I was a Rock and Roll record collecting teen born and raised in the Baltimore area, graduated suburban high school in June of 1968, then in November '68 I began a year of living and working in the wonderful woodlands of the Patten, Maine area. It was sparsely populated, and I fit right in with the Mainers. I still love and respect the ways of old time country folk, woodsmen and small town teenagers - all of whom we shared some good times and many of life's lessons together. I am well known and verified up there for what I write about my experiences, for my photography of Maine and how I have shared it with them.
I had gone to my uncle's Katahdin Lodge and Camps, and become a bear hunting guide. Usual stories of working in an outdoors industry right after high school are about summer camp for kids jobs, tent & RV camp ground duties, dish washing at an eatery, but none offer the variety of skilled, hard, dangerous work challenges I became engaged in and aced at Katahdin Lodge. Not once did I dislike being a streetwise suburban guy in the forest lands and insular small town society of the north country becoming a competent professional woodsman.
Look at all that front lawn I had to mow down there at Katahdin Lodge and Camps, in the summer of 1969. Anytime Finley Clarke's Nephew, David Robert Crews - that'd be me, anytime I was living and working at Finley's Katahdin Lodge and Camps, I was the Lodge's sole grass cutter and weed whacker. I wouldn't have it any other way. And my Uncle Finley and his wife, my Aunt Martha, both completely agreed with me. And work I did!! A minimum of nine-hours-a-day-six-days-a-week. I was all over the wildland and small town areas within tens-of-miles in every direction from the Lodge, and I fondly recall it as territory where I was welcomed and fit right in. Had I done anyone there any wrong, I'd have had them all turn against me and I'd have had to move away.
Here I am at 19-years-old splittin’ wood for 9-10 hours a day, Monday thru Friday for two weeks in a row. Look at dee' well defined muskules' on 'dem friggin' arms 'uh mine wouldja'! Then besides that 9-10 hours, each day, I had to feed and water the animals, do some outside maintenance work, etc., and then go track wounded bears for our paying hunters, retrieve any dead ones I found, and then come back to the Lodge to gut and skin them. I was aware of how hard I worked, but never felt that it was out of the ordinary - especially in a seasonal business.
During the winter of 1968-69, there was lots of snow that needed to be shoveled at Katahdin Lodge and Camps. Even as a kid in Maryland, I liked to shovel snow. It’s great exercise. At the Lodge, I learned how to plow snow off the wide horseshoe shaped driveway with a farm tractor. My lesson began during a blizzard with an all night long, all next day, then again an all night session till next day and with never more than a 20-minute break every two or three hours indoors. I was just learning to handle a tractor, and I flat-out got into using the machine in rough weather. Notice I say "rough" not "bad" and that is because all weather is good for something.
I did all kinds of other stuff that I that I had never done before.
I was pressed into service as a carpenter’s, plumber’s, electrician’s, and mechanic’s helper.
I had to split cords of wood for the wood stove, and I still love to split wood. We only had those wood stoves to heat the Lodge with, so my aunt and uncle had taught me how to pack the wood into a wood stove so that it keeps burning smoothly and for the longest time. The only tip that they taught me about using a wood stove that I can give you without showing you is that it is the hot coals from the burning wood in the bottom of a wood stove’s belly that catches the next higher pieces of wood on fire, not the flames from the burning pieces in the lower part of the stove.
There were nine dogs, one horse, and two caged bobcats who became my responsibility for feedin’, waterin,’ and cleaning up after, and them thar' critters and I got along right famously--'cept fur that ornery horse. I was never taught, nor had yet figured out how, to make friends with the horse by spending a few minutes to talk to him at watering and feeding times, mucking out its stall and more, but today a horse and I could become friends because I understand how to.
That is my Uncle Finley looking at you, and the other two men are bear hunters helping me cleanup after I had split and stacked 19-cord of firewood the previous two weeks. The hunters were successful guys in their lives, and they had grown to pay others to do their labor work but it was enjoyable for them two to pitch in and use rake & shovel hand tools like when they were younger men. You can see back there where our wooden dog houses sat. I aced it on driving Northern Mainer Style in that blue 1968 Chevy S10 Pickup Truck. The vehicle did not have power steering nor power brakes, plus it had a manual shifter. Those three old time features allowed us to more precisely control the ride at high speeds on country roads and slow moving along rough roads in the backwoods.
I drove four wheel drive trucks all over Northern Maine, in all kinds of weather, and on every type of old, overgrown, rutted, muddy, flooded by a beaver pond, quagmire of a logging road and roller coaster like dirt, gravel, or tar country road. I'd have never made it through all those wild and crazy driving situations if my uncle and some other highly skilled Northern Maine drivers hadn't taught me some serious driving skills and techniques that the average driver never learns. I only got stuck twice in the snow up there during that winter of 1968-69, but one time it was on the hard packed snow out at the side of the road in front of Putt Gerow's tiny country store at Knowles Corner, and old Putt had just laughed lightly, shook his head slightly, then the old woodsman came out and showed me how to ease a vehicle out of a spot like that. I never got stuck in the mud though, and we had some genuine quagmires to drive through at times. And never once did I have a problem driving at the fast and sometimes furious pace required to get things done my uncle’s way. Ask anybody who was up there then, they'll tell ya.
After all that snow melted, I did all of the lawn mowing at the Lodge, and it was a huge yard. Fortunately, I had mowed lawns for money all through my teen years, and I was very proficient at it. I enjoyed it too, in a physical sports challenge sort of a way. Because not only was it another way that I liked to get my physical exercise, it has always been a fun mental challenge and exercise for me to figure out the most sensible mowing pattern to follow for the easiest way to finish each individual lawn and have it looking real good. In my eyes, that job ain’t ever done till the trimming is done right, and I had ways of deftly handling the gasoline powered push mower to use it do most of the trimming that all you amateurs and pros alike do with one of them gas powered or electric trimmers.
Eventually, I became a Registered Maine Hunting & Fishing Guide; me being in learning stages I was limited - by the test giving game warden - to only guiding bear hunters. My uncle and his guide Gary told me, "When bear season begins, your basic job is to keep the hunters from getting themselves hurt." Very few of the hunters were woods wise, and they all had firearms and a hunting knife. I was a young man in charge of various aged men who displayed varying degrees of firearm and hunting safety adherence. Bear hunters began hunting in midafternoon and stayed out in the wood alone at a bear bait till after sunset, so though it was a nice deal for many individuals to be out there in nature there are some few people who get real scared and freak out a bit. I handled all situations well.
That part of the job required me to handle a lot of stinky bear bait--rotting beaver carcasses and slaughterhouse leftovers like cow guts and pig’s heads. That rotting stuff often had maggots crawling all over it, and on hot summer days I had to dip my gloved hands into 55 gallon drums filled with rotting cow guts that had about a six to eight inch layer of wiggling maggots on the top of the mushy guts and there was steam wafting up from the mound of maggots along with a serious stench from the stuff that the maggots were munching on. It stunk us guides up somethin' terrible--we called it "Leave Me Alone Cologne" because nobody wanted to be near us when we had just been working with bait.
I had to go into the woods and track bears for sportsmen who had paid to bear hunt at the Lodge for a week. It was normal for me to follow the blood trails of wounded bears by myself, after dark, and unarmed. Ain't nuthin’ to it–Wild Maine Black Bears usually run from humans. No bears have ever killed anyone in Maine, but people have been attacked. Besides that, having a firearm along would have violated laws that prohibit night hunting. Ya’ wouldn’t want a big, mean, snarlin’ game warden to get me would ya’? I also had to carry any bears that the hunters had killed out of the woods with the help of one or more of the paying hunters and/or other guides. Then the other guides and I gutted and skinned those dead bears.
Also, we guides enjoyed sharing local fun stories and telling hunters about peoples' lives in Northern Maine plus interesting spots to visit when not out hunting. Good conversation abounded, with we guides hearing hunters' life stories, advice and good info from what they do professionally.
During the past 30+ years, whenever I’m telling anyone my stories about my Maine adventures, they always think that tracking wounded bears at night without taking a firearm along with me was the most dangerous part of those experiences. That is not so.
The driving was absolutely the most dangerous part of the job. We Katahdin Lodge hunting guides drove over the speed limit ninety-some percent of the time. I usually drove more than 100 miles each day--including on my days off from work when I was just a happy teenager running around the country side with other happy teenagers.
When I was in the pilot’s seat of one of the Lodge’s trucks, I felt perfectly comfortable averaging 10-15 MPH over the posted speed limit, but if my uncle was riding with me I had to fly along those country roads at 15-20 MPH over the limit most of the time. That extra 5-10 MPH meant that I couldn’t hardly ever relax at all during the driving, because I wasn’t as highly skilled at it as my uncle was.
Those Maine-iac drivers had taught me well though, I assure you that I was very safe to ride with most of the time--nobody's perfect.
But my safe driving sure as hell scared the be-jeezums out of a few paying bear hunters each week when they were my passengers in one of the Lodge's pickup trucks, and they hadn't yet gotten to know that I could definitely handle driving a truck on them wild & wooly roads at those speeds. Then sometimes a couple of fun loving, thrill seeking, city guys, who were at the Lodge on a bear hunt, would egg me on to git-it-on at top speeds when I was just tooling along conversing with them nice and relaxed like while driving at mere high speeds.
I always enjoyed the challenges and the satisfactions of making it from point A to point B to point Z all day long without a mishap while using those finely honed driving skills of mine to be that safe at such high speeds on those rough roads. But, it was still the most dangerous part of the job.
That’s how I earned my keep at Katahdin Lodge and Camps in Patten, Maine.
That is nineteen-year-old me on the left,
alongside lifelong Maine Woodsman Gary Glidden.
We were posing with four bears our paying hunters had killed.
The female bobcat. Bobcats do not mate in captivity.
Several times I shot a wild rabbit for the bobcats, and that is the male cat with a fresh meal.
That is me in early 1969 plowing a trail in deep snow from a fresh - and refreshing - you should have seen the healthy, happy reddish glow from my exposed facial areas out in the mighty blizzard. Prior to the incoming blizzard, I had shoveled snow off all the roofs so they would not collapse from new added snow.
