Unlikely Friend

The first time I met Ed “Boston” Dorrer he was at the Bollinger County Eagles in 2010. It was a memorable day. My kids were at their mother’s house , dark clouds were on the horizon and tornado warnings filled the airwaves, a typical stormy Spring day in Southeast, Missouri.

Looking back leaving the house to go hang out with my friends in a metal building to wait out an impending tornado was not exactly the smartest decision but I’m so glad I did.

The first face I recognized was Dennis Willis, so I headed for his table, and a fateful meeting with “Boston”. With a scowl on his face he looked at me and said, “I don’t like people I don’t know sitting at my table.”

To which I replied, “Well it’s not just your table, it’s “Chief’s” too and besides, around here we put the Yankees outside to watch for funnel clouds.”

It was at this point “Boston” laughed and “allowed” me to sit at “his” table. It was his test and I had just passed it. It was the beginning of many friendly “arguments” between he and I.

“Boston” was a red-blooded American who had staked his claim in Marble Hill. He loved it here and convinced others to move here as well. Noone or no force of nature was going to move him either.

His house sat next to Crooked Creek and one time, during a flood, I went to check on him. When I arrived at his house, there he stood on his front porch wearing his “newsboy” hat, a sweatshirt, shorts and rubber boots, comical yet defiant. He informed me that he had already secured his possessions and wasn’t going anywhere. That was “Boston.”

He was a good friend to me , and many others in the area and once told me not long after moving here, that he had fallen upon “hard times” but the people of this town helped him out. He never forgot their generosity and afterwards you could find him at the Food Pantry, every Tuesday, helping area residents out just as they had helped him. Some people talked about caring, “Boston” proved he did through his actions.

Rest In Peace my Yankee friend.

– Clint Lacy