I Want My Back Pay And The Respect That I Earned

During the entire time that I worked long, hard hours for my Aunt Martha and my Uncle Finley K. Clarke, they never, ever said one complimentary word to me, or as far as I know about me, concerning the accomplishments that I made as suburban kid who became a Maine Guide. They never thanked me for the doing the multi-faceted, often difficult and sometimes bear-bait-stinky work that I did for them. They never acknowledged the dangers that I faced and survived daily - while working for them. That work required considerable natural abilities. It also often required me to either already posses or to learn various skills. It did not matter to Fin and Marty that I fell into the Northern Maine social life and fit right in. And those Mainers are infamous for not allowing people "from the outside" into their lives. Fin and Marty had no respect at all for the way that I handled their paying guests and showed those individuals good, safe, fun times in the vast woods of Northern Maine. Those two selfish relatives of mine have yet to pay me all of the money that they owe me.

While I was in the Army and stationed on Okinawa (thank god not Vietnam), I spent many hours mulling over the way that I was mistreated by my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley. I knew that I didn’t want to work at the Lodge for the rest of my life, or strictly in the hunting business, after I got out of the Army. I realized that if I didn’t work for Fin and Marty in Maine that they’d never help me to get a job at any other outdoors adventure outfitter anywhere or to start my own guiding business somewhere else. I used to think that after I was discharged from the Army it would be fantastic to travel around the world working for outdoor recreational businesses which catered to the kinds of campers, hikers, nature photographers, cross country skiers, snowmobile riders, hunters, etc. who like to eat meals cooked and baked over a camp fire.

But due to Fin and Marty’s selfishness, after I was discharged, I could not use my accomplishments at Katahdin Lodge to convince any outdoors adventure outfitter to hire me, because Fin and Marty would never have given me the honest employment reference that a responsible business owner would require before allowing me to guide their paying clients. The way that my aunt and uncle saw things was: either I came back to work for them for the rest of my life as their lifelong, subservient, under paid scapegoat and worked at Katahdin Lodge until they died and left most of it to me as payment for a lifetime of hard work, or I had to forget that I had ever become a Maine Guide.

I have often thought about what it would have entailed for me to bring a wider range of paying guests to Katahdin Lodge, which includes campers, hikers, nature photographers, cross country skiers, etc., but it was no use for me to think about that because Fin and Marty would never integrate non-hunting guide services into their business. They couldn't stand the company of people who were into any other outdoors activities except for hunting, they didn't like a lot of their paying hunters either, and those two were far too gruff and vulgar for the tastes of any paying guests except men and women who were in a hunting party frame of mind.

If my aunt and uncle had treated me fairly and allowed me to add other outdoors activities services to the Lodge’s hunting business, then I’d probably still be working at Katahdin Lodge during certain seasons and be financially secure and much healthier, Fin and Marty would have retired from that business in much better financial shape then they did, and the businesses that supplied the Lodge and its guests with what they needed to have great outdoors experiences up there would be a lot better off financially, too (from what I see on the Internet about Patten, Maine, the economy there is hurting).

I am a photographer, a writer, a tent camper who can cook good meals over open fires, a hunting guide who can also show mountain bikers, hikers, ATVers, snowmobile riders, bird watchers, cross country skiers, etc. a fun, healthy and safe time in the outdoors. During the past four decades, I have thought all of this through. I have even planed out things for the Lodge like various types of trails in the miles and miles of woods directly behind the Lodge, star gazer’s huts, a social hall, a movie theater with super comfortable sofas and chairs, space to sell Maine made crafts, trucks to take wheelchair bound clients hunting or out for wildlife photography, and a chalk board in the Lodge where all our guests would write down where they were going to out in the woods that day so that we could know where to look for them if they didn’t make it out of the woods safely that night.

Another part of the problem which kept me from bringing those other services into the Lodge’s business was that Marty had taken tight control of everything about the Lodge’s business but the outdoors work, and Fin needed complete control of that. They would never have allowed me to run a non-hunting part of the business, even though that would have brought in many more paying guests at the Lodge.

Even though I was a trained photographer in the Army, Fin and Marty never acknowledged that set of skills and natural talents, which I posses. In fact, one time when I was again working at the Lodge, during 1977, and a hunter at the Lodge asked me if I ever considered going into medical photography, Fin scoffed, sneered, and rudely said, "Who him, he ain’t smart enough."

My Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha took all of those great opportunities for me to be a lifelong Professional Maine Hunting and Fishing and Photography and Camping and Other Outdoors Adventures Guide from me, and my family, just because they wanted to.

At one point in time, Finley had written into his will that I was to receive two-thirds of his estate. To receive that inheritance, I would have had to become Fin and Marty’s spineless puppet, and that would have crushed my self respect and eventually all respect from anyone who knew me - especially any women who shared an intimate loved with me.

As an eighteen to nineteen-year-old kid working at Katahdin Lodge, I was very vulnerable and impressionable. My Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha knew me well and all of my strengths and my vulnerabilities, so they took complete advantage of my vulnerabilities to control, cheat and mistreat me. I fully realized this when I passed the age that they were when I worked for them, and I realized how well I know some young relatives of mine and their strengths and weaknesses.

When my close relatives lied about my well proven outdoorsman's abilities by telling people more or less that I was a numbed brained incompetent as a bear hunting guide, and then they cheated me out of most of the money and the respect that I had earned as their young, enthusiastic employee, and on top of that, they had verbally and emotionally abused me to the point that my very soul was battered to bits and my mind was too dazed and confused to be able to figure out how to heal myself, it felt as if I had been punished by my family and our society for not being the contributing, hard working member of society that I was.

After that heavy dose of demoralizing reality, I could not go on with my life as if none of that happened. I didn’t know how to, and that is one of my weaknesses. I wish that I was stronger in that way, but my strengths as a young man only included family loyalty, not the ability to fight with my family when they do me wrong. Some people will say that it is just too bad for me and try to walk all over me as my aunt and uncle had, but I tell you this, I have thrashed Finley and Martha Clarke severely - with the truth. I explain that in detail a little further down on this web page.

I have always believed that family members are all supposed to be loving, nurturing, good and fair to each other - unfortunately Fin and Marty treated me the exact opposite of that. No one else in my family ever said anything about this to Fin and Marty or to me. I know Fin was accepted by my family as a hardheaded, self-centered quasi-bully, but they didn’t have to allow him to do what he did to me when I was at such a young, inexperienced age. My reaction to that was to grow angry and resentful towards most of my family. I trusted no one. That destroyed my natural sense of family. It felt as if I had lost my family. I have stayed loyal to them, though. There were chances for me to sue Fin and Marty, which would have made a lot of trouble in my family because Fin and Marty would have said some mean things to my parents and others, and that might have pushed me to the point of raining brutal violence down upon my Uncle Finley. But I chose not to pursue my legal rights due to my family loyalty.

Fin and Marty took from me almost all that I have earned from them along with opportunities for a healthy life that had to include me being able to sometimes work in the woods of Northern Maine (a great expanse of woods that I still love to this day) guiding paying clients on outdoors adventures, and they robbed me of much more that I have a right to seek recompense for. They took the great times that I should have had sharing Northern Maine’s woods and wildlife, along with the memorable companionship of the finest kind'a Mainers, whom I was friends with up theyah' (the word "there" spoken in a Maine accent), and sharing all of that with the rest of my family. If I had been able to work at the Lodge for the bulk of my life, as Finley had desired, and I had considered doing so before the bullshit he and Marty piled on me got too deep, and we could have had my family members come up there and be guided by me on some fantastic Maine Outdoors Adventures, it could have made a huge difference in my life. This has all been a debilitating loss to me - for four fucking decades.

By the time that I entered the U.S. Army in November of 1969, I had become a young man whom I was comfortable with being, who I enjoyed being, who I was proud to be, a gregarious guy who possessed some useful abilities and marketable skills that are just right for a market that I love to work in. But my family had made it almost impossible for me to be him.

When I was in the Army, I was fortunate not to be sent to Vietnam, but my military experiences were way out of the ordinary. You will have to read about that to understand.

As a result of all this, after I was discharged from the Army I lived my life out on the fringes of my family and society as a rather uncommunicative, unproductive, depressed and lonely man for a long time. It was a cold, empty hearted way to exist.I am still more that way than not, and life would be much worse for me today if it wasn’t for the computer programs and the Internet that allow me to produce the stories and the web sites that I work on almost everyday.

Finley and Martha Clarke were both still alive when I first wrote this, but Fin has died. They denied owing wages to me, and they lacked appreciation for all that I did for them. They influenced some people to believe that I’m lying about all of this. Martha Clarke still maintains and expands on those falsehoods. It is time for me to clear my name and to be fully compensated. I want my back pay and the respect that I earned from Martha Clarke. I will pursue this as best I can till after Martha dies and the Clarke estate is settled.

This set of blog postings was created as a PowerPoint Presentation which I had sent printed copies of to Fin and Marty in around the year 2002. I never heard from them about it.

When this was first written for a PowerPoint Presentation, that I made, my Uncle Finley was alive, but he died on April 25, 2006. My nephew is friends with one of Marty’s great nephews, and the information about my uncle’s death came to me through that channel. No one in Finley’s family has ever been notified of his death by Martha Clarke.

I read Finley’s obituary in the Bangor Daily News. There was no mention of anyone in Finley’s biological family in it. But there is plenty about Marty’s family in it. Her family were generally sort of afraid of Finley, and they usually timed their infrequent visits to see Marty in Maine to occur when Finley was not there. Many of them live very near me, and I know that through the years Finley rarely, if ever, came around to visit them when he traveled in this area. He did visit some buddies of his around here at times but not hardly his in-laws. Finley never had much of anything to do with his in-laws.

Really though, as I think all this through, and I rehash about a talk that I had with my cousin who was probably the last one in my family to go visit Fin and Marty, and I read that obituary, and I do know from other sources that Marty set it all up so that she got everything for herself, which she and Fin had worked for, and then eventually for her family, I see now more than ever that it was mostly Marty’s greed that split our family up from Finley forever, at least on this good earth. I simply can’t understand how in-the-hell Martha Clarke could turn her back on my family after having been so close to us from the time that she was born till a few years after she moved to Maine in 1965. It ain’t Maine, it’s all the money that she and Finley were making when they ran their very own profitable business, Katahdin Lodge and Camps, along with Martha's desire to have Finley more for herself than anyone else.

Finley had the Lodge in his name, and when I was there in 1977 Finley and I rode down to the bank in Patten to deliver the final payment on the Lodge. But afterwards all the properties that they owned ended up in both their names. Which would be fine with me if Martha was willing to share what they had together with both our families after her death; but she made damned sure that that did not happen.

Let's face it, Fin and Marty had sent me out into the vast Maine woods to guide their paying hunters after a day or more of telling them that I was a numbed-brained incompetent not worth the food I ate at the Lodge, this means that those two ignoramuses were either lying about my proven abilities as a woodsman or blatantly risking those hunter's safety, plus mine and anyone else around me. When I was working at Katahdin Lodge, there was ample opportunity for me to have caused a deadly hunting or driving accident. One serious mistake on my part could have cost Fin and Marty everything. Nothing like that ever happened.

A question that I asked myself a long time before I began writing out this story is, "What the hell difference will it make to anyone else, is there any redeeming social value to it?"

There is something about my story that is important for other people. It exposes in depth some of the effects of verbal and emotional abuse. Those other people will understand the damage that it was doing to me at the time it was happening and what the life long residual effects from it is. This is a good case study about that type of abuse. It can help both other abused individuals and their abusers to understand better exactly what is going on in their lives. I figure that some abusive individuals have no idea what goes on in the minds of their victims; maybe I can persuade them to think about how serious what they are doing is and how close they are at times to having very violent things happen to them in retaliation. Victims of their abuse can take solace in knowing that they are not alone, when they read this story of mine.

I am bound and determined to write out the wild and fun parts of my Northern Maine Adventures. I also feel a deep need to write about the ‘woodsy’ stuff that I learned up there in the Great North Woods while working as a Maine Guide. In order for me to write about those good things that I have lived long enough to be able to write about, I am saddled with the task of writing about the bad things that I have survived long enough to be able to write about. If I wasn’t sure how important it is for some survivors of verbal and emotional abuse to tell the world about their bad experiences in depth, I would only be writing about the outdoorsman’s and maturing teenage kid’s part of the story.

Some people will ask why I think that this story is so very important that I am writing it all out such a long time after it happened.

First off, my aunt and uncle worked my psyche over so thoroughly that the resulting damage to my human spirit has never healed.

The next part of the answer is that after the damage was done, I spent time as a confused, depressed young man who had lost his sense of family and of self, and I also lost most of my emotional connections to society in general. Those terrible times were damaging in themselves. That prolonged and added to the damage done.

Too many people falsely believe that I had to have been the one who screwed up my career as a professional outdoorsman by not working hard enough for my aunt and uncle or by not being able to do the job. Fin and Marty have all the money and power, and I am a very low income and nearly powerless man. Americans always seem to respect the money and power the most and to move towards it when choosing sides in any debate about the facts of any matter. Some people in my life will never let me forget those falsehoods that they believe in, it still pops up at times during arguments or quasi-civil discussions. I need to set the record straight about who screwed up what, whether I get my back pay and respect from Martha Clarke or not.

I refuse to allow my aunt’s and uncle’s and other relative’s false version of what happened when I was living and working at Katahdin Lodge to be part of the legacy that I will leave to my younger relatives, and to the history of my family, when I die. This future factor is enough by itself to make me write out this story and paste it all over the Internet.

People tell me to remember the good and forget the bad; this is unrealistic; the human mind doesn’t work like that. The reason they say forget about it is because they view it as strictly my unfortunate loss, not theirs or anyone else’s.

It isn’t that way though, it has been and continues to be a great loss to my family, friends, female companions and society as a whole. I am developing this web site by myself. I took one basic Computer 101 class at Dundalk Community College, which is the only training in computer skills that I have. Have you seen my other web sites which are linked to this one at the top left of the page? I have great photographs and well written stories on them. I have a lot to contribute to this world of ours. I need to heal more because I need to give more. I have never wanted a free ride in life, I simply want what I have earned. I can do a lot more of what I do well should I finally receive what I’ve earned.

I need to do more of this kind of work than what I can do at this point in time, for my own good and for my family’s good. And I want to do all that I can for the benefit of society, no matter how limited my working abilities are because of my disabilities. To do all that I am capable of despite my physical disabilities, I need to heal as much of my damaged psyche as I can. That damage could be healed substantially if I were to finally receive the admission of the facts that is due to me from Martha Clarke. She may never give me any respect, but the truth leads to respect for me from others. The healing which would come from people’s new found respect for me would allow me to overcome my depression to some degree. Then I’d be able to handle more of life in general, to do more photography and writing, and to be a fully respected member of my family again.

These web sites, and other things which I have posted on Internet, prove exactly who I am. The problem is that very few people who know me actually know who I truly am. And many of them who know me better than most people do are so used to believing that I’m the person who failed in Maine that they don’t want to read what I have written.

When I drive down here in Maryland during a snow storm I never get stuck; that is because of driving skills which were taught to me by my uncle and a few lifelong Mainers, when I worked at Katahdin Lodge, in 1968-69. When I am out in the woods at night I absolutely love it out there, because I learned to love it and not fear the dark forest, when I was a bear hunting guide, in 1968-69. Those are two examples of the good that I still carry in me from those days.

When I tell some people about the psyche battering, bad experiences from my days as a bear hunting guide that still haunt me and still have a depressing effect on me, they say that it was a long time ago and that I should forget it and move on.

I don’t want that bad shit to still haunt me. If that crap wasn’t still a depressing force in my life, I’d be writing this all out as a fun, fantastic and totally wonderful adventure story. Now that would make a great book and a movie for me to make a small fortune off of. The snowmobile scenes would be the best ever seen on the silver screen. And there’s a real life car chase scene for the movie too, plus other wild driving bits. That depressing bad crap has to be dealt with in my writings too, it’s the only way for me to ever move past it.

For many people, the only tangible part of the answer to the question of why I am writing about this decades later is that I am owed money - a monetary debt does not simply fade away or disappear. Some people just don’t care about how anyone else feels inside. The statute of limitations has past for me to collect this debt through a court of law, but that debt still remains.

I tried to open up a healing dialogue between my aunt and uncle and I in 2001 or 2002, when I sent them printed copies of three benign stories that I have written about my time at Katahdin Lodge. I had hoped that those stories would remind them of who I truly am, and get them to think things over and at least have some small degree of family contact with myself and our relatives on Finley’s side of the family. One story is about the day I helped an old woman who lived six miles north of the Lodge to deal with her home burning to the ground. The second story is about the time that a Washington, DC rocket scientist almost shot my head off when he lost his cool at a bear bait one night. The third is about the first time I went into the small Town of Patten with some other teenagers and had a real fun time meeting girls and almost seeing a guy get his head shot off by a jealous husband. When Fin and Marty refused to acknowledge the things in those true tales that I had done while working for them, it was as if they had done all of the hurtful, demoralizing, depressing things - that are detailed on this web site - to me all over again.

I need to contact as many people as I can who were witness to what my life was like in Patten, Maine, so that they can read what I say about it and verify or deny it. It is the only way to make sure that this story is set straight in the minds of many other people. The are plenty of people in my life, or who were in my life, who believe that it was my fought that things did not work out between my aunt and uncle and I. One or more of those individuals has even gone so far as to relate to me thoroughly false information about my life at Katahdin Lodge. I have the natural born right to clear my name of all falsehoods and to leave the true story of my life behind me, when I move on to the other side of my soul's destiny.

The facts that Fin and Marty publicly humiliated me many, many times and that they have always spread self-serving misinformation about my hard, dangerous work and other accomplishments at their business, to various people, gives me an inalienable right to do the same thing with the whole truth about all this. Unfortunately for those two fools, their ignorant, arrogant, public verbal assaults, insults and outright lies against me were my original inspiration to begin producing fair, intelligent, well thought out, factual written documents detailing my side of the story in ways that make them as available as they could possibly be to anyone in the public.

Ever since I lived in Maine I have often told stories about the wild and wonderful aspects of the adventures that I experienced there to my family members, friends, and acquaintances. Numerous times, I have held the rapt attention of many fine folks who loved listening to me tell my stories about Maine. It always ends with this question, "Why in the world aren’t you still up there?" Then I have to bum everyone out with the answer that my aunt and uncle were very emotionally cruel to me and would neither pay me the money nor respect which I had earned from them.


Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews

ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews