After they were seated on the sofa, they looked at each other, and spontaneously broke out into laughter.
Julia Craigs, 94, and Kaye Bell, 95, were visiting over tea and a bite of cheesecake. As they chatted, the hue of age faded, and their eyes mirrored their childhood days.
It was 89 years ago. The year 1925. The place, Monticello Grammar School.
“I moved to Monticello and she was already up there,” recalled Bell.
Craigs answered, “We started first grade with Rita Cowperthwaite.”
As stories were being shared, Bell asked Craigs if she recalled what she had done in grammar school.
Rolling her eyes, Craig admitted she did remember.
“You know, kids will be kids, so you are in a set or out of a set, friends with someone and someone else isn’t,” said Craigs. “I said something to a girl. She didn’t like it very well and she said, ‘I am going to tell Mrs. Foster on you.’ I said, you can tell Mrs. Foster ‘She can kiss my …’ She went right in and did it.”
But the two could never remember arguing with one another.
“It was the other people having the spats. We were just making them,” Bell said with a wily smile.
“If there were squabbles, we settled them,” Craigs added.
It became apparent that Craigs was a handful.
“You were sort of an instigator on the school bus,” said Bell looking at her friend.
Craigs answered, “I was a hellion when I was in Monticello. I really was. I used to fight with the boys, I would wrestle with them, I would do most anything. I don’t know, I was just a roughy.” The two talked about going on a school hack, which Bell described as a long sled with a cover, with a stove in it, pulled by horses.
“It took a long while to get to school,” Bell said.
“This time of year, when the weather was nice, we would want to stand on the step outside and get some air,” Craigs recalled. “Bob Hare drove the school hack. Well, he would take his switch and hit the horses, and of course, there was a big jump and we’d fall off. Didn’t he get a kick out of that.”
The two were classmates until the sixth grade when Craigs, 11, moved to Houlton.
“I missed her,” said Bell, who added, “My Dad had a farm in Monticello and I had to stay and pull mustard.”
Craigs attended the Niles School on the B Road until eighth grade.
But, the two joined forces again in high school.
Craigs was a freshman in 1933 at Houlton High School, with Bell joining her in 1936, as a junior.
“I went to high school for two years in Monticello,” Bell explained.
“But, we graduated together,” added Craigs.
“Do you remember where they had the graduation?,” Bell asked Craigs.
With confidence, Craigs answered, “Yes. I sure do.”
Craigs explained that Houlton High School’s Class of 1937 held their graduation at the grand stand in Community Park. Though neither one could remember the reason for the location, it stuck, as it was just one remnant of a colorful past.
Common threads that drew the two girls together was their upbringing and personalities.
“We both grew up very poor,” said Craigs, as Bell quickly teased, “I was poorer than you.”
Craigs recalled taking sandwiches with just either ketchup or mustard as the filling and maybe even a hard-boiled egg.
“We had nothing else,” she added.
In high school, she was college and I switched to commercial,” said Bell. “I was the second of seven children, I was not going to college.”
“Oh, I had big ideas,” said Craigs. “I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer. But, I graduated from high school on a Friday and on Monday morning, I went to work for the telephone company as a telephone operator.”
“And, you were lucky,” Bell added.
“Was I ever lucky,” said Craigs. “I got $10 a week. In six months, we got a 50-cent raise.”
Craigs worked from 1937 to 1941, as the operators were gradually substituted with dial-up. She took a transfer to New Jersey and stayed only about a year and came home.
“Edna Cunliffe, chief operator, called when Jimmy was about 2,” explained Craigs. “I was living at the farm. She wanted to know if I was interested in going back to work. I was so tempted. But, in those days, mothers stayed home with the children. I was not going to leave my son for my mother to bring up.”
Craigs went back to work part-time in 1956 and went on full-time until the New England Telephone Company office closed in 1970.
After high school, Bell went off to work as a nanny in New York for four or five years and then came back to the Shiretown to raise her own family. She worked for quite a few years at O’Donnell’s Express.
“It was hard work and you were really busy,” she said, “But, it was a fun job.”
Then, she went to work for the A.E. Morse Company and then on to the Border Patrol — which was the headquartered in Houlton for the whole state — where she worked as a clerk and then radio operator.
Bell did go to college, but not until she was 60 years old. She graduated when she was 69. She is an author and is known as Houlton’s historian in residence. She is the curator of the Southern Aroostook Historical Museum and she can tell incredible stories about Aroostook County’s past in an attention-grabbing way.
Both ladies have been involved with local organizations, as well as their churches.
These two friends literally crossed paths, as neighbors, when they were raising their children.
“Our kids grew up together on the same street,” said Craigs.
That sparked another unique memory.
“I remember when your older daughter was a candidate for Miss Houlton and my son, Jimmy, borrowed a Cadillac and was the chauffeur in the school parade,” laughed Craigs.
Bell then explained her son, Brian, and Julia’s daughter, Rhonda, graduated in the same class (Houlton High School 1965) and they both live in Arizona.
The two friends have seen many technological, medical and changes in industry.
“When you think about seeing it all, you wonder about the one thing that sticks out or has meant the most to you, well I have said, I felt that it was electricity,” Craigs explained. “When we got electricity, we thought we had it made. We had a light, we used to use lamps or lanterns. Then from that, an iron; from that the washing machine and now look what we do with electricity.”
From accounts of taking the “L” into New York City to staying at Hotel Pennsylvania; from smuggling liquor over the border to the Great Depression; and even to the ordinary snow days, which took a plow four hours to clear a mile, these two have breathed in the fragrance and walked wounded through chapters of their lives.
Both ladies are widowed. Bell’s husband, Horace, died 42 years ago, while Craigs’ husband, Ronald, has been gone for 18 years. They are role models of a gritty zest for life.
“It has been an interesting life, it really, truly has,” said Bell.
“Especially when you stop and think of the things we’ve seen happen,” Craigs added.
The two still stay in touch, as they visit and work on class reunions, as Craigs is the class correspondent.
“Out of our class of 105, there are six of us left that we are aware of,” said Craigs. Two are in nursing homes and two more live away.
As Father Time kept his pace, the two friends will revel in past anecdotes, while bragging on their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
But, as maturity shows on each of our faces and time seems to wait no more, it is the earlier times of our lives, we relish. The older we grow, despite the ill, we speak of those days with gratitude.
“We are tough. We come from Monticello. It was absolutely a different world then. It was a fun time. We both were, I won’t say troublemakers, but we could get into trouble once in awhile,” Bell added with a smile.
