, demanding to know what we were doing. “We’re watching TV!” Jake yelled back and there was a clatter of dishes as mother dropped what she was fixing and came rushing to the door. She had to laugh along with the rest of us when she saw what Jake was doing.

Finally, Dad was home, supper was over, the dishes done and we were allowed to turn on the wondrous machine. Anticipation and excitement burned inside us like a flame. The sound came on first and the screen lit up but there was no picture. All we saw were snowflakes dancing on the black screen and static crashing in our ears. Disappointment fell on the room like a dark cloud on a sunny day. Mother ran to adjust the rabbit ears and finally we were able to get the snowy, faraway broadcast of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

Dad sat back in his old chair with a red headed child on one side and a blond headed child on the other. We were mesmerized by the commercials even though the screen was so snowy that we really couldn’t see them all that well.

Dad took a little time to warm up to the idea of having a TV. We were all readers and Dad was used to seeing us kids with a book in our hands. Now all we did was spend every spare moment glued to the television set. Since Dad was up at four every morning and went to bed with the chickens every night around seven o’clock, we didn’t get to watch television all that much.

Finally, the show that really made him a die-hard television fan was the televised fight from Lewiston between Mohammed Ali and Sonny Liston. Dad was an avid boxing fan after that. It was always funny to watch Dad, watching a televised fight. It was just as though he was actually doing the boxing himself. He’d creep to the very edge of his chair and make all the boxing moves just like the fighters on the screen. He’d swing his powerful fists and feint and duck the same way the real boxers did. Mother warned us to be careful and not go too close to Dad when he was watching a boxing match. She was afraid that in a really exciting round, he might take a wild swing and accidentally knock one of us kids out cold.

Since our reception with rabbit ears was lousy to say the least, our next action was to buy an outdoor antenna. Our house was situated in a wide open potato field and in a fairly high area so Dad figured that with a better antenna, we ought to be able to pull in Pluto if we had a mind to. We roamed the roads for miles around and lugged home every beer bottle and soda can we could find and we found plenty! We used this money to buy the much needed antenna.

Jake went down in the woods and cut down a good-sized tree and then he cut off all the limbs and we were ready. Dad bolted the antenna to the top of the pole and then we carefully lugged it up on the house roof. Once he’d attached the antenna pole to the side of the chimney we were ready to run the wire for the TV. Finally, everything was ready and we ran down the shed roof and jumped off. It didn’t take too long before the antenna wires were all hooked up to the television and with baited breath; we turned the set on.

We were in heaven! Finally, we could really see what was going on on the screen! We were beside ourselves. It was like a miracle! Not only could we get the local channels from Presque Isle and faraway Bangor but we pulled in some of the Canadian stations too. We couldn’t understand French but that didn’t matter, we could see the pictures and understand what was happening anyway.

Having grown-up with French speaking people all around, we were used to hearing this spoken language but not in our house. Jake began to mimic the Canadian announcers and tried to speak French the same way they did. Dad, after hearing Jake doing his latest French pronunciations, looked at mother and said that he guessed that someone must have “jumped” the fence with that one. Mother cast Dad a long look that said, “If you value your life, you’d better not say another word.”

Dad was finally won over when spring and baseball season rolled around. He was a baseball fan all his life and the team he truly loved best was the Boston Red Sox. Dad seldom laid a hand on any of us kids but we knew that we’d better shut-up when he was watching a Red Sox game. He’d pull down the shade on the western window to cut the glare off the television and then he’d move his chair so that it was perfectly aligned in front of the screen. Then, he’d sit back with a cold, homemade brew, a Chesterfield cigarette smoking in the ashtray on the arm of his chair and watch the game like a man who’d fallen in love for the very first time. And he really had.

A couple of weeks later, we got home from school one day and Mother said that Aunt Cassie had been to visit to see why we hadn’t been down to see her lately and when she learned that we now had a television set too, she said that it probably was going to be a long time before she saw the likes of us again and that she sure missed our visits.

©062107

Brother

My oldest brother Walt, was four years old than me and always an enigma to the rest of the family. He was what you might call a loner. He liked people all right and he loved a good book but he much preferred his own company.
Walt was already a senior in high school by the time I reached the eighth grade and not only was he was on the cross country team but he was quite a good basket ball player too. Walt really only played basketball because he liked Mr. Grant who was the junior varsity and varsity basketball coach and was a much loved teacher at Ashland High School. Mr. Grant possessed a very dry wit and infinite patience and drinking secretly also helped him cope with all of his students and their problems.
It was only because of Walt that I passed eighth grade math. You see, Mr. Grant was also my math teacher and after tryin and failin numerous times to get me to comprehend simple math and compound fractions, he finally heaved in the towel. “Stevens,” he said in a hopeless voice to me. “If your brother Walt wasn’t such a good basketball player, I’d flunk you! As it now stands, I’m going to give you a C- and I sincerely hope you can find a career which doesn’t involve math of any kind!”
Walt stood about five feet ten and he had mother’s deep brown eyes and her auburn hair which he wore slicked back in the duck tail style, the latest fashion of the day. Dad had been bald since he was nineteen and this worried Walt excessively. He’d stand in front of the kitchen mirror day after day and comb his hair over and over again tryin to git it jist right while he whistled the latest Elvis Presley tune.
Since our house was located about five miles from the town of Ashland, we had to ride the school bus all year round and one cold, winter’s day we had a new bus driver who was actually a cousin of ours. Not a well-liked cousin but a cousin anyway. As we were boardin tha bus at the high school for tha journey home one afternoon, our cousin waited impatiently for all of us to stop pushin and shovin and yellin as teenagers are want to do and then he turned around in his seat so that he could git a real good look at us.
He slid his cold, blue eyes over every last one until we’d stopped yappin and then he announced that tha next person he caught talkin would be immediately kicked off and would have to walk the rest of tha way home. Surveyin us as though we were a bunch of hardened criminals, he waited for our response and gettin none, with a final glare at all of us, he snapped his mouth shut and turned around to drive.
That particular afternoon the temperature was hoverin around minus twenty degrees and the wind was gustin out of the Canadian north between fifteen and twenty miles per hour. It was not a good night for walkin!
Now Walt was a lover of all females and he jist couldn’t resist talkin to the pretty Gendreau girl who was sittin across the aisle from him. He made some snide comment about the driver’s announcement and the second time he opened his mouth, the bus driver slammed on his brakes and the bus came to a reluctant lurchin stop. His angry eyes flashed fire in the rear view mirror and lookin directly at my older brother, he yelled! “O.K. Stevens, I warned yah! Git your sorry ass off my bus!”
Walt, looked back at our cousin for along moment and indecision about what to do roiled through his brain and then deciding that a fight jist wasn’t worth it, he kind of shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant manner, picked up his basketball gear, sauntered down the long isle and stepped down into the road. Walt knew that with his running ability, he’d make it home long before the bus had made it all the way up the Fenderson Road to tha turn around at the Rushinall’s house. But that wasn’t good enough for the bus driver. He looked at the rest of us sheepishly sittin there and he yelled again, “I mean all you Stevens!” Surprised, Jake and Bub and I all looked at each other and we too got off the bus.
It was a long, cold walk on a freezing winter afternoon and all the way home; we plotted and schemed about how we were going to get our revenge on Walt and the bus driver. We never did make good on any of our plans but, the energy generated by all our planning and scheming kept us from freezin to death. We never did catch up with Walt because as soon as he got off the bus, he quickly set his cross-country runnin pace and he sailed over the hills and valleys and was home long before we were.
Walt had discovered girls early and he especially loved the pretty French girls who lived in the small settlements in and around Ashland. He had the unique ability to learn and imitate any other language that he heard and before we knew it, he was speakin quite passable slang French and he was especially proficient in swear words. Walt was quite gifted and a voracious reader and our family didn’t really know just how gifted Walt was until much later on in his adult life.
When Walt was in his junior year in high school, he fell in love with a lovely French girl by the name of Jessie, who lived in the Portage Lake area of Aroostook County which was about thirteen miles from Ashland. Walt would hitch hike the thirteen miles to visit Jessie for a little while and then he’d hitch hike home again. It became a well-known joke around town that when Walt complained to Coach Grant that the basketball warm-ups were really gittin tiresome and Coach Grant would eye him closely for a couple of seconds, grin and reply, “Hey Stevens, don’t complain to me. Jist pretend that you’re runnin out to Portage Lake to visit Jessie. Oh, and Stevens, make that another four laps for all your complainin!” All his classmates would have a good laugh as Walt continued runnin laps around the gym.
By the time Walt became a senior, he realized he was losin ground where Jessie was concerned and he turned his attention further north. It wasn’t too long before he discovered the little Town of Eagle Lake. As Walt and his best friend Jimmy soon discovered, it also had many beautiful French girls. The other attraction was a road house named Peter Pan, where even if you were underage, on most any night of the week, you could still git a watered down drink.
Come Saturday night, Walt and Jimmy could usually be found down by the corner of Saint Mark’s Catholic Church in Ashland, all spruced up and tryin to hitch a ride to Eagle Lake. Ashland and Eagle Lake were strong rivals in the interschool basketball games along with Fort Kent and the Allegash. Boys from Ashland were not exactly welcome to come and check out the girls in Eagle Lake and vise versa.
Whenever the competin teams from all around “tha county” came to Ashland to play a game, win, lose or draw, they’d write graffiti on the locker room walls, kick in the shower room doors and do other unmentionable things to the changing rooms at Ashland High School. Consequently, there was great hostility between the teams and every slight was recorded for later retaliation. Competition was keen durin basketball tournaments but it was even keener when the prize was a lovely French girl.
One particular fall evenin, Walt and Jimmy set out for a “man’s” night out in Eagle Lake. They were dressed to the hilt in new jeans and sneakers and their hair was combed back in the popular “Duck’s Ass” style. They considered it a good omen when after havin hitch-hiked for only ten minutes; they were picked up by a sympathetic Canadian truck driver and deposited right outside their desired goal.
Peter Pan’s was already jumpin as Walt and Jimmy hurried through the door and they quickly latched on to a couple of girls and started dancin. Walt was just beginnin to enjoy himself when Jimmy suddenly punched him in the arm and motioned for Walt to look over his shoulder. Walt adjusted his steamed up glasses and whistled as his breath was involuntarily sucked into his lungs.
Standin at the edge of the long bar were five of the basketball players that they’d played against the previous night. Walt vividly remembered the sore feelins and muttered threats after the hard-won ball game and his head began tellin him that a situation was about to happen. Jist as he began slidin his eyes around the smoke-filled room looking for a possible escape route, the leader of the group suddenly pointed at Walt and Jimmy with a cry of recognition.
Walt and Jimmy ditched the girls and began a fast shuffle towards what appeared to be the rear exit door. Walt grabbed the handle and pulled the door open and he and Jimmy rushed in. To their surprise, they discovered it was the men’s toilet. Jimmy slammed the door shut and locked it. “God damn it all ta hell! How’re we going to git out of here Jim?” Walt asked. Jimmy pointed to a small window located just above the toilet. Walt shrugged and stepped onto the toilet seat then he reached up and shoved the window open. It slid upwards with a dry screeching sound and with a quick thrust of his hand, he dislodged the rusty screen.
“Jaysus, Jim, give me a boost, will yah.” Walt ordered and Jimmy grunted as Walt climbed onto his shoulders. Walt twisted and struggled and finally slipped headfirst through the window and disappeared. Jimmy stared at the empty darkness of the window and at that moment, there came a sound of splintering wood from the bathroom door behind him. This was all the impetus Jimmy needed and he didn’t wait to see what fate had befallen Walt. As he later said to Walt, “My mother didn’t raise no fools en my ass was gonna burn!”
Jimmy jumped onto the toilet seat and lunged for the open window. He groped for the windowsill with his fingers and his fingernails made scrabbling noises against the dried out wood. He cursed and lunged again and with the desperation of a condemned man, he connected. He pulled his body up and he was teeterin half in and half out of the window. Jim called out to Walt and he heard a muffled reply and that was all he needed. He didn’t wait to hear anything else, he let go and fell headlong to the ground below.
Jimmy grunted as his body hit the hard ground and then he suddenly found himself sliding very rapidly downwards. “Not too bad,” he thought to himself and in the next instant he became aware that his senses were bein assaulted with a multitude of data and it was all bad! He felt and smelled things at exactly the same instant and a feelin of clingin wetness overrode all the other feelins. He felt wet right up to his neck but, along with the wetness came a clammy, slimy feelin. Whatever he’d landed in didn’t just cling, it oozed and slid too. He pulled his hand out of the muck and tried to wipe off his face so that he could see where he was and he gagged as he brought his hand up and the powerful stench hit him full in the face.
“Walt! Walt! Where tha frig are yah?” Jimmy whispered. Off to his right Jimmy heard a sucking sound and then came a sloshin kind of movement in his direction. He gingerly turned and finally he saw Walt for the first time. Only, Walt didn’t look like the same person who’d disappeared through the window just a few moments before. He was covered with black, slimy shit from one end to the other. They were now “swimmin” in Peter Pan’s cesspool.
“If you laugh Jimmy, I swear tah Christ I’m goin to kill yah!” Walt whispered hoarsely as Jimmy lost control and fell over with laughter into the muck. Walt grabbed Jimmy and pushed him face down in the cesspool and Jimmy gagged and tried desperately to pull away. After Walt let go of him, Jimmy did his best to wipe tha muck off his face and all he managed to do was smear tha stuff sideways. Walt took one look at his best friend and in his best southern accent said, “Smile Jim, so I can see where you is.” That was all they needed, they doubled over with laughter and shit flew in all directions.
A few seconds later, there was the sound of the door breakin open in the bathroom above and the sound of angry voices floated down to them on the damp night air. Knowin that they were sittin ducks, Walt grabbed Jimmy and they began making their way to the edge of the septic tank. Walt found the edge of the grass and quickly pulled himself up out of the mess, then he reached behind him and grasped Jimmy’s outstretched hand and pulled him free of the oozing muck.
They furtively crept along the edge of the building and slipped between the rows of parked cars until they reached the main road and then they headed south at a pretty fast clip. They ran until they couldn’t run anymore and about a couple of miles down the road, they slowed down to a fast walk so they could catch their breath. Jimmy kept moanin and repeatin over and over, “Oh God!” “Oh Jaysus!” “Oh God!” Every now and then, he’d reach up and wipe the oozing, putrid stuff of his face with the back of his hand and fling it into the dirt at the side of the road.
They’d been walkin for about five miles when they finally heard the sound of an automobile approachin from behind. Walt grabbed Jimmy and pushed him down into the nearest ditch and they lay where they were as the car rushed on past them into the dark night. “Jayus Walt, why’d yah do that?” Jimmy asked. “I thought we needed a ride!” “It might have been those guys back at the bar and I didn’t want tah take any chances because they know we’re from Ashland.” Walt replied. “Oh yah, I forgot about that,” Jimmy mumbled.
They pulled themselves up out of the ditch and trudged on down the deserted road. After what seemed like miles, they again heard the sound of an automobile approaching in tha distance. Walt moved to the shoulder of the road and stuck out his thumb and as tha car slowed to a halt, Walt pushed Jimmy forwards towards the car. Walt yanked open the door, shoved Jim in and climbed in beside him. The driver looked at the two of them in disbelief, and gittin a strong whiff of how they smelled, he covered his nose with his hand and screamed, “Out! Out! Get out!” Walt wrenched open the door and stumbled out pullin Jimmy after him. The driver slammed the door shut and took off with a squeal of tires.
Walt, who loved Elvis with a passion, always wore his hair in the “duck tail” fashion and his dark auburn hair was usually combed until it was absolutely perfect and he always had a comb in his pocket ready to fix any hair that fell out of its coifed arrangement. Since tha fall into tha cesspool had completely undone his locks, Walt felt tha need to fix his hair. He dug around in his shirt and whipped his comb out of his shit-filled pocket and began combing his matted, slimy hair. He combed and patted until he had every strand back in place and it felt jist right! Then, he turned to Jimmy and with a smile in his voice said, “You know Jim, shit sure makes a good hair settin gel, don’t yah think?” Jimmy jist ignored him and walked on.
Tha shit-encrusted boys walked on for miles and miles and as the wan moon was slidin towards the western horizon, Walt turned to Jimmy and said. “One good thing to remember Jim, mosquito’s jist never bites a shitty man!” Jimmy merely groaned and kept on walkin with his head down. The only sound that could be heard in the pitch-black night was the sound of their basketball sneakers hittin the pavement and the squish of the muck between their toes. They’re feet seemed to be mocking them saying, shit… shit… shit… shit… shit, as they placed one tired foot in front of the other on the long journey home.
Walt survived that ordeal and went on to graduate with the class of “59.” In search of a better life than Tha County had to offer, he promptly joined the army and was sent to Fort Deven’s, Massachusetts for basic training. It was there that Walt was “discovered,” so to speak. Not only was he a sharp shooter with a rifle but, he could look at a document that was upside down and sideways and memorize it in a matter of seconds. He had total recall. He also had an undeveloped linguistic ability. Walt was sent off to Officer’s Candidate School, Protocol School and various other agencies of the United States Army. It didn’t take them long to realize that they had a rare specimen on their hands.
Walt traveled all over the world during his career with the military. He even got to “visit” Vietnam not once but, twice. He sometimes came home for short visits before he was assigned to another tour of duty. Walt was on his way up and there was no stoppin him.
Walt worked hard and he was very happy about his success and whenever he acquired a new possession, he never failed to call mother and dad to tell them about it. It took Walt quite a while to settle down with one woman and when he finally tied the knot, he called to tell us that he was bringin his wife home to meet everyone. Walt arrived home in a flurry of excitement and he couldn’t wait to show off his beautiful new wife, Ginny and his shiny new Cadillac.
A couple of mornings after he’d arrived, Walt went outside to admire his dream car only to find that his brand new automobile had a flat tire. He opened the trunk to discover that there wasn’t a spare tire inside. He slammed the trunk shut and stormed into the house to call around to try and find another tire. He didn’t bother to call the local garage in Ashland first, he called garages in Presque Isle, Caribou and even down to Houlton, to no avail. He hung up the phone and slumped dejectedly into a chair. “God-damned hick town!” He muttered under his breath. Mother, hearin his retort, stopped washin dishes and turned and looked at him. “Did yah try Michaud’s Garage in Ashland?” She asked. “No,” he replied. “What makes you think that they’d have that size tire if all the other garages didn’t?” He asked.
Mother slapped the dishtowel down on the counter and marched over to the telephone. She quickly dialed a number and after a few minutes, she turned to Walt and asked him, “What size tire did you say you needed?” “Why?” Walt asked. “Well,” she replied. “Michaud’s Garage has not one but two! They used to keep them on order especially for old Lizzie Gallup’s Cadillac. You can pick one up any time you want.”
Shortly before dad died in 1982, Walt came home for a short visit. Walt was now living in Virginia and had a nice job with the National Security Agency in Washington. Dad was lyin on his bed and Walt was sittin in a chair across from him. Every so often the lulls in conversation were broken by the sound of a car as it passed our house on the way to town.
Walt stretched and said to dad, “God dad, I don’t know how you stand it! Doesn’t all this silence and boredom git to you sometimes?” Dad lifted his head and looked at Walt. “I guess a feller gets used to it after livin here sixty-eight years.” “Not me!” Walt retorted. “I’d never git used to it, that’s why, right after graduation, I joined tha army to have a look at the way the other half lives and now that I have a little of what the other half has, I can’t understand why anyone with half their faculties would ever stay in this God-forsaken place. Look at you, dad, what have you got to show for all your years of hard work and honesty? Why, you can’t even get social security for a job that you held for twenty-five years! When I retire, at least I’ll have something to show for it!”
Dad painfully raised himself up on one elbow and looked more closely at his oldest son. “Well, you might be right Walt. I don’t seem to have too many of those material things that you seem to value so much but I do have things that your money could never buy.” Dad took a long breath and went on. “I did work like a dog for twenty-five years for Maine Seed Potato Growers and when the company closed, I didn’t git a dime. I couldn’t collect Social Security for all those years because the Social Security Act wasn’t even passed until the nineteen thirties. A man can’t change the time of his birth now can he? I’ve lived a long and hard life and I don’t have any regrets. I still git up every mornin at four am and build a fire for your mother and I went to work every day, even when I was sick, so that you and your brothers and sisters would have food to eat. I did an honest days work for an honest day’s pay en I never cheated anyone en I never hated anyone either. I don’t claim to understand what’s goin on in the world atall but for all those friggin educated fellers down there in Washington, I don’t see how they’ve managed to screw up the world as much as they have. And when everything is said and done, it will all come back to the little towns like this one and to people jist like me to get everything back on an even keel again and don’t yah think it won’t!”
“Dad, I… “Never mind son,” Dad replied. “I always knew that yah were way too smart and had ideas much too grand to ever to stay in a place like this one for too long.”

Dad is gone now and Walt is still working in Washington. He doesn’t come home much anymore but he still calls on Sunday.

By Martha Stevens-David

Great Aunt Cassie

She was our great aunt but us Stevens’ kids always called her Aunt Cassie. She only stood about five feet tall in her stocking feet but she had more drive and energy in her little finger than most people had in their whole body. There wasn’t anything that she couldn’t or wouldn’t do if she put her mind to it. To me, she was the epitome of the true American spirit.

The word impossible just wasn’t in her vocabulary. If the old Farmall tractor needed a new part that wasn’t available at the local Ashland parts store, she could always be relied upon to know where one could be found, bought or borrowed.
Long after Uncle Hal, had thrown down his wrenches in disgust and stormed off, swearing at the top of his lungs, Aunt Cassie would calmly come out of the house, wipe her hands on her flour sack apron, pick up the abandoned tools and proceed to repair the tractor.

Aunt Cassie was a woman who not only loved Uncle Hal, she also loved life but the thing she loved the most was a good dose of gossip. From time to time, she’d go to visit all the neighbors and after downing numerous cups of tea and ferreting out all the latest, juicy story, she’d return home, anticipating the first chance she’d have to pass on the slightly embellished stories.

Aunt Cassie was an inveterate pack rat. She never threw anything away and she couldn’t stand for anyone else to throw anything away either. She often made secret, furtive excursions to the local dumps where she’d joyfully spend the entire morning sorting thru other people’s trash. She never came home disappointed either. She’d immediately cart everything she’d found up to her attic that was located directly over her kitchen. Year after year, as Aunt Cassie slowly but surely accumulated more and more “treasures,” the kitchen ceiling began to curve noticeably downwards. Everyone who knew her began making side bets as to when the ceiling would finally cave in.

By the time we were born, Aunt Cassie’s three kids were all grown up and on their own. So, we, her great nieces and nephews became the ones to replace her own kids in helping, from time to time, with chores around their farm. Aunt Cassie missed her true calling when she became an Aroostook County farmer’s wife at the age of fifteen. She really should have gone to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency. She had an uncanny way with a chocolate chip cookie that would make you spill your guts about all the gossip you’d ever heard and even some you haven’t. If you told her some story that she hadn’t previously heard before, her eyes would light up and she’d hastily shove another cookie into your grubby hand. Then, she’d lean a little closer and with her voice scarcely above a whisper, ask, “And then Tooter, what happened?”

Then came a day when Aunt Cassie thought she’d died and gone to gossip heaven. She’d finally acquired what Uncle Hal commonly referred to as “That God-Damned thing,” the telephone. She finally got the phone by begging and pleading with Uncle Hal about how it would save them so much time and money not to have to run into town every time they needed a new part for the tractor or for the other farm equipment. She finally convinced him when she said that she’d call over to Presque Isle and have the parts they needed mailed out to them.

From the day it was installed, Aunt Cassie was beside herself with joy. From the very beginning, she had been connected to a six family “party-line.” Each family was assigned a certain number of rings and when the phone rang for any family on the line, it also rang at all the other houses. It wasn’t too long before she’d memorized all the neighbor’s rings and upon hearing the phone begin to ring, she’d immediately drop whatever she was doing and run into the parlor and pick it up. She could be found most anytime of the day or night, leaning over her old desk, with the telephone receiver cupped under her chin, listening in on someone else’s conversation. Uncle Hal constantly complained that her cooking had gone to hell in a wheelbarrow ever since she’d gotten that God-damned thing!

She got into trouble quite a few times when she overheard some real juicy gossip and forgot that she was the rubberee and not the callee and she’d joined right in on the conversation before she realized what she was doing. Over the years, the habit of holding the receiver cupped under her chin while she listened in on other’s phone calls, began to take its toll. She took to holding her head at a slight angle as though she had a crick in her neck. Whenever anyone asked her about her health, she’d gingerly rub her neck and complain of a touch of arthritis here and there. Hearing this, Uncle Hal would snort and laugh that it wasn’t “arthritis” but “telephoneitis.” She certainly wasn’t going to get any sympathy from him!

Aunt Cassie had a way of getting you to do something terrible by making it seem like a great big adventure. One day, when I went for a visit, she was happily washing her breakfast dishes when suddenly she knelt down and began rummaging through the cabinets under the sink. When she stood up, she was holding two small, empty lard pails in each hand. She spun around, looked me right in the eye, lowered her voice to a whisper and said, “Tooter, I found the biggest patch of strawberries this morning… Let’s go!” With a big smile on her face, she’d hand me the two dainty lard pails, grab a huge milking pail for herself and off we’d go to the secret place where the wild strawberries were calling her name.

Or, she’d sit you down in her cluttered kitchen, with the wood stove stoked to the brim, hand you a couple of freshly baked molasses cookies and ask you how you’d like to earn a quarter. In nineteen fifty-two, that was a lot of money to most people, and especially for us Stevens’ kids, so we usually said yes. It certainly didn’t take us long to catch on to her ways.

She was a master of suspense too. She’d never tell you right away what the job really was. She’d hand you a hat, boots, gloves and an old jacket and then she’d take off at a fast clip towards the barn and you’d have to run to keep up with her. Before you knew it, you’d rounded the corner of the building, past the outhouse and you were out behind the barn. It didn’t take overly long to get the gist of her plan, what with a huge smelly pile of cow manure staring you in the face! After you’d swallowed deeply several times, to keep all those cookies down that she’d just fed you, she’d thrust a three pronged pitchfork into your hands and say, “I jist need, oh maybe three or four trailer loads of manure for the flower beds and my garden. And oh yes, I nearly forgot, I guess we can’t forget the lawn, now can we?” You knew right then that this was going to be an all day affair! God! How I hated that smelly, disgusting job! But, Aunt Cassie would work right alongside you and she sang all the while she was slinging forkful after forkful of “poor man’s fertilizer” into the manure spreader. You can’t say all this stuff wasn’t “educational” though. To this very day, I know how to grow a pretty mean garden and my flowers are to die for and oh yes, I can still sing “Mockingbird Hill” all the way through.

After the garden had been thoroughly covered with rich, black manure and the earth turned over, then the lawn and flower beds had to be covered. Then everything had to have a good dose of water and she’d move on to another important task.

For the next couple of weeks, we’d be extremely careful not to visit Aunt Cassie unless we absolutely had to. If the Aroostook River had receded off Uncle Hal’s flats on the island, we’d take the long way around to go fishin down to the island. Instead of going straight down the road past her house, we’d run down over Mr. Beaulier’s property to the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad tracks and cross them and go down thru the woods to get to the river. It took us a great deal longer and added miles of walking to our fishing trip but we knew that she couldn’t see us.

If her “eagle” eyes happened to catch us slinking past her house to go fishing or strawberrying, she’d thrust her curtains aside and shout from her kitchen window, “Jake!” “Tooter!” “Bub!” “Helen!” And we’d all have to go and see what it was that she wanted. God!, didn’t the weeds grow huge in Aunt Cassie’s garden what with all that good rich cow manure on it and Lord!, didn’t the grass grow fast on her huge lawn!

Aunt Cassie considered herself an “expert” in givin home permanents. All any of her female relatives had to do was to mention that they “needed” a new perm and Aunt Cassie would whip out her old Marcel waving kit and begin. It was fascinating for us kids to sit in her kitchen and watch this mysterious, malodorous event take place. Aunt Cassie would saturate each clump of hair with a poisonous, smelling liquid then she’d wind the hair up in a rusty roller and clamp the roller into place with an aluminum clip. Once the victim’s entire head was rolled up, a kind of chemical reaction would take place and blue, sulfur-smelling smoke would drift into the air and we’d hold our breath, half expecting the victim’s head to burst into flames or for them to be electrocuted!

God forbid that Aunt Cassie received a telephone call at that moment of if she heard the phone ring on the party line for someone else, because she’d be gone. She’d abandon the unwitting person in a heartbeat, leaving them sitting in her kitchen with blue smoke rolling off their head, while she rubbered in on the latest news.

After an indeterminate amount of time, she’d reappear as though she hadn’t ever left and begin removing the perming paraphernalia. Sometimes, only half of the hair had taken properly and the other half had been fried to a crisp. Upon seeing the look of horror on her latest victim’s face, Aunt Cassie would grasp the dead hair in her hand, laugh and say, “Ain’t that jist like the fashions in gay Paree!” Usually, it took at least a year before anyone’s hair had grown in enough for them to need another perm. Few were ever foolish enough to mention that they “needed” another perm in front of Aunt Cassie again.

When things got too boring at our house, we’d always sneak off down the Goding Road to Aunt Cassie’s house to see what was going on there. Usually, we were never disappointed. The farm was always filled with new and exciting creatures and experiences.

When spring finally rolled around, off we’d go to see all the new piglets, baby calves and chickens. The new calves were so cute, especially the ones that had just been born and were trying to stand on their wobbly legs. Aunt Cassie would allow us to pet them and brush their coats only after we’d agreed that the stalls would be so much “nicer” without all that smelly old cow shit all over the place! The deal was, that we could pet and brush the calves tour heart’s content, after we’d cleaned out all the stalls. It sounded like a fair deal to us at the time.

We also loved to look at and hold the soft yellow chicks and this was ok with Aunt Cassie too if we agreed to pound up a few old crockery jars into feed for the hens. We’d sit down on the ground around a large rock that she called her “chicken” rock. It had a deep indentation in it from all the years of pounding bits of broken crockery on it. We’d always fight over who got to use the hammer first and hearing us argue, she’d chide us from her kitchen window, “Kids!” “Kids!” “I’ve got more than enough broken dishes from the dump to go around. Now don’t be fightin over that old stuff!”

As Mark, her oldest grandson grew; he often came to visit his grandparent’s farm. When we knew that Mark was there visiting, we’d drop everything and head down over the hill to play with him. We used to call him the “city” kid because he lived in Ashland which was about five miles from our house.

To say that Aunt Cassie doted on her grandson was putting it mildly. We knew that if Mark was with us when we took it into our heads to chop down a “few” trees or if we just “happened” to pull up some of Uncle Hal’s potatoes, then we wouldn’t get into too much trouble. Mark was our “insurance” policy, so to speak.

Mark didn’t get to visit his grandparents too often because his parents thought that Uncle Hal’s swearin and other vices might had a bad influence on him. When he did get to visit, Mark would act like a kid let out of jail. He’d want to do everything that he wasn’t allowed to do at home. He wouldn’t even take a bath unless Grampy Sutherland took one too and he’d imitate his grandfather in every possible way.

Uncle Hal knew full well that Mark wasn’t allowed to swear and he’d wait with baited breath until Mark’s next visit and then he’d purposely try out every cuss word that he knew and a few that he’d made up. Mark soaked up all these new and different experiences like a sponge. All the while, Uncle Hal would smile to himself and he’d wait to hear the explosions that were sure to come from the direction of Station Hill after Mark had gone home.

Mark’s last name was Michaud but as soon as he got to the farm, he’d insist that we call him “Sutherland.” He’d always tell us that if we didn’t call him that, he’d blame everything that we’d done on us. Being a bunch of kids, we didn’t care what we called him. If he wanted to be called Sutherland, that was fine with us.

I’ll never forget that fine summer’s morning when Jake, Bub, Helen and I were down to Aunt Cassie’s. Mark had just arrived the night before and he was going to stay for a week. We were sitting in the grass on Aunt Cassie’s lawn arguin about what we were going to do for the day. Jake wanted to go down to the island, steal dad’s boat and take it on a fast trip around the island. Bub wanted to go out to the back fields and smoke some Indian tobacco. Helen and I wanted to go strawberrying in the overgrown hay fields across the road. Mark wanted to go down to the railroad siding and find some snakes to put on the tracks before the next train came through.
Aunt Cassie looked out her kitchen window where she was washin dishes and yelled out to us to ask us what was wrong. Jake lied to her and said that we were thinkin of goin down in the wood to chop down some trees to build a log cabin. Hearing this, Aunt Cassie stopped what she was doing and looked at us for a couple of seconds, then with a shrewd look on her face, she said, “I don’t know about you, but if it was me, I wouldn’t go down in them woods right now, what with all those skeeters and mingies around. And it’s God-awful hot today too!” We all looked at each other and waited. “Why don’t you play right here?” “Where?” We all yelled. She looked out through the screened in window with a big smile on her face and she knew that she had us.

“Well,” She said. “You know that I have that old chicken coop right over there behind you and it’s empty right now. I think that it would make a perfectly fine playhouse, don’t you?” We turned and looked where she had pointed and sure enough, there it was! Reeling us a little closer into her trap, she continued. “There’s only one problem though kids. It really ought to be cleaned out before you play in there. It ain’t been cleaned in years!” “No problem!” We all yelled. Jake ran to get the wheelbarrow, Bub and I ran to get the shovels, Mark ran to get some gloves and Helen went to get us some drinking water from the hose. We scurried up the small incline to the shit-filled chicken coop like an anxious husband on his honeymoon.

We pushed open the sagging chicken coop door and gagged at the sight that awaited us. The walls and floor were covered with chicken droppings and the smell was horrendous! We each grabbed a tool and we shoveled, we swept, we carted and we cleaned all morning and after about five hours, the “play house” was beginning to look pretty good well, we could finally see the floor anyway.

Suddenly, through the dust that hung in the air, I looked over at Jake. His red hair and face were completely covered with a fine, white dust. Beads of sweat ran down the side of his face like small rivers and he was thoroughly and systematically scratching himself. I looked at him for a moment and then I felt the sudden urge to scratch too. Mark, watching us, began to scratch and whine about feeling all itchy. Bub and Helen were standing in a corner and they looked just like the rest of us. We dropped everything and got the hell out of that hen house.

Mark ran screeching down the hill to where Aunt Cassie was watchin from her kitchen window. She looked out to where we were standin, scratchin and itchin and asked. “What, tired of playin already?” She asked and she seemed to be laughing a little as she said it. “Grammy,” Mark whined. “Do chickens have lice?” “God yes!” She replied. “But don’t worry kids. Chicken lice don’t stay too long on kids!” And she burst out laughing. Jake looked up at her face in the screen window and asked, “Well, how long do they stay?” “Oh, not more than two or three days,” She replied. We all looked at each other in horror and Mark shot into the house.

As we tiredly rounded the corner of her house, headed for home, we heard this parting shot from the direction of her window. “By the way kids, anytime you want to come and play in the other chicken coop, jist let me know. It ain’t been cleaned in a long, long time!” To this day, I swear that I could hear her laughter in the still afternoon air behind us as we straggled, filthy, itching and scratching, up the long hill towards home.

NOTE: I hurriedly finished this story so that I could present it to Aunt Cassie in honor of her ninetieth birthday on March 18, 2001. After she’d read it, a relative asked her how she’d liked the story. She mulled the question over for a couple of seconds and then she said. “I don’t mind that Tooter said that I liked to dig in the dump, because I do! I don’t mind that she said that I liked to gossip because that’s true too! And I don’t even mind that she wrote that I liked to rubber in on my neighbor’s telephone calls because I did! But I don’t like it that she wrote that I had a crick in my neck because I don’t!”

NOTE: July 7, 2004, as of this writing, Aunt Cassie is still alive and well and still living alone in her old house on the Goding Road and she turned ninety-four on March 18, 2004. May God Bless you Aunt Cassie. I will always love you.

NOTE: March 21, 2007. As of this writing, Aunt Cassie is still alive and well but she has moved into what she calls “Wrinkle Village” a (euphemism for the Home for the Elderly) in Ashland for the winter. I spoke with her yesterday and after a long and happy conversation, she asked, “Is there anything I can do for you Tooter?” “God no!” I replied. “You did more for me when I was a kid that I can ever repay you for.” “Well,” she said. “What were a few cookies? When I close my eyes, I can still see your little blond head as you walked by my house, goin fishin or you seated on the old Farmall tractor on Uncle Hal’s lap as you helped him cultivate the potatoes. You know Tooter, I hope I can move back to my old shack when warm weather comes and have a little garden. I want to plant a potato plant for Hal.” I hope you can move back too Aunt Cassie and plant a potato plant for Uncle Hal for me too. I will always love you, Aunt Cassie.

Note: May 15, 2007. As of this writing, Aunt Cassie is still doing well but she still had a little problem when I spoke with her last week. It seems that after having gone a lifetime without actually knowin what her age really was, she finally found her birth certificate and she called me in a state of panic. “”Tooter,” she said. “I finally found my birth certificate!” “Well,” Aunt Cass, “That’s good news.” “No,” she replied, “It ain’t.” “Why not Aunt Cass?” I asked. “Well, you know, these fools went and gave me a big birthday party because they thought I was ninety-seven and I’m not!” “Well, how old are you?” I asked. “I’m younger than I thought I was, I’m only ninety-six!” I had to laugh at that and then I asked, “Well, isn’t that good news?” “No,” she replied, “It ain’t!” “Why?” “Well,” these fools will think I lied and now I’ll have to give back all the presents!” “Oh” Aunt Cass, you may only be ninety-six but you’re still the oldest person in Ashland.” She had a think about it and then she said, “I guess you’re right.”

Note: During the Ashland Days Celebration on the Fourth of July, 2007, Aunt Cassie was honored again. She was awarded a cane and a plaque. After all the uproar had died down, she called me to tell me the news. “Tooter,” she said. “These fools went and made a big deal over me ahgin and they had a ceremony and they gave me a beautiful cane and a plaque with my name and age engraved on it.”.” “Oh,” Aunt Cass, that’s wonderful!” “No it ain’t!” she replied. “Why not?” I asked. “Well,” she said. “Tha damn fools gave me a beautiful cane and then the sons-ah-whores took it back!” “En if that wasn’t bad enough,” she went on, “They gave me a plaque and then they asked me where I was goin to hang it in my apartment. I looked that old fool right in the eye and said, “I’m not goin to hang it anywhere, I’m goin to put it under my bed!” She wasn’t at all impressed with the plaque but she sure did want that cane! She went on to say that her family had “surprised” her and hadn’t told her about the ceremony in her honor and when they’d come to pick her up, they hadn’t even allowed her to change her clothes. Then they’d taken her uptown and put her in a buggy that was hooked to a horse and had pulled her all over to hell and gone. She wasn’t happy or impressed with that ceremony either. She said that a newspaper reporter had come up to her and had taken her picture for the Presque Isle Star Herald and he’d asked her how she’d liked the buggy ride. She said that she had told him that at age fourteen, her father, Old Ock Bragdon, had told her that she was grown now and that she’d best be lookin for a husband to support her. So, he’d put her in his horse cart and they’d driven the long ride from Buffalo into Ashland. She said that she hadn’t liked the buggy ride with her father eighty-three years ago and she didn’t like this one either! Aunt Cassie went on to tell me that she sure hoped that they’d gotten this “honorin” thing out of their systems and that she sure to God hoped that she didn’t make it to one hundred because she dreaded to think what them friggin fools might do to her then! But I sure hope you do make it to your hundredth birthday Aunt Cass.

Note: February 18, 2008

Aunt Cass began losing ground right after Christmas and is now in a nursing home in Caribou. Today is her 97th birthday and she is going softly into her good night. I’m sorry to lose you, Aunt Cass but I certainly don’t want you to suffer. May God bless and keep you till we meet again.

Note: March 13, 2008

Great Aunt Cass left this earthly realm last night at 6:15. She’s not suffering anymore and I’m certain Heaven is a much brighter place now. I wrote the following poem just for her:

For Aunt Cass

I haven’t come to say goodbye
Because you didn’t really die…

You’re in the sky and in the trees
And all my lifelong memories…

You’re in all the things that grow
And in the very winds that blow…

So, I’m not sad now that you’ve gone
My memories of you go on and on…

So wait for me now that you sleep
For I have promises to keep…

“Life’s journey is not to arrive at our funeral all sweet and pretty, ours it to slide in sideways all used up and wrinkled, screaming Holy Hell what ah ride!”

“Rest in Peace, Aunt Cass.”

©Martha Stevens-David 0318008
An original poem by M. Stevens-David 031508

Aroostook County Memories

The sky, in Aroostook County, is a sharp, clear blue with large fluffy white clouds floating lazily across it and the slight breeze is so fresh and clean that the first thing one notices is that it doesn’t have any smell at all. The air sweeps across the close-cropped pastures and down through the acres upon acres of potato fields with barely a ruffling of the leaves. With the advent of autumn, the wild grasses have turned a deep gold and their stocks contrast deeply with the lush greenness of the potato plants.

The soft droning of bees is all that one can hear as they gather nectar from the multitude of flowers, which grow in wild profusion in the over-grown pastures as far as the eye can see. The patches of bright orange, red and gold Indian paintbrushes sway to and fro in the gentle breeze like the heads of sleepy children.

Down below what we Stevens’ kids called “Sutherland’s Hill” there is the shimmer of silver as the late afternoon sun is reflected off the slowly moving Aroostook River as it winds its way past Masardis, Garfield, Ashland and Sheridan on its lazy way through the county. If one ventures closer to the river, you can clearly see the ripple of the water, as the numerous fish rise to the surface to feed off the hoards of insects that are floating on it. The slap of a beaver’s tail on the water sounds like a cannon’s boom in the silent, fall air.

Across the river on the Garfield side, the stands of Pine, Spruce, Hemlock, Beech and Maple stand straight and tall like sentries in the army of the forest. In the lush coolness, there is ample evidence of the abundance of wild animals and one can readily see that rabbits, bear, moose, deer, raccoons, muskrats, mink and otter still occupy this vast area. The intermingling calls of bluejays, crows, ravens and woodpeckers echo in the quiet stillness of the fall day.

Off in the distance, you can also hear another sound, the sound of man and his chainsaw as its steel teeth rip through the white meat of the virgin timber. The snarl and smoke of the monster skidder permeates the air as the huge machine struggles to pull the slaughtered logs up out of a deep ravine and load them onto the steel bodies of the waiting logging trucks.

If you raise your head a bit and look off in the distance, your eyes will naturally be drawn to the southern horizon. There is an oft-repeated expression “On a clear day, you can see forever,” and from where our house stood on a high knoll on the Goding Road, we couldn’t exactly see forever but on a clear day we could see the majesty of Mt. Katahdin about seventy-five miles to the south.

When winter comes once again to Aroostook County the harsh realities of living confined, for the most part, in doors for the next six or seven months, is almost too much to bare. Another winter of bone-chilling cold, wet socks and mittens and long, woolen underwear are the realities of living in the county. Wet wool, Kerosene and the crackle of the wood burning stove are all too familiar smells and sounds to a true Mainer. This time of year is always a season of hardship, suffering and most of all great patience for those who live in the county.

Even with all this hardship, living in the two million five hundred thousand plus acres, Aroostook County is a place of great beauty too. On nights when the temperature hovers around zero, the Aurora Borealis, with its shimmering bands of rainbow colors, dances its way across the Northern sky as continued proof that it has been choreographed by the master choreographer himself. The Indians, who are older than time, called this magical event “The Dance of the Heavenly Spirits,” and this so aptly describes this atmospheric phenomenon.

At times, the cold is so intense that it completely freezes the sap in the trees and even the slightest wind will cause the swaying branches to break, with a sharp sound like gun shots in the frigid air. Cold sears the tissues of the nose and lungs and compels one to move about quickly on their appointed rounds.

Man is completely at the mercy of Mother Nature in this unrelenting season. The morning may dawn bright and clear but within the hour, the sky has turned a dull gray and the wind shifts out of the North with a vengeance. The wind-driven snow comes skittering across the desolate potato fields to pile-up in huge drifts across the roads. The only contrast to the barren whiteness is the leafless trees and fence posts as they stand like sentinels in the swirling snow.

In Aroostook County, in the dead of winter, the roads remain in alternating conditions of either deep-piled snowdrifts or frozen ribbons of steel blue ice and one ventures out of doors only under extreme cases of necessity. To live and survive in Northern Maine, year after year, requires not only extreme patience but also an indefatigable spirit or a combination of both are required in order to live in this, as our mother used to call it, “God-forsaken” place.

Visitors, who live in warmer climes, which to us Stevens’ kids, meant any place south of Bangor, often voiced the opinion that “The County” must be a wonderful place to live when there is so much snow. Upon hearing this, Mother would roll her eyes and mutter a few choice words under her breath and say, “Surely God protects dreamers, fools and children.”

By Martha Stevens-David @ lmdmsd@megalink.net

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