The first 13 postings on this blog are based on a 13 slide PowerPoint Presentation, which I had put together back around the year 2002.
All of the blog posts on this web site explain a lot about my transformation as a kid, who was mostly a Rock n’ Roll, Blues, and Rhythm n' Blues fan, from the suburbs of Baltimore, who became a Maine Bear Hunting Guide. They also tell exactly how I was treated by my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley K. Clarke, who owned the hunting lodge where I worked as a Registered Maine Guide, Katahdin Lodge and Camps, in Patten, Maine. The important thing here is that I sent my Aunt Marty and Uncle Finley a printout of the PowerPoint Presentation, but they never responded.
Most of the photos on this web site are from that PowerPoint Presentation, but I have rewritten and added text to the slides, which are now the individual blog posts on here. Though I have rewritten it to a small degree, the basic information and message was already in them when they were sent out as printouts to my aunt and uncle up in Maine and also to a whole bunch of people who live in and around the area of Patten, Maine.
But first I had sent them all--Fin and Marty and many Patten Maine residents--copies of several stories about that time in Maine which I had written first. They are The House Fire, The Day That I Fell In Love With Patten Maine, and The Rocket Scientist. Those are three tales that I thought would remind them of exactly what I had done up there as teenage kid from Dundalk, Maryland and a bear hunting guide and how the history of it truly was. As opposed to my aunt and uncle’s twisted, self serving, self righteous version of how it was, which I have had to try to live with ever since the 1970s. If you haven’t read any of my short stories yet, read some of them to see what I’m talking about.
A year or two after writing my first stories about my Maine adventures and sending them to Fin and Marty, I wrote Then They Own You (published on The Daily Me as Katahdin Lodge 1979) and then sent a copy of the story to them, and to a bunch of Patten Mainers too. That story tells how my relationship with Fin and Marty came to a near murderous halt.
Because of Fin and Marty's refusal to face the facts and admit the truths in my written works about my times with them as their nephew and also employee, I do not know whether or not that they ever opened any of those mailed stories to them. But by me sending out all of those copies of all of those written works to the local Patten, Maine area barber shops, beauty parlors, delicatessen, pizza shop, a bunch of post office box numbers on the Patten Post Office, hunting lodges, and also to several of the people who are featured in my stories or to their family members, by doing that I made certain that Fin and Marty would be asked about me and my written work and how true it is by any number of people whom they could easily come in contact with up there in their part of Maine. I made it so that Fin or Marty could not even go to the bank or grocery store without the possibility of having someone ask them about their lies, deceit, and abusive history of me, and asking them two about my claim that they owe me a lot of money.
In November of 2001, I began to send a series of post cards to my Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha.
In 1977, at Katahdin Lodge, I had witnessed my Uncle Finley angrily grabbing a handful of mail, that was addressed to him, he grabbed it out of his wife Martha's hand and threw it right into the trash can. He had no idea who any of it was from. He simply did not want to deal with any of it. That type of angry outburst is a true symptom of the Korean War induced PTSD that Finley suffered severely from.
So you see, not only was it extremely unlikely that either Fin or Marty would open up any mail I sent them, due to their refusal to face the facts and admit the truths in my written works about my times with them as their nephew and also employee, Finley would not always open up any regular mail sent to him in envelopes. Consequently, I began to send them post cards.
Copy Of First Post Card Sent On Nov. 15 or 16, 2001.
All of the blog posts on this web site explain a lot about my transformation as a kid, who was mostly a Rock n’ Roll, Blues, and Rhythm n' Blues fan, from the suburbs of Baltimore, who became a Maine Bear Hunting Guide. They also tell exactly how I was treated by my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley K. Clarke, who owned the hunting lodge where I worked as a Registered Maine Guide, Katahdin Lodge and Camps, in Patten, Maine. The important thing here is that I sent my Aunt Marty and Uncle Finley a printout of the PowerPoint Presentation, but they never responded.
Most of the photos on this web site are from that PowerPoint Presentation, but I have rewritten and added text to the slides, which are now the individual blog posts on here. Though I have rewritten it to a small degree, the basic information and message was already in them when they were sent out as printouts to my aunt and uncle up in Maine and also to a whole bunch of people who live in and around the area of Patten, Maine.
But first I had sent them all--Fin and Marty and many Patten Maine residents--copies of several stories about that time in Maine which I had written first. They are The House Fire, The Day That I Fell In Love With Patten Maine, and The Rocket Scientist. Those are three tales that I thought would remind them of exactly what I had done up there as teenage kid from Dundalk, Maryland and a bear hunting guide and how the history of it truly was. As opposed to my aunt and uncle’s twisted, self serving, self righteous version of how it was, which I have had to try to live with ever since the 1970s. If you haven’t read any of my short stories yet, read some of them to see what I’m talking about.
A year or two after writing my first stories about my Maine adventures and sending them to Fin and Marty, I wrote Then They Own You (published on The Daily Me as Katahdin Lodge 1979) and then sent a copy of the story to them, and to a bunch of Patten Mainers too. That story tells how my relationship with Fin and Marty came to a near murderous halt.
Because of Fin and Marty's refusal to face the facts and admit the truths in my written works about my times with them as their nephew and also employee, I do not know whether or not that they ever opened any of those mailed stories to them. But by me sending out all of those copies of all of those written works to the local Patten, Maine area barber shops, beauty parlors, delicatessen, pizza shop, a bunch of post office box numbers on the Patten Post Office, hunting lodges, and also to several of the people who are featured in my stories or to their family members, by doing that I made certain that Fin and Marty would be asked about me and my written work and how true it is by any number of people whom they could easily come in contact with up there in their part of Maine. I made it so that Fin or Marty could not even go to the bank or grocery store without the possibility of having someone ask them about their lies, deceit, and abusive history of me, and asking them two about my claim that they owe me a lot of money.
In November of 2001, I began to send a series of post cards to my Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha.
In 1977, at Katahdin Lodge, I had witnessed my Uncle Finley angrily grabbing a handful of mail, that was addressed to him, he grabbed it out of his wife Martha's hand and threw it right into the trash can. He had no idea who any of it was from. He simply did not want to deal with any of it. That type of angry outburst is a true symptom of the Korean War induced PTSD that Finley suffered severely from.
So you see, not only was it extremely unlikely that either Fin or Marty would open up any mail I sent them, due to their refusal to face the facts and admit the truths in my written works about my times with them as their nephew and also employee, Finley would not always open up any regular mail sent to him in envelopes. Consequently, I began to send them post cards.
Copy Of First Post Card Sent On Nov. 15 or 16, 2001.
I put my return address on this first post card, so that it could be sent back to me if it didn’t go through. I sent it expecting that either Fin and Marty still lived at Katahdin Lodge and Camps and still used their old post office box, or the card would be forwarded to them, or it would be returned to me with their forwarding address on it. It must have been forwarded to them, because I never got it back.
You may believe that it was a privilege for me to work a minimum of 9 hours a day 6 days a week for you at Katahdin Lodge—driving thousands of miles over rough roads at high speeds—taking inexperienced bear hunters out into the vast north woods and helping them have an enjoyable and rewarding outdoors adventure without getting anyone shot—and not getting in trouble with the local folks which would have caused you great difficulty in your business. So here is my bill for services rendered: $7,000 for 1968-69 + $2,000 for 1977 + $350.00 bear bonus for 1979. Plus interest. Any amount over $10,000 will settle your account with me. David
You may believe that it was a privilege for me to work a minimum of 9 hours a day 6 days a week for you at Katahdin Lodge—driving thousands of miles over rough roads at high speeds—taking inexperienced bear hunters out into the vast north woods and helping them have an enjoyable and rewarding outdoors adventure without getting anyone shot—and not getting in trouble with the local folks which would have caused you great difficulty in your business. So here is my bill for services rendered: $7,000 for 1968-69 + $2,000 for 1977 + $350.00 bear bonus for 1979. Plus interest. Any amount over $10,000 will settle your account with me. DavidThis Post Card Was Sent On Nov. 28, 2001
This post card was returned to me also. But the Smyrna Mills postal workers surely knew where Fin and Marty had moved to, or they could have found out, because Fin and Marty hadn’t moved too far from the lodge—and the first card did go through. They had moved to 21 Bald Eagle Lane on Shin Pond in Mt. Chase, Maine, which is about 25-30 miles by road from Katahdin Lodge, but up there in the sparsely populated woods of Northern Maine, it’s almost in the same neighborhood.
The way that I figure it is, Fin and/or Marty had made a nasty phone call or visit to the Smyrna Mills Post Office and had bullied them into sending this card back to me with the "Moved, left no address" stamped on this one. Those two self righteous, arrogant, ignorant individuals, my aunt and uncle, could ruin anyone’s day, if they wanted to. I’ve seen it happen to others besides me--it always turned my stomach. I am sure that a bad, sickening scene was made over my post cards at the Smyrna Mills Post Office.
The way that I figure it is, Fin and/or Marty had made a nasty phone call or visit to the Smyrna Mills Post Office and had bullied them into sending this card back to me with the "Moved, left no address" stamped on this one. Those two self righteous, arrogant, ignorant individuals, my aunt and uncle, could ruin anyone’s day, if they wanted to. I’ve seen it happen to others besides me--it always turned my stomach. I am sure that a bad, sickening scene was made over my post cards at the Smyrna Mills Post Office.
When you did not acknowledge my father’s death I felt it within reason to want to slam my fist into your face a few times. He was your friend. (Finley’s brother Nelson had called and left a message on Fin and Marty's answering machine informing of my father's death.)Not responding to my phone call informing you of my mother’s death was a sad thing for you to do (I had to leave a message on their answering machine). I believe that you did grieve over your sister’s death, privately. Had you come to her funeral I would have allowed you to came and go in peace.
She was your protection. I could not fully pursue my claims against you without causing her to retreat from reality further than she had.
I will continue this quest for good old truth and justice indefinitely. David
I knew that my aunt and uncle would be very angry at me for sending these post cards. They deserved to be dealt with this way. They had angered me to no end, and had hurt and damaged our family more than I had ever imagined anyone could.
I was doing my best to make them so angry that they had to 'come out and fight', and either bring some kind of legal charges or lawsuit against me, or maybe one or both of them would come down here to my home and knock on my door. it may have gotten me shot, but it was well worth the risk. I had no money to go to Maine and bring a lawsuit against them, or to simply knock on their door and demand my money. And that really could have gotten me shot.
My entire adult life has been lived well below the poverty line. My severe, debilitating depression has been horrendous, and it was partially caused by the way that Fin and Marty did me so much grievous wrong. I have never been in a financially healthy enough or any other kind of healthy enough condition to go to Maine for the purpose of pursuing a legal claim for reasonable compensation for all that Finley and Martha Clarke owe to me.
The following scanned in image is the back of a homemade post card that had an 8x10 photo of the wood splitting photo on this blog site. Before I found out Fin and Marty's new address, I sent this one to the old Smyrna Mills address, even though I knew that it may not ever make it to Fin and Marty. And I left my return address off this one, because I figured that this would give the Smyrna Mills postal workers something talk about, and maybe some gossip about these post cards would reach Fin and Marty. They probably had gotten the first one, but they had been in their new address long enough not to need their forwarding address on file at the Smyrna Mills Post Office. Or maybe Fin and Marty had convinced the Smyrna Mills Post Office personnel not to allow anymore of my post cards or other mail to them to be forwarded.
Later on, I found out what Fin and Marty’s new address is, and I sent another version of this homemade post card to them at 21 Bald Eagle Lane.
Remember this? I worked on that woodpile of yours for a minimum of 9 hours a day for 10 days. Plus I had several hours of other things to do at your lodge each day, including going out to track wounded bears. And you never had one good thing to say about any of it.
I was proud to be able to split the better part of 19 cords of wood in 2 weeks. I still love to split wood but I deserve a fair wage for doing it.
GIVE ME MY MONEY!
David
Later on, I found out what Fin and Marty’s new address is, and I sent another version of this homemade post card to them at 21 Bald Eagle Lane.
Remember this? I worked on that woodpile of yours for a minimum of 9 hours a day for 10 days. Plus I had several hours of other things to do at your lodge each day, including going out to track wounded bears. And you never had one good thing to say about any of it.I was proud to be able to split the better part of 19 cords of wood in 2 weeks. I still love to split wood but I deserve a fair wage for doing it.
GIVE ME MY MONEY!
David
A Post Card Sent On July 16, 2002
This is a scanned, copy machine copy of a postcard that I sent to Fin and Marty on 7/16/02. I sent them this one postcard, than weeks later sent them over twenty handwritten postcards that all said "YOU OWE ME $27,5OO.15." I sent fifteen of these particular handwritten postcards at one time, so they had to see and read something off of them before the cards went into the trash. I never heard from them about it.
If I am not owed anything by them than why did those two not pursue legal action against me to stop my postcards and stories from coming up there and to defend their good names?
Because they are guilty of all that I say in my stories and on my Internet sites.
Now it is just Marty who is alive for me to pursue to get my back pay. She is the one who was the main architect of their cheating me out of my pay anyway. If she was a fair minded person she would have paid me even if Fin had been against it. She didn’t always pay any of Fin’s hunting guides all that we had earned nor all that was promised to us by my uncle. I have been told by several reliable sources that Finley’s favorite hunting guide, John Birmingham, had quit because of that; but John is still like the son Fin and Marty never had. If she could not pay us when Fin said to, then she could have paid us when he said not too, because she handled the payroll and the Lodge’s book keeping ledgers. Not only that, beginning in the early 1970s, she wouldn’t even let Fin see the friggin’ ledgers.
Unfortunately, for me and my side of the family, Marty has worked things out financially so that she got all that Fin worked for, till she dies, and then somehow she has it so that no one in Finley Clarke’s family gets a thing. No money, no property in Maine, no old photographs of Fin’s, no guns, no hunting knives, no hunting trophies, none of Fin’s personal effects at all, including his war medals. My family gets nothing to remember him by and to share with our offspring and younger relatives who are direct blood relations to this interesting man who was a war hero and a famous Maine Guide.
I believe that John Birmingham and the other people who were Fin and Marty’s long time friends deserve to receive something from the estate when Marty dies. Martha’s family deserves their fair share. I simply want what I earned right now, and also what is fair from the estate for me and my side of the family. Finley became a war hero during the Korean War, which was a long time before he knew anyone in Maine, and I doubt that anyone on Martha’s side of the family feels that they deserve to inherit his military stuff. I believe that Martha Clarke should at least let my family have Finley’s medals and most of his military memorabilia.
But she needs to pay me the money and the respect which I earned while working for her right now!
I was a Registered Maine Guide who tracked wounded bears at night without a gun for the financial gain of her business, after a day of dealing with stenchin’ bear bait and helping paying bear hunters to satisfy their natural needs for a good, safe time in the great outdoors. What more could a person do to earn honest money and the respect that is due to them?
I sent about a dozen more different post cards, than what you see on this web site, to those two self centered, selfish relatives of mine. I told them just what the truth is. I had scanned copies of those cards into my computer, but the computer hard drive that they were on fried and died on me.
Those cards said things like "You are liars and thieves."
My Aunt Martha’s youngest sister, Jane, is a lesbian who had a ‘marriage’ ceremony with another woman about 3-4 years ago. I heard about it and sent Marty this on a post card:
If I am not owed anything by them than why did those two not pursue legal action against me to stop my postcards and stories from coming up there and to defend their good names?
Because they are guilty of all that I say in my stories and on my Internet sites.
Now it is just Marty who is alive for me to pursue to get my back pay. She is the one who was the main architect of their cheating me out of my pay anyway. If she was a fair minded person she would have paid me even if Fin had been against it. She didn’t always pay any of Fin’s hunting guides all that we had earned nor all that was promised to us by my uncle. I have been told by several reliable sources that Finley’s favorite hunting guide, John Birmingham, had quit because of that; but John is still like the son Fin and Marty never had. If she could not pay us when Fin said to, then she could have paid us when he said not too, because she handled the payroll and the Lodge’s book keeping ledgers. Not only that, beginning in the early 1970s, she wouldn’t even let Fin see the friggin’ ledgers.
Unfortunately, for me and my side of the family, Marty has worked things out financially so that she got all that Fin worked for, till she dies, and then somehow she has it so that no one in Finley Clarke’s family gets a thing. No money, no property in Maine, no old photographs of Fin’s, no guns, no hunting knives, no hunting trophies, none of Fin’s personal effects at all, including his war medals. My family gets nothing to remember him by and to share with our offspring and younger relatives who are direct blood relations to this interesting man who was a war hero and a famous Maine Guide.
I believe that John Birmingham and the other people who were Fin and Marty’s long time friends deserve to receive something from the estate when Marty dies. Martha’s family deserves their fair share. I simply want what I earned right now, and also what is fair from the estate for me and my side of the family. Finley became a war hero during the Korean War, which was a long time before he knew anyone in Maine, and I doubt that anyone on Martha’s side of the family feels that they deserve to inherit his military stuff. I believe that Martha Clarke should at least let my family have Finley’s medals and most of his military memorabilia.
But she needs to pay me the money and the respect which I earned while working for her right now!
I was a Registered Maine Guide who tracked wounded bears at night without a gun for the financial gain of her business, after a day of dealing with stenchin’ bear bait and helping paying bear hunters to satisfy their natural needs for a good, safe time in the great outdoors. What more could a person do to earn honest money and the respect that is due to them?
I sent about a dozen more different post cards, than what you see on this web site, to those two self centered, selfish relatives of mine. I told them just what the truth is. I had scanned copies of those cards into my computer, but the computer hard drive that they were on fried and died on me.
Those cards said things like "You are liars and thieves."
My Aunt Martha’s youngest sister, Jane, is a lesbian who had a ‘marriage’ ceremony with another woman about 3-4 years ago. I heard about it and sent Marty this on a post card:
"Hey Marty, I heard that your sister Janie just got married.
So she has finally found herself the right woman.
Did you make it down for the wedding?
It must have been a gay old affair."
So she has finally found herself the right woman.
Did you make it down for the wedding?
It must have been a gay old affair."
There ain’t no way in hell that either Martha nor Finley would ever publicly acknowledge or speak about the fact that sister Jane is homosexual. I seriously doubt that either of them were invited to the wedding, unless Janie sent them an invitation to make a point about lesbian pride and to declare to her thoroughly prejudiced sister and brother in law that she has a right to live her own life as she chooses.
Even though I’m strictly heterosexual, I believe that homosexuality is a natural factor in the human race, but Fin and Marty are real homo-haters, they’d never tolerate gay hunters staying at their lodge--that’s for sure. They’d never hire a homosexual person to work for them, and Fin would probably, loudly, and rudely tell the queer person just that. My aunt and uncle must have had flippin’ fits when homosexual characters began to appear on TV shows.
What? You think that my post card about Janie was rude? If Janie had been my sister, and I had been working for Fin and Marty when they discovered that my sister Janie was lesbian, or that I had a gay brother, they would have said far worse to me right in front of other people.
Here's what my Uncle Finley Kenneth Clarke said about my father one time (it is an excerpt from my story, Then They Own You):
One afternoon, Fin and I sat down to shoot the breeze with one of the hunters. The other fellow was a mature, respectable man. Fin told the story about how my father had landed a job at a stainless steel mill. My Dad had been working for Pinkerton Detective Agency, as an undercover agent, when he was put to work at the mill in order to gather evidence against a mill employee who was stealing too much from the mill and threatening harm to anyone who tried to stop him. After my Dad got the necessary evidence, the mill offered him the job that the big thief lost. My Dad accepted the offer.
Fin added, “And that goes to show you what kind of a son of a bitch he is.”
At this false characterization of my father (and grievous insult to my paternal grandmother) the other fellow winced in disgust and turned his face away from Fin for a moment. It was obvious that the man did not appreciate Fin saying this in front of me. I had shoved so much of Fin and Marty's malicious crap down inside of me that I felt like a barrel of explosive, bubbling muck. When Fin made the mistake of insulting my father like that, he had placed a blasting cap, with a short fuse to it, into my fermenting anger. I knew, right then and there, that his or Marty's next offense against me would be their last.
Finley and Martha Clarke were/are the most completely prejudiced white folks I have ever known. I’ve heard them hate and show no respect for all dark skinned people, longhaired hippies, Rock n’ Roll stars, French Canadians, unmarried couples living together, well shoot man they couldn't stand just about anybody but people who are fairly well exactly like them.
One time during an evening of cribbage games and conversations at the Lodge, between some paying hunters and visiting local Mainers, Marty said, with her face all squinted in from her deeply felt seriousness, "I believed that a colored man should still have to tip his hat and step down off the curb when he’s walking down the sidewalk and a white woman passes him."
If a person called the Lodge to ask about coming up there to hunt and Marty or Fin could tell that it was black man on the other end of the line, they always said that the Lodge was all booked up.
One black guy had bear hunted at the Lodge during the summer of 1967, and by Marty’s account of this story he was a nice guy who was treated OK at the Lodge, and they didn’t mind him being there too much. Later that year, the black guy had stopped in at the Lodge during a scenic fall foliage trip up through Maine to Canada, with his wife. He was just stopping in at the Lodge to say hello, and he had walked into the Lodge by himself. He didn’t stay but a few minutes, so Marty walked back out to his car with him when he asked her to come out to meet his wife.
The way Marty told the story was, "It was after dark, I couldn’t see into the car as I walked out to it, well, (gasp) when I bent down into the car window to say hello to his wife (gasp) her face was just as white as mine. (GASP) He was married to a white woman! I never heard of such a thing before! (Marty then took in a truly dramatic gasp as she held her breath in slightly and slapped the palm of her right hand across her heart she said) Oh my gahd! I didn’t know what to say!"
When I was working at the Lodge in 1979, I overheard my Uncle Finley tell some hunters a story about the time that he was down at the Maine State House in Augusta and was waiting out in the crowded State House lobby with all the other people who were standing around there waiting for that day’s legislative session to begin when one of his numerous adversaries asked him, "Well Finley, what are you down here for this time?"
Fin replied with something about, "Well let me tell you. I’m tired of the Indians and the niggers and…..," and I wish that I could remember the rest that he repeated of what he had said in the State House lobby that day; but he ended the story with a huge smile on his face as he said, "And you shoulda’ seen them all moving away from me, Heh-Heh-Heh."
Finley had been going down to the State House all through the 1970s to fight for new laws and better funding for the roads and other infrastructure around the Patten Maine area. Finley had done a considerable amount of good down in the Maine State Legislature Chambers—he got the one bear killed per hunter per season and no cubs killed laws on the books and some help for the aging infrastructure in the Patten area of the Great State of Maine.
During those times in the legislative chambers he was witness to a lot of legislative action about the Indians up in Maine fighting for the rights promised to them in old treaties with the United States, and the Indians were finally winning what was theirs to begin with. Finley hated that. He had no respect for Native Americans at all. Martha hasn’t any either.
And longhaired men, Fin and Marty hated them with an unnatural passion.
The first time that Finley had ever spoken to a longhaired guy was during a 1969 trip that he went on alone down to Philadelphia on a visit to his friend Jack Swartz’s house for the first time. Fin had to stop at a street corner in Philly to ask for directions into Jack’s neighborhood. The first person he encountered walking down the sidewalk there was a young, white, college boy with long, frizzy hair sticking out everywhere from his well educated cranium, the first tie-dye T-shirt on that Fin had ever seen, and a pair of well worn, patched up hippie style blue jeans on his scrawny legs. When Fin told Marty and some local Mainers about this, he had an odd look on his face of pleasant, surrendered surprise, he cocked his head to the side a little, and after describing the college kid and his weird looking T-shirt with the swirling colors on it, Fin said this about the long haired lad, "He talked normal and everything. He knew where I wanted to go and was real friendly about giving me the directions. But that gahddamned hair looked like shit !"
I was sitting over to the other side of room at the time, and as I looked across the room at Fin, I thought, "What the hell’d ya’ expect the guy to do? Grunt the directions at ya’ or something!"
As far as Fin and Marty’s opinions of gay and lesbian lifestyles is concerned, I can’t remember ever hearing them mention anything about homosexuals. It was not something that they wanted or needed to talk about back when I lived at the Lodge or definitely not at a family get together when I was growing up. I’d say that they rarely brought that aspect of human life into their daily conversations with anyone.
In the 1969 era: there were no openly gay or lesbian people on TV shows; no two gays or two lesbians went walking around Northern Maine holding hands in public back then; nothing about homosexuality was in the news at all back then that I ever heard of or read.
There is a lot of tolorance and understanding for gay and lesbian lifestyles in mant parts of Maine today, but I can guarantee you that Finley and Martha Clarke did not send sister Janie a wedding present. Don't forget now, Finley had known Janie as his next door neighbor, he had known her since she was born, when they lived in Sparrows Point Md..
Nowadays Maine has a lot of stuff going on about gay and lesbian rights in the local news and in Mainer’s conversations, so I know that if I still lived up there now I’d have heard plenty of anti-homo rhetoric from Finley and Martha Clarke.
If you want Martha Clarke’s opinion on her sister’s lesbian lifestyle, or the massive amount of open homosexuality in the world today or the number of non-white folks on TV shows, or on any opinion that she has about me or my stories and Internet publishings about her and her deceased husband, here’s her phone number and full address:
Martha Clarke
21 Bald Eagle Lane
Mt. Chase, Maine 04765
Ph. 207-528-2131
Feel free to contact her concerning anything on my web sites or in my short stories about My Northern Maine Adventures.
David Robert Crews
2727 Liberty Pkwy
Dundalk, Maryland 21222
ursusdave (at) yahoo (dot) com
Due to the facts that: several years ago I sent printed copies of all of my Maine stories to my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley and also to many local Patten area Mainers; and later on I emailed the stories to many folks all over the State of Maine; and then when my stories were published on the Internet I emailed and sent post cards to my aunt and uncle and also to many Patten area Mainers to inform them where my stories were published; some one or more of all of those Maine folks whom I contacted had to run into Fin or Marty now and then, here and there, and must have asked my aunt and uncle about me and the stories that I wrote. Due to those facts they have all had enough time to read and then deny or confirm any truths in them. So far, they haven’t declared to me, or my editors who publish my stories, or anyone else whom I am aware of that any of my stories are complete fictions from my imagination.
Here is a guide to those short stories:
An Italian Nice Guy is a bear hunting story that is really a chipmunk story. It is actually good for kids to read. No bears are even shot at in it. It is fictionalized a bit, but mostly true. I expanded on what I knew about Tony and his family, but they had to be real nice people.
The House Fire is a nice, but scary one (it scarred me when it happened that’s for sure). This one is for good folks of all ages.
The Day I Fell In Love With Patten Maine ain’t nuthin’ like you will expect, and it is a mind blower. It’s a real, small town, soap opera scene, and a teenagers’ thrill a minute experience.
The Rocket Scientist is a crazy trip about a genuine Washington, DC Rocket Scientist. I’ll let ya be surprised by this one.
Jungle Dirt is something that stands on its own. It was my first attempt at fictionalizing a true story. It is about a Vietnam Veteran’s experience when he went bear hunting in Maine three days after coming home from Nam. It is a good story for all of us Vietnam Era Veterans and others who care about us, and how we were treated in America during the Vietnam War. Just about the only fictional parts have to do with the me making some descriptive guesses about the Nam Vet’s mother and a small amount was expanded on to the guy’s step father’s description. Boss Hog on the Dukes of Hazard did look exactly like the step father though.
Driving Northern Mainer Style is a how to article with a great story in it about the time I nearly 'bought the farm' on a sharp curve way up on the Washburn Road. A road that leads into Caribou, Maine.
My VW Bug Trip To Maine has a bear hunting bit in it, but it’s a hoot, and the rest of it is a wild, funny, and happy story. It was about a trip of mine to Maine while I was on leave from the Army just after I had graduated US Army Photo Lab Tech School, and before I went to Okinawa. It goes from Patten, ME down to Dundalk, MD and through a bunch of interesting experiences.
Bananastien is about young adults testing the limits in 1969 Patten, ME. Part of it gets real wild on the back roads.
Easiest Way To Carry A Dead Bear is a nutty piece, but it does give a good hunting tip.
Then They Own You (titled "Katahdin Lodge 1979" on The Daily Me) takes place in 1979, when I tried to work for my aunt and uncle in Maine one more time. They simply had no appreciation for anything that I did for them. They wanted me to work my entire life for them at Katahdin Lodge without receiving a salary and while they seriously mistreated me. I did have some great times at Katahdin Lodge, but it wasn’t worth the emotional abuse that they heaped on me. Neither my Uncle Finley nor Aunt Martha ever said one good word about the work that I did for them. To this day, they refuse to acknowledge what I did up there, when this suburbanite kid went way up into the North Woods of Maine and became a bear hunting guide who never made one serious mistake while living and working there.
Even though I’m strictly heterosexual, I believe that homosexuality is a natural factor in the human race, but Fin and Marty are real homo-haters, they’d never tolerate gay hunters staying at their lodge--that’s for sure. They’d never hire a homosexual person to work for them, and Fin would probably, loudly, and rudely tell the queer person just that. My aunt and uncle must have had flippin’ fits when homosexual characters began to appear on TV shows.
What? You think that my post card about Janie was rude? If Janie had been my sister, and I had been working for Fin and Marty when they discovered that my sister Janie was lesbian, or that I had a gay brother, they would have said far worse to me right in front of other people.
Here's what my Uncle Finley Kenneth Clarke said about my father one time (it is an excerpt from my story, Then They Own You):
One afternoon, Fin and I sat down to shoot the breeze with one of the hunters. The other fellow was a mature, respectable man. Fin told the story about how my father had landed a job at a stainless steel mill. My Dad had been working for Pinkerton Detective Agency, as an undercover agent, when he was put to work at the mill in order to gather evidence against a mill employee who was stealing too much from the mill and threatening harm to anyone who tried to stop him. After my Dad got the necessary evidence, the mill offered him the job that the big thief lost. My Dad accepted the offer.
Fin added, “And that goes to show you what kind of a son of a bitch he is.”
At this false characterization of my father (and grievous insult to my paternal grandmother) the other fellow winced in disgust and turned his face away from Fin for a moment. It was obvious that the man did not appreciate Fin saying this in front of me. I had shoved so much of Fin and Marty's malicious crap down inside of me that I felt like a barrel of explosive, bubbling muck. When Fin made the mistake of insulting my father like that, he had placed a blasting cap, with a short fuse to it, into my fermenting anger. I knew, right then and there, that his or Marty's next offense against me would be their last.
Finley and Martha Clarke were/are the most completely prejudiced white folks I have ever known. I’ve heard them hate and show no respect for all dark skinned people, longhaired hippies, Rock n’ Roll stars, French Canadians, unmarried couples living together, well shoot man they couldn't stand just about anybody but people who are fairly well exactly like them.
One time during an evening of cribbage games and conversations at the Lodge, between some paying hunters and visiting local Mainers, Marty said, with her face all squinted in from her deeply felt seriousness, "I believed that a colored man should still have to tip his hat and step down off the curb when he’s walking down the sidewalk and a white woman passes him."
If a person called the Lodge to ask about coming up there to hunt and Marty or Fin could tell that it was black man on the other end of the line, they always said that the Lodge was all booked up.
One black guy had bear hunted at the Lodge during the summer of 1967, and by Marty’s account of this story he was a nice guy who was treated OK at the Lodge, and they didn’t mind him being there too much. Later that year, the black guy had stopped in at the Lodge during a scenic fall foliage trip up through Maine to Canada, with his wife. He was just stopping in at the Lodge to say hello, and he had walked into the Lodge by himself. He didn’t stay but a few minutes, so Marty walked back out to his car with him when he asked her to come out to meet his wife.
The way Marty told the story was, "It was after dark, I couldn’t see into the car as I walked out to it, well, (gasp) when I bent down into the car window to say hello to his wife (gasp) her face was just as white as mine. (GASP) He was married to a white woman! I never heard of such a thing before! (Marty then took in a truly dramatic gasp as she held her breath in slightly and slapped the palm of her right hand across her heart she said) Oh my gahd! I didn’t know what to say!"
When I was working at the Lodge in 1979, I overheard my Uncle Finley tell some hunters a story about the time that he was down at the Maine State House in Augusta and was waiting out in the crowded State House lobby with all the other people who were standing around there waiting for that day’s legislative session to begin when one of his numerous adversaries asked him, "Well Finley, what are you down here for this time?"
Fin replied with something about, "Well let me tell you. I’m tired of the Indians and the niggers and…..," and I wish that I could remember the rest that he repeated of what he had said in the State House lobby that day; but he ended the story with a huge smile on his face as he said, "And you shoulda’ seen them all moving away from me, Heh-Heh-Heh."
Finley had been going down to the State House all through the 1970s to fight for new laws and better funding for the roads and other infrastructure around the Patten Maine area. Finley had done a considerable amount of good down in the Maine State Legislature Chambers—he got the one bear killed per hunter per season and no cubs killed laws on the books and some help for the aging infrastructure in the Patten area of the Great State of Maine.
During those times in the legislative chambers he was witness to a lot of legislative action about the Indians up in Maine fighting for the rights promised to them in old treaties with the United States, and the Indians were finally winning what was theirs to begin with. Finley hated that. He had no respect for Native Americans at all. Martha hasn’t any either.
And longhaired men, Fin and Marty hated them with an unnatural passion.
The first time that Finley had ever spoken to a longhaired guy was during a 1969 trip that he went on alone down to Philadelphia on a visit to his friend Jack Swartz’s house for the first time. Fin had to stop at a street corner in Philly to ask for directions into Jack’s neighborhood. The first person he encountered walking down the sidewalk there was a young, white, college boy with long, frizzy hair sticking out everywhere from his well educated cranium, the first tie-dye T-shirt on that Fin had ever seen, and a pair of well worn, patched up hippie style blue jeans on his scrawny legs. When Fin told Marty and some local Mainers about this, he had an odd look on his face of pleasant, surrendered surprise, he cocked his head to the side a little, and after describing the college kid and his weird looking T-shirt with the swirling colors on it, Fin said this about the long haired lad, "He talked normal and everything. He knew where I wanted to go and was real friendly about giving me the directions. But that gahddamned hair looked like shit !"
I was sitting over to the other side of room at the time, and as I looked across the room at Fin, I thought, "What the hell’d ya’ expect the guy to do? Grunt the directions at ya’ or something!"
As far as Fin and Marty’s opinions of gay and lesbian lifestyles is concerned, I can’t remember ever hearing them mention anything about homosexuals. It was not something that they wanted or needed to talk about back when I lived at the Lodge or definitely not at a family get together when I was growing up. I’d say that they rarely brought that aspect of human life into their daily conversations with anyone.
In the 1969 era: there were no openly gay or lesbian people on TV shows; no two gays or two lesbians went walking around Northern Maine holding hands in public back then; nothing about homosexuality was in the news at all back then that I ever heard of or read.
There is a lot of tolorance and understanding for gay and lesbian lifestyles in mant parts of Maine today, but I can guarantee you that Finley and Martha Clarke did not send sister Janie a wedding present. Don't forget now, Finley had known Janie as his next door neighbor, he had known her since she was born, when they lived in Sparrows Point Md..
Nowadays Maine has a lot of stuff going on about gay and lesbian rights in the local news and in Mainer’s conversations, so I know that if I still lived up there now I’d have heard plenty of anti-homo rhetoric from Finley and Martha Clarke.
If you want Martha Clarke’s opinion on her sister’s lesbian lifestyle, or the massive amount of open homosexuality in the world today or the number of non-white folks on TV shows, or on any opinion that she has about me or my stories and Internet publishings about her and her deceased husband, here’s her phone number and full address:
Martha Clarke
21 Bald Eagle Lane
Mt. Chase, Maine 04765
Ph. 207-528-2131
Feel free to contact her concerning anything on my web sites or in my short stories about My Northern Maine Adventures.
David Robert Crews
2727 Liberty Pkwy
Dundalk, Maryland 21222
ursusdave (at) yahoo (dot) com
Due to the facts that: several years ago I sent printed copies of all of my Maine stories to my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley and also to many local Patten area Mainers; and later on I emailed the stories to many folks all over the State of Maine; and then when my stories were published on the Internet I emailed and sent post cards to my aunt and uncle and also to many Patten area Mainers to inform them where my stories were published; some one or more of all of those Maine folks whom I contacted had to run into Fin or Marty now and then, here and there, and must have asked my aunt and uncle about me and the stories that I wrote. Due to those facts they have all had enough time to read and then deny or confirm any truths in them. So far, they haven’t declared to me, or my editors who publish my stories, or anyone else whom I am aware of that any of my stories are complete fictions from my imagination.
Here is a guide to those short stories:
An Italian Nice Guy is a bear hunting story that is really a chipmunk story. It is actually good for kids to read. No bears are even shot at in it. It is fictionalized a bit, but mostly true. I expanded on what I knew about Tony and his family, but they had to be real nice people.
The House Fire is a nice, but scary one (it scarred me when it happened that’s for sure). This one is for good folks of all ages.
The Day I Fell In Love With Patten Maine ain’t nuthin’ like you will expect, and it is a mind blower. It’s a real, small town, soap opera scene, and a teenagers’ thrill a minute experience.
The Rocket Scientist is a crazy trip about a genuine Washington, DC Rocket Scientist. I’ll let ya be surprised by this one.
Jungle Dirt is something that stands on its own. It was my first attempt at fictionalizing a true story. It is about a Vietnam Veteran’s experience when he went bear hunting in Maine three days after coming home from Nam. It is a good story for all of us Vietnam Era Veterans and others who care about us, and how we were treated in America during the Vietnam War. Just about the only fictional parts have to do with the me making some descriptive guesses about the Nam Vet’s mother and a small amount was expanded on to the guy’s step father’s description. Boss Hog on the Dukes of Hazard did look exactly like the step father though.
Driving Northern Mainer Style is a how to article with a great story in it about the time I nearly 'bought the farm' on a sharp curve way up on the Washburn Road. A road that leads into Caribou, Maine.
My VW Bug Trip To Maine has a bear hunting bit in it, but it’s a hoot, and the rest of it is a wild, funny, and happy story. It was about a trip of mine to Maine while I was on leave from the Army just after I had graduated US Army Photo Lab Tech School, and before I went to Okinawa. It goes from Patten, ME down to Dundalk, MD and through a bunch of interesting experiences.
Bananastien is about young adults testing the limits in 1969 Patten, ME. Part of it gets real wild on the back roads.
Easiest Way To Carry A Dead Bear is a nutty piece, but it does give a good hunting tip.
Then They Own You (titled "Katahdin Lodge 1979" on The Daily Me) takes place in 1979, when I tried to work for my aunt and uncle in Maine one more time. They simply had no appreciation for anything that I did for them. They wanted me to work my entire life for them at Katahdin Lodge without receiving a salary and while they seriously mistreated me. I did have some great times at Katahdin Lodge, but it wasn’t worth the emotional abuse that they heaped on me. Neither my Uncle Finley nor Aunt Martha ever said one good word about the work that I did for them. To this day, they refuse to acknowledge what I did up there, when this suburbanite kid went way up into the North Woods of Maine and became a bear hunting guide who never made one serious mistake while living and working there.
David Robert Crews Copyright 2006
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