Fittin’ In With The Locals Wasn’t Easy

If at least the past two, no, three generations of your family hadn’t been born and raised within oh, say sixty miles of the town of Patten, then you would always be “from the outside.” I respected that. They had a tough life up there livin’ in the woods. When there were local jobs available, the work was usually fairly hard and definitely dangerous. If they became injured or ill, it was their family, friend, or neighbor who drove them the hour or more it might take to get to the nearest hospital. Those folks up there relied on one another for their survival. Everybody looked out for each other.

The kids from Patten and the other small towns in the area would often go to each other’s dances and parties. And I went to most of them too, often with my best friend Gary McCarthy--we picked up some sweet babes together.

Early one relaxed, mid-summer's Saturday evening, just before the night's teen fun and country kid style action was about to commence ta' happening in Northern Maine, Gary and I were sitting and sipping sodas on swivel stools at the lunch counter in the Patten Drug Store.

Gary turned to me and said, “Dave, if you get into a fight with a guy from another town, then by jeeze, it’ll be me and you against him back to back; I’ll fight any of his friends who try to hit you from behind. But! If you get into a fight with a guy from the Town of Patten, it’ll be him, me and the rest of the town against you.”

I had no problem with that—I admired them for the way that they stuck together.

Patten had a permanent population of under two thousand people, and the ten or eleven mile ride from town up to the Lodge was very sparsely populated. Finley and Martha Clarke were from Sparrows Point, Maryland, but they were popular with a good number of that small population of local Mainers. Company often dropped in at the Lodge during the evenings and on Sundays. There were great games of cribbage, and some of the best conversation I’ll ever experience.

Ya’ weren’t supposed to believe all of the tall tales that they told as being fully factual, but you really enjoyed hearin’ ‘um.

Photographs by David Robert Crews

Hangin’ around on a Saturday Night at Ballard’s Citco Station in Patten. I took these shots with my first and very inexpensive 35MM camera to show my family and friends back home in Dundalk, Maryland what it was like on a typical Saturday Night hanging out in my new small town.


That’s me second from the left and right where I wanted to be. This was at the girl all the way to the right's birthday party, which happened to be the night before I left for U.S. Army basic training. The girl, Deanna Caldwell, was the first girl I dated up there. Then one night, because I had gone out with Deanna three times another girl wouldn't go out with me because, as the new girl told me that night, in Patten three dates meant that you were going steady. I wasn't ready to settle for one certain girl yet in a town with so many sweet, attractive, teenage darlin's, so I never dated Deanna again. That is my old friend Arnie Ballard enjoying a cuddle with Deanna, and I think that the girl between Arnie and I was Jughead McCarty's steady girlfriend, I just can't remember the pretty girl's name.


Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews

ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews

Everyone Respected Finley’s Ability To Outwork Anyone

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 Crews

Fin 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

Martha Clarke Was A Working Class, Steel Mill Town Woman

Photography by David Robert Crews

My 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.

Photography by David Robert Crews

John 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