Somehow or the other Fin, with Marty's approval, had convinced Game Warden Ted Hanson to give me a Registered Maine Hunting and Fishing Guide’s License.
One day during May of 1969, Ted drove up to the Lodge, walked in and sat down at the long dining room table there, as our visitors often did, and Finley told me to sit down across the table from Ted and that Ted was a game warden who was there to give me my test for a Registered Maine Guide’s License. Ted asked me a batch of required questions which Fin gave most of the answers for. The only question I can remember is, "Can you cook and bake over an open fire?" Fin was standing there behind me the whole time, and he laughed lightly as he said over my shoulder to Ted, "He’s learning"; I was pretty well at a loss for words the whole time anyway. But that question struck a cord in me, because I was interested in learning how to cook over an open fire and especially bake delicious homemade goodies, because some Mainer friend of Fin and Marty’s, whom I was playing a game of Cribbage with at the Lodge one day, had told me about one of the most famous old time, long dead, local Maine Guides who used to bake the most delicious biscuits on a campfire. I never did learn to bake over an open fire, but I can sure as hell cook good meals over a campsite fire. The questioning ended right after Fin informed Ted that I would only be employed to guide bear hunters and not deer hunters or fishing parties till I had learned a lot more about the vast woods of Northern Maine and I had become proficient at the profession of being a Maine Guide. And I was handed my Registered Maine Hunting and Fishing Guide’s License for the year of 1969.
It was a complete surprise to me.
Welp’, the way that it was for me at the time was that I loved working in and just being out in the woods, I loved the Patten Mainers, I loved my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley, but now I was really stuck at the Lodge for I didn't know how long. Because by having them two finagling relatives of mine get the game warden to give me a professional guide’s license, Fin and Marty had underhandedly let me know that I was expected to stay and work at the Lodge through the entire upcoming summer bear hunting season.
If I had refused to accept the guide’s license and told Fin and Marty that it was time for me to go join the Merchant Marines, before they were ready to let me go, it would have incited them into raging anger. Fin and Marty relied on my help to keep their business going. The main reason that they needed me to stay and help them to keep their business going is that most of the local Maine men didn’t want to work at Katahdin Lodge, because Fin would frequently verbally abuse any of his guides who didn’t walk out on him the first time that he yelled at them. He cussed and hollered at me every single day. I was only 18 years old–too young and too confused by Fin and Marty’s bull crap to know how to stand up against them.
One part of the reason that I stayed and accepted the guide’s license along with that professional Maine Guide’s position at the Lodge was that I had no money to go catch a bus or plane to leave, because my aunt and uncle hadn’t paid me a weekly salary. I was painfully aware that if I left against their wishes that they would never give me the money that I knew I had earned from them, and they would have told me something like, "hoof it on back home gahdamnit if you don’t appreciate all that we are doing for you."
Grant it, I appreciated having the opportunity to get to know the local Mainers, to date sweet and pretty Maine girls, to ride snowmobiles and learn to walk on snowshoes, to spend time out in the woods. But I had an obligation to serve my country in some military manner, and I was determined to choose my branch of service before the U.S. Army or the U.S. Marine Corp drafted me. I love my family and my country more than life itself. I have been ready to die to defend my country-my family ever since as a child in elementary school I got a grasp on the meaning of our necessity to continually be on guard for our freedom. The only reason that I was intent on joining the Merchant Marines to stay out of the Vietnam War was because it looked to me that that war wasn’t truly defending my country from communism.
Had I left to go join the Merchant Marines, as I had told that pair of selfish, self centered individuals that I had planned to do before and all during the time I was living and working at their business, my aunt and uncle would have made a big, bad deal out of it amongst our family—them two would have turned everything around to their benefit and vilified me. Fin and Marty would have told everyone something to the effect that I had quit on them when they needed me most and that they had treated me like a son and given me more than I deserved. This would have caused a great rift within our family if that had that happened, because some of my family members would have sided with them two and some with me.
My Grandmother and Grandfather Clarke believed that their son Finley was God’s gift to the planet earth. Ever since Finley was a little child his parents had taught him that he was better than everyone else. To my knowledge, Finley K. Clarke never in his life outright admitted to doing anything wrong. Finley’s parents had visited the lodge while I was working there and had seen how horribly he was mistreating me, but they didn’t care.
My father’s side of the family wasn’t aware of just how bad my situation was at the time. If my Grandmother and Grandfather Crews had known that I was being so thoroughly abused and cheated by Fin and Marty, they would have gotten mad as hell at all of the Clarkes. Both sides of my family had lived within a few miles of where I grew up in Maryland. We all visited each other frequently when I was growing up.
The bottom line here is that I had to stay at the Lodge to avoid starting a family feud. It was put upon my young, yet worldly, shoulders to suffer and sacrifice silently in order to keep our families together.
Very Old Photograph by A Very Young Davy Boy
This is my Grandmom Crews on the left and my Grandmom Clarke on the right at a family picnic in my backyard in Dundalk, Maryland.
One thing that really hurt me deeply, about the situation in Maine, was that I could never allow my Grandmom and Granddad Crews to come visit me at the Lodge. When Fin started in on his daily verbally abusing me, my paternal grandparents would have gotten thoroughly upset and told Fin and Marty just how lousy of a pair of relatives that they were for the way that they treated me.
My Granddad Crews was a fisherman and not having the pleasure of showing him some fantastic fishing and other fine times in the Great Outdoors of Maine is a loss that I can’t seem to get past. He was an old West Virginia mountain boy, who worked most of his life in the blast furnaces of the steel mill that Fin and Marty had worked for. He retired as the foreman of the two largest furnaces there. Those foremen were good with the men, good with a shovel and good with the overhead cranes, in a hot, dirty and very dangerous place–all around about the hardest working men I ever knew of. He was just the kinda fellow that my older friends in Maine would have enjoyed getting to know. He was a self taught car mechanic, and he would have tried to get into working on the Lodge’s trucks or something, if he had come up to stay there with us for a week or so.
My Grandmom Crews was a Welshwomen who came to America, during World War One, as a US Army Captain’s children’s nanny. She was about as good as they get at home cooking and other homemaking skills. She would have fit right in with the country women who worked for Marty at the Lodge. My Grandmom Crews would have pitched in and helped around the Lodge, if I could have invited them up for a visit. She would'a definitely had to get into that kitchen and cook something for the crowd at the Lodge. She and Granddad would’ve made some good friends amongst the Mainers I knew.
Fin and Marty haven’t spoken to anyone on either side of my family for many, many years. It is a gahddamned shame that my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley had to be so greedy, self serving, and ignorant that they destroyed all relationship with my entire family.
Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews
ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews
One thing that really hurt me deeply, about the situation in Maine, was that I could never allow my Grandmom and Granddad Crews to come visit me at the Lodge. When Fin started in on his daily verbally abusing me, my paternal grandparents would have gotten thoroughly upset and told Fin and Marty just how lousy of a pair of relatives that they were for the way that they treated me.
My Granddad Crews was a fisherman and not having the pleasure of showing him some fantastic fishing and other fine times in the Great Outdoors of Maine is a loss that I can’t seem to get past. He was an old West Virginia mountain boy, who worked most of his life in the blast furnaces of the steel mill that Fin and Marty had worked for. He retired as the foreman of the two largest furnaces there. Those foremen were good with the men, good with a shovel and good with the overhead cranes, in a hot, dirty and very dangerous place–all around about the hardest working men I ever knew of. He was just the kinda fellow that my older friends in Maine would have enjoyed getting to know. He was a self taught car mechanic, and he would have tried to get into working on the Lodge’s trucks or something, if he had come up to stay there with us for a week or so.
My Grandmom Crews was a Welshwomen who came to America, during World War One, as a US Army Captain’s children’s nanny. She was about as good as they get at home cooking and other homemaking skills. She would have fit right in with the country women who worked for Marty at the Lodge. My Grandmom Crews would have pitched in and helped around the Lodge, if I could have invited them up for a visit. She would'a definitely had to get into that kitchen and cook something for the crowd at the Lodge. She and Granddad would’ve made some good friends amongst the Mainers I knew.
Fin and Marty haven’t spoken to anyone on either side of my family for many, many years. It is a gahddamned shame that my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley had to be so greedy, self serving, and ignorant that they destroyed all relationship with my entire family.
Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews
ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews
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