Life in the Corn Minion Number One: Arleinamay.

Name: Arleinamay Ordfay.
Location: Ellsw’th, Maine.
Current Occupation: Music instructress for larvae.
Favorite Drink: Moxie. ["Unique" Maine soda: tastes like flat cola that has had cigars extinguished in it.]


Arleinamay approached me one stifling (hahahahaha! stifling! in Maine!) summer day and asked me for a favor. She’d snagged an interview for a music teaching position and needed a companion to ride with her through the nosferatu-infested forests to the school. It was my day off, and it was summer, and at that time I’d not traveled around much in my piney home state, so I was like, hey, what the eff. That, and I was certain to find some random ethnographic artifact. Plus, you could definitely do worse to have Arleinamay as a traveling companion; my vocal cords ache when I think about the hours of pleasant conversation. And by “pleasant” I mean “oftentimes inappropriate, vulgar and hysterical.”

We got into her boat-car and headed due East. Her interview was supposed to be in a town called Woodland, which we found on a map to be near Calais on the Canadian border. We prayed to any deity that came to mind for our safe passage on “The Airline”, aka Route 1, which is used primarily by logging trucks and skiddahs, which of course take up the entire road and force smaller, weaker vehicles into the ditch. We made good time to the remote Eastern portion of the Pine Tree State, and since we got there hella-early, we decided to go to a Canadian Wal*Mart, which was delightful to the extreme. (Canadian rednecks speaking French; divine.) When it came time to get a move on, we crossed back into the States and made haste to the school. Arleinamay walked into the reception office and announced that she was there to interview for the music position.

One of the two women in the office crumpled her face ever-so-slightly. “I’m the music teacher, and as far as I know {shoots glance to receptionist, who shrugs and shakes her head, eyebrows raised} I’m not going anywhere.” Arleinamay said that she’d been contacted by the school and that there was, indeed, supposed to be a music position available. We stared at each other for a few minutes, periodically shrugging our shoulders and crinkling our brows. The receptionist then looked up at Arleinamay and said, and I quote:

“Well, did you know that theyah ah two Woodlands in Maine?”

My first instinct was to wonder what the hell kind of state would allow there to be two towns to have the same name. Then I remembered: only a million and a half people live here. Who the eff cares of there are two towns with the same name? On the tail of that, of course, was my curiosity about where the other Woodland might be. Upon asking, we found out that the “Woodland” we were in currently was phasing out of being named as such, and was transitioning to “Baileyville.” “The othah Woodland”, the receptionist said, “is up Fo’t Fayahfield way.”

Effing Fort Fairfield. Arleinamay went ashy, like when you get hit with that first stomach spasm after eating Indian food. Fort Fairfield is two and a half hours due North from Calais and the faux Woodland. To say that we’d never make it on time would be like saying that Martha Stewart is really an overweight Hispanic man with good makeup; both are true. The receptionist’s curiosity turned to pity, and she handed Arleinamay a phone with which she could call the non-faux Woodland school to tell them that we were missing chromosomes. Arleinamay apologized profusely for wasting their time and thanked them for their consideration.

But apparently, they were interested enough in her that they said, hey, we'll wait the two and a half hours for you to come interview. Christ on a cracker. Back in the car; two and a half hours later we were in Aroostook County ("The County" in Mainese; it's the largest county in Maine and the largest county East of the Mississippi).

It all ended well. They offered Arleinamay a job on the spot and she later took it. For more than a year, she and her then-fiancee Ndreway lived in Fort Fairfield, Maine, population 7, within visual distance of the Canadian border crossing. Once a day, an antique air-raid siren went off at noon, and that was the excitement in Fort Fairfield.

That's my favorite story about Arleinamay, and I didn't make up a single bit of it, as she could confirm. Well, I neglected to tell you how they, as poor teachers, made supplementary income from selling children into white slavery, but that's for another time.

I met Arleinamay my first week at UMaine, in my crappy little dorm room in Somerset Hall. Her boyfriend, Ndreway, was to be my roommate, and as he unpacked (silently) we talked each other's ears off. The day three years later when I was the best man at their wedding was one of the proudest of my life; it was the least I could do for years of sister-like friendship.

I miss her, and Ndreway, all the way out here in the corn. But she knows, I hope, that wherever I go, she's there too.

I remain, as ever,

Dom