Tuesday, August 21, 2007

My Stories About Being A Bear Hunting Guide and Country Girls’ Delight Up In Maine

Here is a guide to my stories about being a Maine bear hunting guide and country girl's delight up in Patten, Maine at Katahdin Lodge and Camps. I will provide links to each of these stories, where they are published on a Maine web site. Some stories are on several web sites.

Just keep in mind that I need some professional editing help and I also need to do some other 'sprucing up' of them in order for me to be completely satisfied with these written works--but the stories sure as hell are interesting, entertaining, a tad bit educational, and (according to thousands of readers so far) fun to read anyways.

I hope that you enjoy reading one or all of them.

The House Fire is a nice, but scary one (it scared me when it happened, that's for certain). This one is for good gentle and not so gentle folks of all ages.

The Day I Fell In Love With Patten Maine ain't nuthin' like you will expect, and it is a mind blower. It's a real, small town, soap opera scene, and a teenagers' thrill a minute experience.

An Italian Nice Guy is a good bear hunting story that is really a chipmunk story. It is actually good for kids to read. No bears are even shot at in it. It is fictionalized a bit, but mostly true. I expanded on what I knew about Tony and his family, but they had to be real nice people.

Here also are copies of emails exchanged between myself and the Italian Nice Guy's family confirming that I wrote his story well.

The Rocket Scientist is a crazy trip about a genuine Washington, DC Rocket Scientist. It is about one of any hunting guide's worst fears and dangers.

Jungle Dirt is something which stands on its own. It was my first attempt at fictionalizing a true story. It is about a Vietnam Veteran's experience when he went bear hunting in Maine just three days after coming home from fighting hard for a full year 'Nam. It is a good story for all of us Vietnam Era Veterans and others who care about us, and how we were treated in America during and after the Vietnam War. Just about the only fictional parts have to do with the me making some descriptive guesses about the Nam Vet's mother and a small amount was expanded on to the guy's stepfather's description. Boss Hog on the Dukes of Hazard did look exactly like that friggin' jackass of a stepfather though.

Easiest Way To Carry A Dead Bear is a nutty piece, but it does give a damn good hunting tip. It gets right loony, ain't no doubt about it.

Bananastien is about young adults testing the limits in 1969 Patten, ME. Part of it gets real wild on the back roads.

Driving Northern Mainer Style is a basic "how to guide" on driving on those wild and woolly, climbin' and droppin', twisty and hard turning country and backwoods roads up there in Maine. And also how not to drive them roads. Within that written piece, there is also a story about how I nearly 'bought the farm' early one morning up on the Washburn Road, where it goes into the small city of Caribou, Maine. Ya' better tighten y'ur seat belts for this one.

My VW Bug Trip To Maine has a hilarious bear hunting scene in it, it's a hoot, and the rest of it is a wild, funny, and very, very happy story. It was about a trip of mine to Maine while I was on leave from the Army just after I had graduated US Army Photographic Laboratory Technician School, and before I was assigned to duty over on Okinawa. This story goes from Patten, ME down to Dundalk, MD and through a bunch of quite memorable experiences.

Then They Own You takes place in 1979, when I tried to work for my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley Clarke in Maine one more time. They simply had no appreciation for anything that I did for them. They wanted me to work my entire life for them at Katahdin Lodge without receiving a salary and while they seriously mistreated me. I did have some great times at Katahdin Lodge, but it wasn't worth the emotional abuse that they heaped upon me. Neither my Uncle Fin nor Aunt Marty ever said one good word about the work that I did for them. To this day, they refuse to acknowledge what I did up there, when a Baltimore suburbanite kid went way up into the Great North Woods of Maine and became a bear hunting guide and country girl's delight who never made one serious mistake while living and working there.










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