Photography by David Robert CrewsMy Aunt Martha Clarke, Marty, knew that working in her husband’s business afforded her the opportunity to attain far more financial success and social prominence than she ever could by working at the office job which she had held, in the same steel mill Fin was layin’ brick at, when they had moved to Maine.
Marty never had any children, but I believe that Fin and Marty were securely in love and that they made love often. I don’t know if they had ever discovered what the unfortunate, medical reason was which had prevented them from conceiving a child.
At the lodge, Marty was head cook and bottle washer, did all of the chores that a hotel maid does, and handled all of the business correspondence, bookkeeping duties, payroll, and telephone traffic. She could hold her own in just about any conversation ever heard at the Lodge, and her propensity for telling dirty jokes was famous. She got along well with most of the hunters, but she would often gossip about a few of them after they left, and sometimes it was for a long time after the hunters left.
Unfortunately for all of us who worked at the Lodge, Marty never showed any appreciation for the hard, dangerous, multi-faceted work which we guides did for her financial gain; she cheated us out of our pay and/or time off from work anytime that she could get away with it. I have heard from friends of mine in Maine and also my family down in Maryland that Fin’s favorite hunting guide, John Birmingham, had quit working at the Lodge after Marty had refused to give the man a raise in salary which Fin had told the guide that he was supposed to have received and that John had definitely earned. John is one of the most competent, most highly regarded woodsman in Northern Maine. He is the best shot who I have ever seen shoot a firearm. John Birmingham is as good as they get when it comes to Maine Hunting and Fishing Guides. The most defining detail about Martha Clarke which that situation exposes is that John was at the time, and always will be, the closest to being the son who Finley always wanted.
One thing that Marty hated to see was Fin or any of us guides taking a well deserved break during the day. No matter how long we had been out there working or how hot and sweaty and dirty or cold and wet and dirty we were when we sat down in the Lodge for a break she'd usually try to saunter on by and prod us about some pending or partly completed task.
Even during a blizzard she only allowed me to come into the Lodge to warm up for ten or fifteen minutes after every two or three hours of plowing fast falling snow. Fin had been out of state on National Guard duty when a big blizzard struck and three feet of powdery snow fell on top of two and a half feet of hard packed snow in two days. After I had plowed snow all day, most of the night, and through the next day during that blizzard, my aunt had pointed out the healthy red complexion on my cheeks that the wind driven snow had given me. Then she said to me, with a squint on her face, "Now doesn’t that feel good? Do you know how much it would have cost me to hire a bulldozer and its operator to come up here and clear all of that snow off of the driveway after the blizzard ended if you hadn’t kept it plowed? A hundred dollars."
Conquering that ferocious storm felt great to me!
It was tough going though: I had to jump off the tractor now and then to crawl down under it and put the chains back on the tires; the snow banks around the Lodge's horseshoe shaped driveway got too high for the tractor's wide, hydraulic scooped manure bucket to lift up over them when I had to dump a full load of snow out of it, so I had to take the buckets of snow across the two-lane-macadam-country road out front to dump them. Fortunately there was no through traffic at all on it during the storm.
But I had to constantly be on the lookout for those huge flying wedge snowplows that they use up there. Those humongous machines pretty well had the right of way most of the time, and one of them could have killed me in a collision between the two of us. Them fellers and me had the road out there in front of the Lodge to ourselves for about two days straight.
Right there a short way down the road south of the Lodge there is a good sized blind hill. It has a wicked quick drop over a rather sharp edge when driving south past the Lodge, and any vehicle driving north past the Lodge comes haulin' ass up over that hill top at a good pace, because there is another hill of that same height and shape about a half mile past the first hill, so either way ya go it is down one hill fast and then a vehicle gains great momentum to send the driver up the next tall hill fast and smooth. When the drivers are down near and at the bottom of the deep dip between the two steep hills them drivers can't see if any vehicles will be coming at them in the other lane, and maybe hangin' over the double yellow lines a bit dangerously into the other driver's lane. Nor can a driver who is down in the dip or climbing quickly up the next hill see any large, furry obstructions innocently stepping out of the deep woods on both sides of the road.
Any driver heading north who wants to pull into the Lodge's driveway has to begin to slow down as soon as they crest the hill, and then they turn left into the driveway. But any drivers heading north who are not stopping at the Lodge usually come flying up over the crest of the northern hill top at a good rate of speed, even though they had just climbed way up a steep hill, because they had just rolled fast (and easy on the gas) down the equally sized and shaped southern hill, which had given the vehicle a "fire the booster rockets now" effect. And the solid gripped feeling of the forward pull of the gravity at the bottom of the dip gave it all a naturally added, smooth flowing, thrilling inertia which was damn near inebriating.
When them there humongous bladed snow plows came by the Lodge heading northbound, charging madly, they looked like prehistoric, big and hefty, recently shaved Mastodons heading for warmer latitudes. Those snow plume spttin', northbound heavy metal beasts flew down the south hill, and then up the north hill, and then they snowblasted on by the Lodge at a steady rate of speed. If I was out there with that tractor cross ways on the road, being all blurred out looking due to the sideways flying snow, and sitting there with the tractor's front bucket held out as far as I could force it over top of the ten foot and higher snow bank on the opposite side of the road, the many, many moments whenever I was in that position the snowplow drivers coming northbound down and up over the hill did not have enough time to stop before they plowed into me.
Sadly, that poor excuse for a loving, caring, kind and considerate Aunt Martha of mine never thanked me in any way at all for my long hours of hard, dangerous work out in the freezing cold nor did she ever tell anyone but my equally ungrateful Uncle Finley that I had done all of that plowing by myself. And she had only told him because he had seen on the TV weather reports that the storm was hitting us and it was obvious that someone had to plow the driveway so he had called her to make sure that it got done. He never asked her to put me on the phone though so that he could thank me for being there way up in the woods when he and his wife needed me or to tell me that I was doing a great job for them or to acknowledge that I had most certainly, successfully entered the domain of men in Maine who were not afraid of working hard outside in the roughest weather.
When I first lived and worked for my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley, my life was ruled by the mistaken, immature impression that family members are always nurturing to, supportive of, and loving towards one another.
Marty never had any children, but I believe that Fin and Marty were securely in love and that they made love often. I don’t know if they had ever discovered what the unfortunate, medical reason was which had prevented them from conceiving a child.
At the lodge, Marty was head cook and bottle washer, did all of the chores that a hotel maid does, and handled all of the business correspondence, bookkeeping duties, payroll, and telephone traffic. She could hold her own in just about any conversation ever heard at the Lodge, and her propensity for telling dirty jokes was famous. She got along well with most of the hunters, but she would often gossip about a few of them after they left, and sometimes it was for a long time after the hunters left.
Unfortunately for all of us who worked at the Lodge, Marty never showed any appreciation for the hard, dangerous, multi-faceted work which we guides did for her financial gain; she cheated us out of our pay and/or time off from work anytime that she could get away with it. I have heard from friends of mine in Maine and also my family down in Maryland that Fin’s favorite hunting guide, John Birmingham, had quit working at the Lodge after Marty had refused to give the man a raise in salary which Fin had told the guide that he was supposed to have received and that John had definitely earned. John is one of the most competent, most highly regarded woodsman in Northern Maine. He is the best shot who I have ever seen shoot a firearm. John Birmingham is as good as they get when it comes to Maine Hunting and Fishing Guides. The most defining detail about Martha Clarke which that situation exposes is that John was at the time, and always will be, the closest to being the son who Finley always wanted.
One thing that Marty hated to see was Fin or any of us guides taking a well deserved break during the day. No matter how long we had been out there working or how hot and sweaty and dirty or cold and wet and dirty we were when we sat down in the Lodge for a break she'd usually try to saunter on by and prod us about some pending or partly completed task.
Even during a blizzard she only allowed me to come into the Lodge to warm up for ten or fifteen minutes after every two or three hours of plowing fast falling snow. Fin had been out of state on National Guard duty when a big blizzard struck and three feet of powdery snow fell on top of two and a half feet of hard packed snow in two days. After I had plowed snow all day, most of the night, and through the next day during that blizzard, my aunt had pointed out the healthy red complexion on my cheeks that the wind driven snow had given me. Then she said to me, with a squint on her face, "Now doesn’t that feel good? Do you know how much it would have cost me to hire a bulldozer and its operator to come up here and clear all of that snow off of the driveway after the blizzard ended if you hadn’t kept it plowed? A hundred dollars."
Conquering that ferocious storm felt great to me!
It was tough going though: I had to jump off the tractor now and then to crawl down under it and put the chains back on the tires; the snow banks around the Lodge's horseshoe shaped driveway got too high for the tractor's wide, hydraulic scooped manure bucket to lift up over them when I had to dump a full load of snow out of it, so I had to take the buckets of snow across the two-lane-macadam-country road out front to dump them. Fortunately there was no through traffic at all on it during the storm.
But I had to constantly be on the lookout for those huge flying wedge snowplows that they use up there. Those humongous machines pretty well had the right of way most of the time, and one of them could have killed me in a collision between the two of us. Them fellers and me had the road out there in front of the Lodge to ourselves for about two days straight.
Right there a short way down the road south of the Lodge there is a good sized blind hill. It has a wicked quick drop over a rather sharp edge when driving south past the Lodge, and any vehicle driving north past the Lodge comes haulin' ass up over that hill top at a good pace, because there is another hill of that same height and shape about a half mile past the first hill, so either way ya go it is down one hill fast and then a vehicle gains great momentum to send the driver up the next tall hill fast and smooth. When the drivers are down near and at the bottom of the deep dip between the two steep hills them drivers can't see if any vehicles will be coming at them in the other lane, and maybe hangin' over the double yellow lines a bit dangerously into the other driver's lane. Nor can a driver who is down in the dip or climbing quickly up the next hill see any large, furry obstructions innocently stepping out of the deep woods on both sides of the road.
Any driver heading north who wants to pull into the Lodge's driveway has to begin to slow down as soon as they crest the hill, and then they turn left into the driveway. But any drivers heading north who are not stopping at the Lodge usually come flying up over the crest of the northern hill top at a good rate of speed, even though they had just climbed way up a steep hill, because they had just rolled fast (and easy on the gas) down the equally sized and shaped southern hill, which had given the vehicle a "fire the booster rockets now" effect. And the solid gripped feeling of the forward pull of the gravity at the bottom of the dip gave it all a naturally added, smooth flowing, thrilling inertia which was damn near inebriating.
When them there humongous bladed snow plows came by the Lodge heading northbound, charging madly, they looked like prehistoric, big and hefty, recently shaved Mastodons heading for warmer latitudes. Those snow plume spttin', northbound heavy metal beasts flew down the south hill, and then up the north hill, and then they snowblasted on by the Lodge at a steady rate of speed. If I was out there with that tractor cross ways on the road, being all blurred out looking due to the sideways flying snow, and sitting there with the tractor's front bucket held out as far as I could force it over top of the ten foot and higher snow bank on the opposite side of the road, the many, many moments whenever I was in that position the snowplow drivers coming northbound down and up over the hill did not have enough time to stop before they plowed into me.
Sadly, that poor excuse for a loving, caring, kind and considerate Aunt Martha of mine never thanked me in any way at all for my long hours of hard, dangerous work out in the freezing cold nor did she ever tell anyone but my equally ungrateful Uncle Finley that I had done all of that plowing by myself. And she had only told him because he had seen on the TV weather reports that the storm was hitting us and it was obvious that someone had to plow the driveway so he had called her to make sure that it got done. He never asked her to put me on the phone though so that he could thank me for being there way up in the woods when he and his wife needed me or to tell me that I was doing a great job for them or to acknowledge that I had most certainly, successfully entered the domain of men in Maine who were not afraid of working hard outside in the roughest weather.
When I first lived and worked for my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley, my life was ruled by the mistaken, immature impression that family members are always nurturing to, supportive of, and loving towards one another.
Photography by David Robert CrewsJohn Birmingham in front of Katahdin Lodge's Land Rover (a real Land Rover) in the winter of 1969. John was home on leave from the U.S. Army, before he went to Vietnam. But before he entered the Army, he worked for Fin and Marty as a hunting guide. I learned how to drive a standard transmission with a stick shift in that old Rover. Notice the pile of snow up against that old wooden building in the background, it got there when Finley and I had shoveled it off the roof when that roof was about to cave in from the weight of four foot deep snow.
Photography by David Robert Crews
Marty going snowshoeing back to Hale Pond with Chet and Susan Chase. Chet was a teacher at Katahdin High School. Notice the piles of snow on either side of the door back there, they got there when I shoveled off the Lodge's roof every single time it snowed that winter.
Finley was my mother’s younger brother. Our family was very close when I was growing up, and both my mother’s and father’s families knew Martha’s family, so my entire family’s relationship with Martha Clarke stretched back long before I was born. Marty lived next door to my mother’s and Finley’s family in the small, friendly, crime free mill town of Sparrows Point, Maryland. Marty was like a sister to my mother when they were growing up. Fin and Marty knew my father’s family, the Crews side of our family, for their entire lives because for many years they had all lived in Sparrows Point too, and most of the families down there knew each other the same as families usually do in all small towns anywhere in the world. Both of my parents and Martha grew up "on the Point".
After my parents got married, and then Fin married the girl next door, Marty, we had all lived close to each other and visited each other’s homes frequently. From the day I was born till 1965, when Fin and Marty moved to Maine, we saw each other on every holiday at my Grandparents Clarke’s home, except for our family’s annual Fourth of July picnic, which was held, by my parents, every year at my house. Those were great get-togethers complete with huge home cooked meals and lotsa' family fun. Uncle Finley (called Uncle Kenneth by us back then) and Aunt Martha came to every birthday party given for me, my two sisters, mother and father which were held every year at my house. My Uncle Kenneth was in the Army Reserves and during a few of his frequent visits to my home when there was no party going on, when I was a young kid, he used to bring me really cool army stuff like real steel helmets, a combat back pack, and a periscope from an army tank. He also used to build little plastic scale models of army vehicles, and when he got tired of displaying them in his Dundalk, Maryland home, he gave them to me to play with. We were all as close as a family can be.
I lost those wonderful family ties between my aunt and uncle and I when I tried to live with and work for that pair of selfish people up in the Great North Woods of Maine and to have the finest kind of a time with them two natural born ingrates and the local population of fun loving Mainers and other good folks who came up to enjoy the hunting and other outstanding outdoors recreation opportunities up there.
Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews
ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews
Finley was my mother’s younger brother. Our family was very close when I was growing up, and both my mother’s and father’s families knew Martha’s family, so my entire family’s relationship with Martha Clarke stretched back long before I was born. Marty lived next door to my mother’s and Finley’s family in the small, friendly, crime free mill town of Sparrows Point, Maryland. Marty was like a sister to my mother when they were growing up. Fin and Marty knew my father’s family, the Crews side of our family, for their entire lives because for many years they had all lived in Sparrows Point too, and most of the families down there knew each other the same as families usually do in all small towns anywhere in the world. Both of my parents and Martha grew up "on the Point".
After my parents got married, and then Fin married the girl next door, Marty, we had all lived close to each other and visited each other’s homes frequently. From the day I was born till 1965, when Fin and Marty moved to Maine, we saw each other on every holiday at my Grandparents Clarke’s home, except for our family’s annual Fourth of July picnic, which was held, by my parents, every year at my house. Those were great get-togethers complete with huge home cooked meals and lotsa' family fun. Uncle Finley (called Uncle Kenneth by us back then) and Aunt Martha came to every birthday party given for me, my two sisters, mother and father which were held every year at my house. My Uncle Kenneth was in the Army Reserves and during a few of his frequent visits to my home when there was no party going on, when I was a young kid, he used to bring me really cool army stuff like real steel helmets, a combat back pack, and a periscope from an army tank. He also used to build little plastic scale models of army vehicles, and when he got tired of displaying them in his Dundalk, Maryland home, he gave them to me to play with. We were all as close as a family can be.
I lost those wonderful family ties between my aunt and uncle and I when I tried to live with and work for that pair of selfish people up in the Great North Woods of Maine and to have the finest kind of a time with them two natural born ingrates and the local population of fun loving Mainers and other good folks who came up to enjoy the hunting and other outstanding outdoors recreation opportunities up there.
Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews
ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews
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