My Uncle Finley K. Clarke, Fin, was usually the first one to start working and/or hunting in the morning, and he was at it all day and all through the evening till well after dark. He had a saying that I have been in tune with since long before I ever heard him say it, "If something is worth doing, it is worth doing right."
He had bought the lodge in 1965 with money saved up from working a lot of overtime layin’ brick at the Bethlehem Steel Mill in Sparrows Point, Maryland. All of the guys at the mill called him, "Loud Mouthed Finley Clarke."
Where ever he was, he would often let lose a steady, bombastic, tirade of facts and opinions towards any person who happened to be near him. He’d tell anybody just what he thought of them. It didn’t matter if they were paying hunters, local Mainers he did business with, or powerful politicians. He also had a subtle way of forcefully raising the volume of his voice, just slightly above everyone else’s, to the point where all ears within hearing distance of him unwittingly tuned into what he was saying and he became the center of everyone's attention.
When I was working at the Lodge in 1977 and 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 for a 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 had repeated of what he had said in the State House lobby that day; he always ended the story with a huge smile on his face as he said, "And you should'a 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 did do some good—he got the one bear killed per hunter per season and no cubs killed laws on the books. 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.
Many people loved the way that he acted, but he made a lot of life long enemies.
I marveled at how he never got into fisticuffs with other men. But, then, he was well over six feet tall, weighed about right for a well fed, hard working man, and was an expert with fire arms. He kept his many guns cleaned and well oiled. That being said, Finley never threatened, nor insinuated that he would physically harm anyone.
He had won a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star in the Korean War. He was a war hero, but he said that he "never did anything more than any other man over there."
The depth of admiration, respect, or hatred which he received from other people was amazing.
Photography by David Robert CrewsFin surrounded by family and friends on a Sunday afternoon at Katahdin Lodge during the spring of 1969. That’s Gary Glidden on his Triumph 650 Motorcycle and his wife Cathy in the background with the helmet on, Marge is on the back of Gary's bike and her husband Morris is standing in the doorway. Morris and Marge were old time Mainers who were very good friends with Fin and Marty and frequent visitors to the Lodge. I really enjoyed their company. Marty is standing behind the motorcycle.
That’s Fin lookin’ at ya’, me with my back to ya’ and two hunters who volunteered to help cleanup after my two weeks of splittin’ wood 9-10 hours a day for the 5 weekdays of each week. I was in some kinda' good physical shape, no doubt about it.
During the Korean War, Finley had spent the better part of a full year over there, fighting hard, on the front lines. He experienced the complete deal. Death was all around and all over him at times. As a result of the time that he spent in that war,
Finley had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I know the signs of war induced PTSD.
I am a Vietnam Era Army Veteran. I know and have known several Vietnam combat veterans who are victims of war induced PTSD. A few I have known for years and others were fellow patients with me in Veterans Hospitals, when I spent a total of six months in three different VA Hospitals, because of my non-service connected degenerative back disease.
Combat connected PTSD has a certain flavor to it, or a distinct, intense style, you might say. Instant overpowering anger is one of the outwardly visible indications of that disorder.
I once saw a hospitalized Nam Vet pick up the heavy, metal, bedside hospital cabinet in his room and throw it out the door of his room and across the hall against the opposite wall—just because the kitchen staff had put a little pile of horseradish on his dinner plate and he had instructed them not too. Later that week, that hospitalized Nam Vet was napping in the middle of the afternoon, and he had a reoccurring, combat related nightmare. Several nurses stood at his door gawking in on him, as I walked by and saw him in there tossing and turning and moaning and groaning ferociously. It appalled me to see him suffer while they stood there grinning in at his bad nightmare. I spoke to him about it later, and he got real upset, because he had told the hospital staff to wake him up and stop that dream when it reoccurred. The dream was about the moment that his best friend was shot through the head and had died in his arms there in a muddy, bloody trench in Vietnam. That Nam Vet had PTSD.
Other Nam Vets I know have let loose with similar angry actions when I was there to witness them. I understand them about as much a person who's never seen combat can, but not everyone does.
One old Nam Vet ex-neighbor of mine, Joe S., who gets a 100% combat related disability check each month from the Veterans Administration, has a terrible drinking problem. While getting drunk in rough bars, Joe has had his nose broken five times, his neck broken severely once and his ankle stomped on and cracked.
One time Joe started going off on an uncalled for tirade and acting crappy at a keg party we were at, and I had to jump on the back of a big ignorant jackass to pull that asshole off Joe and keep him from pounding half-crippled-up Joe into the earth; and the big natural-born asshole who was beating Joe up was an old long time drinkin’ and druggin' buddy of his. More than once, I have had Joe go off on an angry tirade towards me over some harmless thing I said to him which was immediately twisted all out of shape in his mind, and I had to control myself and not knock my Nam Vet buddy to the ground myself.
I had to control myself many times while working for my uncle and not knock him to the ground either. My uncle wasn't half crippled up though and he was a lot bigger and at least a little stronger than me in 1968-69 when I was 18-19 years old and he was about twice my age, so unless I managed to knock his lights out for a few minutes he would have gotten back up off the ground and I may have been pounded into the earth myself.
Finley often displayed the same type of anger as that hospitalized Vietnam Veteran had.
Finley Clarke was infamous for his angry outbreaks. It happened almost everyday and in anyplace at any time in front of anybody and to anybody. He would throw things around a lot. Things like salt and pepper shakers that had become clogged up a bit got thrown in the trash, mail that came to the Lodge in his name often got thrown right into the trash, and he usually never even looked to see who had sent it to him. Tools, pieces of lumber, and other things he might be working with got thrown around. He once threw an old tire at me from the bed of a pickup truck, because it was in his way and I did not see that it was in time to remove it from there before he got his hands on it. His never ending inner drive to work harder than everyone else and do everything exactly right may be at least partially a symptom of his PTSD.
When my Uncle Finley came home from Korea he was asked to go on a live TV program and be awarded his combat medals with his whole family there on the TV stage along side of him. My Grandparents, Finley’s younger brother Nelson, and my mother all went out and bought nice new clothes to wear on that TV show’s stage. They were all excited about it. But Uncle Finley couldn’t deal with it, he canceled out on that one. That was when he first said that he never did anymore than any other man over there. He also said that to me, and several paying hunters, one sunny afternoon in 1979, when we were all standing in the driveway at Katahdin Lodge, and I mentioned to the hunters that he had earned those three meritorious combat medals.
Several years before my mother died, she told me about that no show on the TV program, I told her that Finley had PTSD, and she said, "Oh, he was a mess back then when he first came home from Korea."
My Uncle Finley Kenneth Clarke had combat related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews
ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews
That’s Fin lookin’ at ya’, me with my back to ya’ and two hunters who volunteered to help cleanup after my two weeks of splittin’ wood 9-10 hours a day for the 5 weekdays of each week. I was in some kinda' good physical shape, no doubt about it.During the Korean War, Finley had spent the better part of a full year over there, fighting hard, on the front lines. He experienced the complete deal. Death was all around and all over him at times. As a result of the time that he spent in that war,
Finley had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I know the signs of war induced PTSD.
I am a Vietnam Era Army Veteran. I know and have known several Vietnam combat veterans who are victims of war induced PTSD. A few I have known for years and others were fellow patients with me in Veterans Hospitals, when I spent a total of six months in three different VA Hospitals, because of my non-service connected degenerative back disease.
Combat connected PTSD has a certain flavor to it, or a distinct, intense style, you might say. Instant overpowering anger is one of the outwardly visible indications of that disorder.
I once saw a hospitalized Nam Vet pick up the heavy, metal, bedside hospital cabinet in his room and throw it out the door of his room and across the hall against the opposite wall—just because the kitchen staff had put a little pile of horseradish on his dinner plate and he had instructed them not too. Later that week, that hospitalized Nam Vet was napping in the middle of the afternoon, and he had a reoccurring, combat related nightmare. Several nurses stood at his door gawking in on him, as I walked by and saw him in there tossing and turning and moaning and groaning ferociously. It appalled me to see him suffer while they stood there grinning in at his bad nightmare. I spoke to him about it later, and he got real upset, because he had told the hospital staff to wake him up and stop that dream when it reoccurred. The dream was about the moment that his best friend was shot through the head and had died in his arms there in a muddy, bloody trench in Vietnam. That Nam Vet had PTSD.
Other Nam Vets I know have let loose with similar angry actions when I was there to witness them. I understand them about as much a person who's never seen combat can, but not everyone does.
One old Nam Vet ex-neighbor of mine, Joe S., who gets a 100% combat related disability check each month from the Veterans Administration, has a terrible drinking problem. While getting drunk in rough bars, Joe has had his nose broken five times, his neck broken severely once and his ankle stomped on and cracked.
One time Joe started going off on an uncalled for tirade and acting crappy at a keg party we were at, and I had to jump on the back of a big ignorant jackass to pull that asshole off Joe and keep him from pounding half-crippled-up Joe into the earth; and the big natural-born asshole who was beating Joe up was an old long time drinkin’ and druggin' buddy of his. More than once, I have had Joe go off on an angry tirade towards me over some harmless thing I said to him which was immediately twisted all out of shape in his mind, and I had to control myself and not knock my Nam Vet buddy to the ground myself.
I had to control myself many times while working for my uncle and not knock him to the ground either. My uncle wasn't half crippled up though and he was a lot bigger and at least a little stronger than me in 1968-69 when I was 18-19 years old and he was about twice my age, so unless I managed to knock his lights out for a few minutes he would have gotten back up off the ground and I may have been pounded into the earth myself.
Finley often displayed the same type of anger as that hospitalized Vietnam Veteran had.
Finley Clarke was infamous for his angry outbreaks. It happened almost everyday and in anyplace at any time in front of anybody and to anybody. He would throw things around a lot. Things like salt and pepper shakers that had become clogged up a bit got thrown in the trash, mail that came to the Lodge in his name often got thrown right into the trash, and he usually never even looked to see who had sent it to him. Tools, pieces of lumber, and other things he might be working with got thrown around. He once threw an old tire at me from the bed of a pickup truck, because it was in his way and I did not see that it was in time to remove it from there before he got his hands on it. His never ending inner drive to work harder than everyone else and do everything exactly right may be at least partially a symptom of his PTSD.
When my Uncle Finley came home from Korea he was asked to go on a live TV program and be awarded his combat medals with his whole family there on the TV stage along side of him. My Grandparents, Finley’s younger brother Nelson, and my mother all went out and bought nice new clothes to wear on that TV show’s stage. They were all excited about it. But Uncle Finley couldn’t deal with it, he canceled out on that one. That was when he first said that he never did anymore than any other man over there. He also said that to me, and several paying hunters, one sunny afternoon in 1979, when we were all standing in the driveway at Katahdin Lodge, and I mentioned to the hunters that he had earned those three meritorious combat medals.
Several years before my mother died, she told me about that no show on the TV program, I told her that Finley had PTSD, and she said, "Oh, he was a mess back then when he first came home from Korea."
My Uncle Finley Kenneth Clarke had combat related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews
ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews
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