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…