Prevent Suicide by Supporting Restarting The Failed Development of A Veterans' Community

The heavy screening was installed to stop American military veterans from jumping to their deaths. The darkness on the walls is smoke damage from arson. The photo is of the five-story stairwell of the former VA hospital at Ft. Howard, Md.. Suicidal vets had dropped down right there past anyone who was on those stairs. In memorial to the numerous vets who committed suicide anywhere, this is a demand that the Department of Veterans Affairs immediately begins to restart the failed - but promised for two decades - property development project to create something positive on Ft Howard for veterans. 

All of the old Fort Howard Veterans Affairs Medical Center buildings have been rotting in the moist air from the Chesapeake Bay, been vandalized, stripped of saleable metals, used as a party zone, employed as set locations for movies and TV shows, plus damaged by police and fire training exercises. It has been explored + photographed + videoed by people who believe the place to be abandoned. More than 50 young people have been arrested for trespassing there. It is bad for the civilian community. It is all tragic for veterans whose 21st Century suicides may have been - or can be - prevented by them having good homes in a veterans' community. In the spirit of suicide prevention alone, the development project must be renewed. 

If you are with me on this, tell everyone you can to support the restart of a veterans' community on the former VA hospital grounds at Ft. Howard, Maryland. If any of the other 70-100 similar proposed projects at VAMC properties across America are failing, the VA needs to get them going good too!

Any knowledge that the projects are being completed is enough to help prevent suicidal thoughts. 

My posted photography of the Ft. Howard VAMC is at: 

Collection: Fort Howard, Maryland Veterans Affairs Medical Center Property (flickr.com)

City Teen Introduced To A Really Cool Small Town

 Copied from where it was first published online on Magic City Morning Star news site of Millinocket, Maine, and the Maine Outdoors Today website. But before I knew how to have my works online, I printed out copies of the piece and sent one to my Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha Clarke in Patten, Maine. It was in hopes they'd thoughtfully combine this with what they already knew and acknowledge what I had accomplished up there for their Katahdin Lodge, as a bear hunting guide and as a friend to many of the local Mainers. I sent other printouts to various people I knew up in the area, plus to the barber shop, beauty parlor, and a few others. Along with copies of my written pieces The House Fire and The Rocket Scientist.

The Day I Fell In Love with Patten, Maine

By David Robert Crews

Jul 31, 2005 - 10:59:00 PM

Disclaimer for Patten Mainers: I can’t remember the exact name that Pa’s Pizza and Subs was called in 1968 and I believe that it is the place that I call The Pizza Place in this story. I remember that one Glidden girl was named Rachel and I believe that her boyfriend was a guy named Charlie. If I ever find out for sure, I’ll use all the right names in a rewrite.

Patten, Maine is a little village way up in the Katahdin Valley. The first time that I ever went there to check out its small-town social life was during the summer of 1968. I was an eighteen-year-old high school graduate, from suburban Dundalk, Maryland, visiting my aunt and uncle at their hunting lodge - Katahdin Lodge and Camps, in Moro, Maine. The lodge is located ten miles north of Patten, where the closest stores, restaurants, gas stations, and post office are. It is an easy, eleven-minute drive between the lodge and town.

Gary and Cathy Glidden were a married couple from town who worked at the lodge. Gary guided hunters and Cathy helped my aunt clean and cook for the paying guests who stayed there. They took a liking to me, and Gary had two of his sisters have one of their boyfriends drive them up to the lodge and take me out to meet some of the local kids in town. Both sisters had steady boyfriends, so dating them was out of the question. But they were willing to see if I could fit in with their small town way of life and introduce me to some of the unattached young ladies living there who might be interested in dating me. They also wanted me to meet any of the other teenagers in town.

We all were glad to meet one other. I was a good-looking lad who thought that northern Maine was extremely beautiful and that the people living there were downright interesting. Best of all, I was devoid of the unwarranted uppity attitude that city dwellers vacationing in Maine too often display, which disgusts the Mainers. The three Maine kids were bright, happy, good-looking, friendly and dressed in the same style of clothing that I wore. It was a natural match.

We drove into town on that warm, calm summer evening, eagerly talking about life as we each knew it, all along the way. They wanted to know what life was like in the suburbs, where I was from, and I was curious about their tastes in music; and we all were interested in the usual things that any teen wants to know about another, when they first meet.

Then there was the difference in our accents, which we all got a kick out of. They would ask me to repeat a word that I had just said at the rate of about one word per every four sentences. That continued, and then increased as I was introduced to more kids in town, and it was mostly the girls doing the asking.

We parked in front of The Pizza Place on Main Street, and some new teenage girls came into the conversation. There were then four of them leaning against the outsides of the rear doors of the car, two on each door, with their shapely female bodies bent forward and their pretty young faces beaming flirtatiously in at me through the open windows. They joined right in on having me repeat words that I had just spoken. Then they began to ask me to say words that they thought they might enjoy hearing pronounced in my accent, as if they couldn’t get enough of it. The funny thing is that I never knew that I had an accent until that evening in Maine when it made me the center of attention for six bodacious babes.

The attention that my Bawamore (Baltimore) drawl received made me feel real good. I enjoyed theah (their) well known shap (sharp), r-less New England accent so much that I simply sat there and took it all in like a happy bear snacking on wild blueberries.

The four new girls intermittently shared some laughs with all of us sitting in the car and chatted with the Glidden girls about the latest hot topics on the local gossip circuit.

One newest news tid-bit got them giggling, wiggling and excitedly inhaling and exhaling hard, between spoken sentences. It was about two Patten natives who were having an extramarital affair. A certain thirty-five-year-old married woman was cheating on her husband with a bachelor who was ten years younger than she was. Her husband had found out about it, and he was angrily hunting for the cad who was her lover man. The cheating wife’s jealous husband was ‘out for blood’ and had, earlier that day, showed his brother a loaded .44 Magnum pistol, hidden under a rag on the front seat of his car, which he intended to shoot his wife’s lover with and send the scoundrel straight to hell.

Not more than ten minutes after the gossip tid-bit about the jealous, murderous husband had graced our ears, the scoundrelous lover man comes sidling out of The Pizza Place with his head down and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He knew who had what and was out to get him.

The lover man hadn’t gotten more than ten steps out The Pizza Place’s door and towards the street when, Lord have mercy, the jealous husband drives up on the other side of the street, wheels around, pulls up next to the sidewalk and stops right there smack dab in front of us teenagers. He reached across the front seat of his car, opened the passenger door, called out to the target of his bloodlust and motioned for him to come over there.

Actually, the husband’s car was a little to our left, as we sat in the boyfriend’s car with its front bumper facing the street and about one car length back from the edge of the street. It was dark enough out that an overhead lamp pole on The Pizza Place’s parking lot was shining a cone-shaped beam of light down around us. There were no street lights nearby, and it was much darker outside of the parking lot light's area of illumination, so the cone had a fairly defined edge to it.

That edge went right down into the front seat of the angry husband’s car, lit the bottom half of his body, but not his chest and head, and revealed to us surprised teenagers that his right hand was placed firmly on top of a rag which obviously covered a large revolver. He was holding the big boomer by its pistol grip, trigger guard, and hammer with the barrel pointing towards the open passenger side door in a way that would permit him to raise and shoot it as the rag draped off to the side and out of the way of the cocking hammer.

There was no place that the scoundrelous cad could have run where the murderous husband wouldn’t have had time to raise his gun and fire. The cad was cornered.

The cad also had to instinctively, subconsciously realize that if he were to run, and the already steaming mad, cheated husband were to fire a shot at him and miss, that the evasive action would most likely cause the mad husband to furiously go past the point of no return. Most likely, the cad-hunting husband would have chased after his fleeing quarry, not stopping until he had committed a bloody murder. That would have obliterated any chance that the cheater might have hoped that he had of talking his way out of being shot to death.

That cornered cad musta’ been ready to soil his trousers.

The lover man sat down in the car with his right foot placed solidly down out on the curb and the lower left side of his trembling body barely sitting on the outer edge of the car’s front seat. He looked like a terrified little bird caught in a bobcat’s mouth.

At the split second when the husband’s car had stopped at the curb, the girls standing outside of the boyfriend’s car had instantly recognized who it was in the driver’s seat, then glanced over at the lover man and shockingly realized what they were in the middle of.

One girl had quiveringly giggled slightly and hushidly exclaimed, “Oh no, let us in!”

All four of those fine young females had yanked open the rear doors that they had been leaning against, pilled into the back seat with me and the Glidden girl whose boyfriend wasn’t there, and hastily pulled the doors closed around us for protection from any hot lead that might come flying in our direction. I was crammed in there between two girls on each side of me and one sprawled across our laps.

It was some kind of deeelightful, let me tell you! They were really wigglin’ an’ gigglin’ now.

The jealous husband started talking straight and dead seriously to the subject of his justified anger. The captured cad kept nervously glancing down at the hand on top of that rag-covered gun while trying to comprehend what that boiling kettle of manhood sitting next to him was saying. He appeared to be ready to bolt and try to fly faster than a speeding bullet at the slightest twitch of that hand full of hell at the end of his lover’s husband’s right arm. But he was scared stiff and wasn’t about to move until the justifiably angry man talking to him gave him permission to. He sat there nodding his head ever so slightly in agreement with what the angry man was saying to him. He was too tense to take very much air into his lungs, and he couldn’t exhale hard enough to make much of a sound, as he tried to say yes to any terms of reprieve from his death sentence that the husband was dictating to him.

The color had completely drained from the scoundrel’s face. With that parking lot light shining down on him like it was, his face looked so pale that it appeared that he needed an undertaker to powder his nose.

The steaming husband saw that his wife’s lover was too scared to move. He raised his hand from the rag covered pistol and began to punctuate every demand that he made by practically poking his right index finger into the bachelor’s pale face.

As I sat there in my warm cocoon of bodacious babes, it became apparent to me that if the cad character got his head blown off, by what looked to be the powerful handgun available at the time, his white brain matter and the red blood from his exploding cranial cavity would blast out the open passenger side door and form a weird cloud made of human head particles in the middle of the lot light’s bright cone. It would then drizzle down onto the crushed gravel of the parking lot like a little pink snowstorm.

I doubt that any of us in the boyfriend’s car saw that as an inevitability. But we sure as hell weren’t taking any chances. We watched with all of our might to see what was gonna happen next. Nobody uttered a word. No bets were placed. No predictions were registered.

Patten is a peaceful place. It absolutely has one of the most non-violent populations of people in the whole wide world. Even though it’s full of big brawny lumberjacks and wild woodsmen. I knew that from what my aunt and uncle had told my family and me about the town, when we had vacationed at the lodge during the two previous summers. I didn’t think that the girls believed that there would actually be a murder committed, right there in front of them, in their easy goin’ little village. But ya’ never know.

Time loses all of its effects on a person’s senses in a dynamic situation of that sort. However long it did take, before our minds could process the whole thing as being real, the husband had satisfied his blood lust by having a levelheaded talk to the object of his murderous intentions. The cad had accepted the husband’s demands: the cad agreed to stay away from the angry man’s wife; the angry man’s plans to murder him were put on hold pending any further marital cheating with the man’s wife. Then the husband gave the bachelor permission to get out of his sight.

The barely breathing bachelor quickly removed himself from the very farthest outside edge of his former lover’s husband’s front seat and fluttered on down the sidewalk like that bird would have done if the bobcat belched.

The girls were in no hurry to dislodge themselves from all around me, but eventually they did. Not, of course, because I asked them to.

I laid in bed that night thinking about how easy goin’, peaceful and levelheaded Patten People are and how bright, happy, good looking and friendly the teenagers in town are and I went to sleep that night knowing that I had fallen head over heels in love with Patten, Maine.

Copyright © 2005, David Robert Crews. All rights reserved.

I Was Just A City Teenage Boy But I Helped A Country Woman Deal With Her House Burning

The House Fire

By David Robert Crews

Sep 5, 2007 - 9:04:16 PM

Prologue

During 1969, the year after I graduated from high school in Dundalk, Maryland, was when I first worked as a bear hunting guide for my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley Clarke up in Maine. Fin owned and he and Marty ran Katahdin Lodge and Camps in Patten, Maine.

Working at the Lodge was my vocation, riding around the vast, wild and wonderful Maine countryside while having a really good time with the local Mainer teenagers and being a country girl's delight was my avocation.

This short story below is the very first one that I wrote, back in around 1999, when I began to finally write out my Northern Maine adventures I have wanted to do so ever since back when I was living them.

I sent copies of this story, and all of my other stories about my times in Maine, to Fin and Marty. Unfortunately, they refused to acknowledge my writings; just as they always refused to acknowledge that I am the person who is in these stories and who can write it all out.

This first story here is a nice little wholesome tale about a young man from an East Coast American suburb having a very exciting time getting to know the local Mainers way up in the deep, wide woods of Northern Maine. I just fit right in up there. I hope that you enjoy this:

During the summer of 1968, just after I had graduated from high school in Dundalk, Maryland, I was on a two-week vacation up to my Uncle Finley's hunting lodge, Katahdin Lodge and Camps, in Patten, Maine, when I was called upon to help at a house fire. That was during the summer when I turned eighteen years old. The day of the house fire, I discovered some fairly good and useful things about myself that neither I nor anyone who knew me had known are such a substantial part of me.

One afternoon, about a week and a half into my two week vacation at the Lodge, Gary Glidden, who was working for my Uncle Finley as a hunting guide, was driving one of the Lodge's pickup trucks out the Lodge's driveway with me in the passenger seat when Finley came running out from the main building of the Lodge and frantically waving his arms and hands up over his head while yelling, "There's a house on fire up the North Road!"

It was obvious that someone had telephoned the Lodge for help.

Gary had originally been going to turn right, south, out of the driveway, but in response to the emergency call he made a quick left, and we took off lickety-split flying along at high speed heading northbound up the North Road.

That road, which is Rural Route 11, meanders up and down the low hills that run along the eastern side of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The first six miles of the road had houses scattered on either side of it at about one or two houses per mile. Then there were thirty-five miles, on the odometer, of deep woods on both sides of it until the road reaches the tiny town of Masardis, Maine. So, when my uncle yelled to Gary and I that the house on fire was "up the North Road," that was all the information that we needed to head to the rescue.

A little old widowed grandmother owned the house that was on fire. Granny's house was a large sized, two-story country cottage, white with pretty yellow trim, well maintained, old and made of solid wood. She had raised her family on that property there. Built next to the cottage, but about thirty feet away, was a wooden shed, and then about fifty feet away from the large cottage was a smaller, extra, rectangular shaped wooden house. The shed and smaller house were all painted up nice and neatly the same as the large house was. The yard was well kept, with lots of healthy bushes and pretty flowers planted all around the place. On the three sides of the home that weren't road front property there was a great, deep, wide, tall treed forest. Across the road from there the forest was much deeper—as much as eighty to a hundred miles deep, till it reached into Quebec, Canada.

On several previous rides up that way earlier during that week, while out bear baiting with Gary, I had taken full notice of Granny's two houses sitting there alongside the only north-south tar road in that part of the Maine woods. Granny's place was about twelve miles away from the nearest tiny town—Smyrna Mills, Maine, which was over to the east of Granny's. I had taken full notice of the place because Granny had her cute little teenage granddaughter staying there for the summer. The girl was there during her high school vacation time, and she had attracted my attention in a similar way as to how a hungry bear strollin' through the woods detects wild berries ripening on the bush—the most delicious looking ones just seem to pop right out at ya' from the lush green background and catch yer' eye. Each of those several times that I had seen the granddaughter and her granny they were out there working together in the yard, prettying up the place even more. And I clearly saw that they were always smiling warmly to each other and were obviously very happy and contented to be in each other's company.

Due to the fact that I was about the same age as the attractive teenage granddaughter I had an immediate crush on her.

The granddaughter wore her hair in little pigtails. In 1968, that hairstyle was a sure-fired mark of immature teenage-uncool-ness down in around the Baltimore City suburbs where I was from. At the time, it was not a popular hairdo at all for the in style teen girls in my neighborhood. But even though that hairstyle was uncool for 1968 era citified high school aged girls, them pigtails made that granddaughter look really good and country girl cute to me.

I said something to Gary about how attractive that girl looked. But Gary told me that the girl never socialized with any of the other teens around there at all, she showed no interest in boys yet, she was perfectly contented to spend all of her time with her beloved grandmother, so I'd best forget about wanting to spend any time in the close company of that sweet little cutie. 

During the week before that, Gary had introduced me into the wholesome, healthy, fun and adventurous social life of the teenagers who lived in and around the Town Of Patten. Read my story “The Day I Fell In Love With Patten, Maine”, and you'll see how that all began. So I knew that the advice he had given me about not bothering with the granddaughter there was the spawn of honest and sincere wisdom from a mature, worldly wise, twenty-eight year old lifelong local Mainer, and newly found friend.

When Gary and I flew onto the scene of the house fire, smoke and flames were eating up that nice old house at a rapid pace. There were already eight or ten people there helping out, which seemed strange because there usually isn't enough traffic on Rt. 11 to draw such a crowd so quickly. In that part of the country no local person would pass by without stopping to help.

Pete Gerow, the only neighbor who lived within easy sight of the fire, had been first to the rescue. Pete had tried valiantly, with a garden hose, to stop the fire at its source in the chimney, but there were many years worth of extremely flammable creosote caked up inside of that chimney and it was burning far too intensely for some measly little bit of water squirting from a garden hose to have any extinguishing effect on.

Granny was an intelligent and wise old country woman who must have known better than to let too much creosote build up like that, but she probably had a very low income and bank account to live on and may have been putting off paying someone to come clean out her chimney. Or maybe she had done that job herself most of her adult life, but then in her old age it had slipped from her mind to attend to that most necessary task.

Pete Gerow and the passersby had grabbed all of the small furnishings that they could save from burning and had carried those things out into the dooryard (Mainer lingo for front yard). As Gary and I jumped from the truck to run over and on into the house to help them, the last savable piece of furniture was being carried out of the burning house by one of the passersby who was stumbling out through a side door there being mercilessly choked and chased by deadly-dangerous, thick black smoke and by just as deadly, aggressive, ravenous, large, terrifying, blue edged, tongues of orange tinged flames. The women and men there on the scene turned towards Gary and I, quickly told us that it was now too dangerous to go back in there, then they moved away from the fire, in our direction, to get safely away from the intensifying heat and danger.

The closest fire station was seventeen miles south in downtown Patten, a little town of less than 2,000 residents. The fire alarm had been called in, but by the time that the firemen could have gathered up the two or three available volunteers and gotten to the scene of the fire, it would have been too late for them to help. So we were on our own.

The fire was raging and Granny was about out of her mind from traumatic anxiety. She kept trying to charge back into the fire after her cats. At least a half a dozen of us there on the scene had to form a shoulder-to-shoulder human wall to be able to gently restrain the unfortunate old widow from running in there after her cats. "My babies, my babies," she muttered, all the while attempting to get around us.

Granny was nearly bonkers now; her nerves were frying fast. She was going into shock, so someone said to take her into the extra house. In that smaller house there she would be out of site of the ravenous fire, which was eating up her cherished home, and most likely she'd be easier to calm down in there. At that point, I believed that we all feared that Granny would go completely out of her mind permanently or die from the stress of the overpowering awfulness of it all.

Two middle-aged women rescuers along with Gary and I took firm, gentile hold of unfortunate old Granny's scrawny little arms and sparse shoulders then led her into the small, extra house. All that I ever perceived about the inside of that structure was that it seemed to be one large room, was clean and tidy, and that there was a bed in it that we steered Granny to. My entire mental focus had become locked onto the deeply distressed Granny, whom I feared was possibly about to die from the shock that was brought on by her traumatic anxiety.

We sat our little wide-eyed bundle of sizzling nerves on the bed, but she kept popping back up and attempting to go after her "babies". Granny's granddaughter came in and said that all of the cats were accounted for, but that didn't calm poor ol' Granny down a bit.

The teenage granddaughter went right back out so as not to be rude to her and Granny's unexpected ‘guests' out there. The folks out there now included my father, my mother, a couple of paying sportsmen bear hunters from the Lodge, my uncle and other local Mainers who had arrived in response to phone calls that they had received informing them of the fire. My father and another man or two were taking turns in the intense heat near the house fire squirting hot spots on the shed and extra house with the garden hose in order to make sure that the fire didn't spread onto those structures.

Everyone there felt sad inside as they watched the fire consume someone else's house, while all that they could possibly do was to wish that they could do more to help.

Gary and the two older women and I acted as a psychological tag team trying to communicate to Granny that everything was going to be all right, but she couldn't respond to us. The emotional shock from her ongoing trauma had her dazed and confused.

I don't know why, but I seemed to have begun to receive small responses from Granny. Maybe I was trying harder than the other three. I had never experienced such a traumatic event before, and the three other people there, who definitely were much more mature then I was at the time, had most likely lived through their own traumas of similar magnitude. Quite likely, they had felt that Granny was probably capable of surviving this trauma. Maybe it didn't seem to be as intense a situation to them as it was to me—I believed that the old gal was about to either completely loose her mind and/or her life.

The two middle-aged women got fed up with not being able to get any responses out of Granny, so they sidled on out the door. Although Gary was a twenty-eight year old, intelligent, mature, young woodsman, it became obvious that I was the only one beginning to get through to Granny. 

Then Gary walked outside.

Me being only eighteen years old at the time, I was quite surprised by all this.

I glanced around and saw that there was no one else to help me with this situation, so I zeroed in on Granny with every bit of my maturing people skills that I could muster.

Granny sat on the side of the bed with her feet placed flatly, but sort of weightlessly, on the floor; her sparse little old shoulders drooped downwards under the heavy mass of her anxiety; her dwindling, aged arms dangled limply at her sides; and her mouth and old yellowed eyes involuntarily gaped open wide. Eyes that were nearly worn out from decades of watching her family survive, live well and grow in such a secluded location that was in a harsher than average natural environment, which is only suited to be home for the heartiest of individuals.

Granny appeared to come out of her shock a little bit and then she commenced to quietly moanin' n' groanin' about losing her house. What else could a body do at a time like that?

I was standing over her, continuing to console her, when all of the sudden she bolted upright into a partially standing position, then wumpf! She had flopped backward onto the bed with her scrawny old arms outstretched and those well-worn, old woman eyes staring straight upwards in a fixed position wide, yellowish-white eyeballs with dark pupils that were contracted down to the about the size of sharp pinpoints. Piercing pinpoints that made it look as if the light of life was quickly, mercilessly, painfully being squeezed out of the poor old gal. Her eyelids did not flutter a bit.

For a short eternity, I stood there somewhat shakin' and shuddering at the sight of the old woman's apparent demise. I was sort of hovering over her, with my arms involuntarily sticking out at about forty-five degree angles from my body and my hands fluttering ever so slightly. I was floating up off of my heels as if I was about to sprout wings, liftoff and fly up to the ceiling. 

Looking down on her I thought, "Oh my God! I just watched someone die!"

Then she came out of her intense shock, and to my surprise she sprang back upright again into a sitting position with perfect, straight-backed, true lady-like posture. I settled back down on my heels and let out a solid sigh of relief, for my breathing had stopped temporarily during those ten or fifteen seconds when it had appeared to me that Granny's breathing was all over and done. 

Granny was solidly back here with us in the land of the living now. She began to shake it all off and come to herself once more. Right on time, the cute, young granddaughter came in with a wonderful little smile on her face. Granny responded to her right away with the deep, affectionate love that they clearly felt for each other.

That was my cue to leave.

You may now be wondering if this story is going to end with me getting to spend time in the close company of that sweet, young, attractive teenage granddaughter. I certainly had made some kind of a good introduction of myself to her, and her grandmother who would have had to have approved of me visiting her granddaughter, but the idea of dating the girl never crossed my mind again.

In retrospect, I seriously doubt that Granny would have recognized me if we had crossed paths again in someplace like Putt Gerow's, Pete's dad's, tiny little country store at Knowles Corner just down the road a short ways from Granny's house.

I sure enough could have stopped by Granny's house latter and reintroduced myself, while on one of my drives around the beautiful Maine countryside that I enjoyed taking in my father's car. But, it was all too soul satisfying for me to go mess it up by having to be told by Gary or my aunt and uncle or my parents or Granny herself to quit bothering that girl and her grandma. If the girl simply wasn't ready for dating yet, then why ask? Those two gals were quite contented to be living somewhat secluded up there in the woods together for the summer. And Granny was OK with living there by herself most of the time.

The events surrounding the house fire were far and above way too intensely and deeply gratifying for me to want to spoil it all by going after a girl who was not yet ready to be with any guy. It was very gratifying to be able to help them, and also to learn that I could help out in such a tragic, traumatic situation.

I could not have told you at the time, but the events of that day at the house fire had raised me to a slightly higher, solid based, level of maturity and feeling of self worth. Those good feelings were what I needed at the time, not the grateful, polite attentions of a shy, slowly maturing girl who wanted to only be with her grandma for a while.

Another thing is, Gary was my newly found good friend, and I was mature and intelligent enough to accept his original advice to allow that girl to be her happy, contented self and leave her be. 

But don't worry about, or scoff at, me. I had some real good times with a few of the local Maine country girls during those two weeks that summer.

Later on during the evening of the day of the fire, after Granny's cherished house had burned to the ground, and everyone from the Lodge was back at the Lodge eating supper, my Uncle Finley jovially informed us all that there were two houses built there at Granny's place because a decade or two before that summer Granny's husband had divorced her and he had then built the smaller house for Granny to live in and he had married a second woman and had moved her into the larger house to live with him. In 1968 though, the only one left living there was Granny.

I have no idea how that all was worked out amongst themselves or how old their children were at the time, but it seemed to have worked just fine. That sure as hell does leave a person with a few interpersonal relationship aspects of the situation to speculate upon. Not just the multi-sexual partner possibilities, but did the husband have two completely compliant women there at his beck and call when it came to cooking scrumptious, hearty homemade meals and all that other good country woman wifely stuff too. Yeah! Maybe one was good with cooking up the best meats and potatoes and vegetables, and the other baked big batches of the best homemade-from-scratch desserts and breads. Or did the two women tell that man in no uncertain terms that the divorce decree was final and that the new marriage vowels were set in stone? 

Two days after the house fire, Gary and I drove by the fire scene. The house was reduced to a pile of light, whitish ashes, which lay in its still intact fieldstone cellar walls. 

But there were Grandmother and Granddaughter placing brightly blooming potted flowers all around those cellar walls and smiling from that powerful love they shared.

Gary's and my faces lit right up.

One of us said, "Look at that!"

The other said, "Isn't that beautiful."

© Copyright 2002-2013 by Magic City Morning Star

Also published at: Maine.gov: Facts & History: Maine History Told by Mainers

Rocket Scientist Off Balance At A Bear Bait

Copied from where it was first published online on Magic City Morning Star news site of Millinocket, Maine, and the Maine Outdoors Today website. But before I knew how to have my works online, I printed out copies of the piece and sent one to my Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha Clarke in Patten, Maine. It was in hopes they'd thoughtfully combine this with what they already knew and acknowledge what I had accomplished up there for their Katahdin Lodge, as a bear hunting guide and as a friend to many of the local Mainers. I sent other printouts to various people I knew up in the area, plus to the barber shop, beauty parlor, and a few others. Along with copies of my written pieces The House Fire and The Day I Fell In Love With Patten, Maine.  

The Rocket Scientist

By David Robert Crews

Sep 3, 2005 - 3:49:00 PM

One of the most powerful examples of my experiences as a bear hunting guide was the time that a Washington, D.C. Rocket Scientist darn near shot my head off. It happened in the summer of 1969, when I was a nineteen-year-old kid from the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland, working at my uncle's hunting lodge in northern Maine. Although I had only been working there at the lodge for eight months, I was a Registered Maine Hunting and Fishing Guide, and I was handling my assigned responsibilities well.

The rocket scientist looked like the classic Hollywood version of a rocket scientist. He was a tall, thin gentleman past sixty years of age with white hair and a well-trimmed white mustache. He spoke in a kind, friendly manner with endearing dignity leaving no doubt as to his high education and life achievements.

His hobby was building high performance hotrod cars and boats. He would order an engine block from Detroit and create an awesomely powerful motor from scratch. He said he owned a station wagon that only got six miles to the gallon of gas, which was a point of pride in the world of hotrods. Some of the young hotrodders living around D.C. hung out in his garage with him learning the "tricks of the trade" which the rocket scientist often invented on the spot.

He was a great guy to hang out with.

The hunt was a seven-day package, Sunday to Saturday, with all guide services, room and family style meals included. The bears were hunted over baits: piles of slaughterhouse leftovers, mostly cow’s guts and heads, placed in strategic locations throughout the woods. Then a tree stand was built near the bait, or a good spot was picked out on the ground close to it where a person could gain maximum hunting advantage over the bears.

Bear hunting was done from early afternoon till a half-hour after sunset. Legal hunting time was from a half-hour before sunrise to a half-hour after sunset. Possession of a loaded firearm during non-hunting times is a violation of the law and can be extremely dangerous. Also, humans with loaded weapons have an unfair advantage over wild animals during the hours of darkness.

On Wednesday of the rocket scientist's hunt, he was part of the group of hunters whom I was responsible for that day. On Wednesday night, I passed a serious test of my ability to guide bear hunters. It happened that night when I was doing part of my job: picking up hunters from near their baits.

That night, the rocket scientist happened to be the first hunter who I was to pick up. I had been instructed by my Uncle Finley to wait for Mr. Rocket Scientist on a smooth, dirt logging road that ran up through the woods about sixty yards from the bait that Mr. R. S. was on. From that road ran an old washed out, rocky, rough, nearly overgrown unused logging road that the bait was placed beside. That little section of old rough road had a lot of large, exposed rocks sticking up out of it that were a hazard to the undercarriage of the lodge’s pick up trucks, so we only drove up it when we had to haul fresh bear bait into there.

In one of the lodge’s pickup trucks, I drove to the prearranged spot for picking up Mr. R. S. and waited there for him until about fifteen or twenty minutes past legal hunting time. At first, I was thinking that maybe Mr. R. S. had seen a bear circling warily around the bait and he was squeezing out every last chance to kill it, or maybe he was just taking his time walking down that rocky road in the dark. But then thoughts of heart attacks and hunting accidents filled my mind.

I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to walk in and find out what was happening.

To avoid being mistakenly shot for a bear, I walked up the rough, rocky road with a flashlight shining up the road, and I was alternately whistling and making other human sounds with my mouth that sounded like the background vocals of Doo Wop songs.

I couldn’t hardly believe what I saw when I got to Mr. R. S.

He stood there in the dark woods holding his bolt action rifle across his chest like a military man standing at attention and waiting to be inspected by his commanding officer. His tall legs were as stiff as tree trunks, his knees were locked tight in standing position, his entire body was as rigid as a day old corpse and it bowed so far backwards in an arch that his nose was pointing up into the treetops. His wildly wobbling eyes completed the picture of a man deep in trouble.

It was obvious that he had flipped out from the fear of being out in the woods alone.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He responded, "You don't think I'm walking down this road at night do you? I could fall on the rocks."

My reply, "Yeah, well look, I have a flashlight and you have a flashlight--it's not that bad. Come on, I'll help you walk down to the truck." He would not budge an inch, literally.

I walked back to the truck alone then drove it up that rocky road to where Mr. R. S. was standing. The headlights showed him to be in the exact same position as before.

I stopped the truck with the passenger side door right next to Mr. R. S., which allowed him to open the door and get in without moving very far. He slid onto the seat with his rifle pointing towards me. The truck’s dome light was on, and I got much too good of a look down the rifle’s barrel.

You know the rule--never point a gun at anyone, not even unloaded ones.

But before I could react to this infraction of proper firearm handling and tell him to point that gun away from me, Mr. R. S. started frantically yanking as hard as he could on the bolt handle of his rifle. I instantly realized that the damn fool still had the rifle loaded and a bullet was jammed in the chamber and the way that he was yankin’ on it could cause it to discharge and shoot me dead.

A split-second later, Mr. R. S. was furiously grunting and grumbling and spraying spit all over himself as he tried to dislodge the jammed bullet. The end of that rifle barrel kept pointing directly at my head, and as I ducked and dodged back and forth in the driver's seat trying to avoid being shot, I must have looked like a ruffed grouse doing the winning dance at a jitterbug contest. In the dome light, the opening at the end of that rifle barrel appeared to grow to the size of a Civil War cannon barrel. The barrel’s rifling grooves were very, very distinctly visible to me and each one of them seemed to be very wide and deep.

After what seemed like a lifetime of terror, I got control of the rifle by pushing it against the rear window of the truck. My chest was almost squeezed through the open spaces in the steering wheel; I was leaning as far forward as I could.

"Stop! Stop! What are you doing!" I blasted at him.

"Trying to unload this thing, it's jammed!" he spurted out.

I returned with a hot under the collar, "You should have had it unloaded a half an hour ago! It's past huntin' time."

"You don't think I'm going to stand around here with an unloaded rifle where a bear can get me do you?" He defensively replied.

"Yeah I do; we go in the woods at night without a gun all the time. If the game warden caught us here I'd be fined too because I'm your guide. The lodge could lose its license and you're not supposed to have a loaded gun in a vehicle. That's another charge against us! Gimme the rifle!"

With that I took the gun from him, exited the truck and unjammed and unloaded that dangerous firearm.

Mr. R. S. regained his composure somewhat during the ride back to the lodge. He acted like he hadn’t done anything wrong or that anything out of the ordinary had happened, and I let it go at that.

I never mentioned a word of this incident to anyone at the lodge. It would have devastated Mr. R. S. if I had, especially since his wife was staying there at the lodge that week too.

Copyright © 2005, David Robert Crews. All rights reserved.

US Army Basic Training Trimmed Down To Disgustingly Lame Level - Army Apology Owed

 My Army comrades and I suffered the lamest military basic training regime you'll probably ever hear of. I was in basic from November and December 1969 into January '70. We never saw the obstacle course, though obstacle courses are most important aspects of military training worldwide. Our 5-day bivouac camping out in pup tents was canceled. The 20-mile forced march was whittled down to a mile-and-a-half, on a heavy snowing day. We never ran more than 10 miles total for the 8 weeks. The drill sergeants told us that each basic training company must follow their scheduled turns at those training days, and it was too cold to do the training due to previous trainees sticking one or two of their fingers out of their heavy gloves or toes out of their sleeping bags to cause frostbite injuries that would require finger or toe amputations then medical discharge so they did not have to go to Vietnam - though few basic trainees were already going to be assigned to Nam. 

What the drill instructors had us do was a lot of repetitious hand-to-hand combat moves or knife fight training with rubber knives in the barracks. On our very first session at hand-to-hand combat training, the drill instructor told us that the moves were mostly worthless in real fighting, and to first try using a helmet, belt, or anything you can find to beat down enemies. But it kept us up out of our bunks and occupied.

It was to be my first Christmas away from home, and I told myself that other members of America's military are spending their holidays in the war zone of Vietnam, many members who were not in the war still had no chance of going home for the holidays, others served the same way in all of America's military services, and it was then my turn so deal with it.  

It gets deeper. Right smack dab in the middle of the 8 weeks of training, we were made to take 2-week leaves home at Christmas holiday time. I heard that the general in charge there at Fort Dix, New Jersey had shut the training down so he and his family could have a two-week holiday in some warm & wonderful southern vacation destination. You need to understand that in basic we were banned from having possession of or access to: TVs; radios; record players; musical instruments; phones; candy; soda; snacks of any ilk; magazines; newspapers; books; civilian clothing; comfortable chairs or sofas;  and all our food was served at 3 meals a day by the Army. You stay on base right wherever they tell you to, while no visitors are allowed. Then we go home for 2 weeks to eat and drink a whole lot while doing tons of TV watching, music listening, and reading, being with family, friends and the lucky guys with lovers, but not exercising or doing rifle target practice.  

I wanted to learn my capabilities and limitations as a soldier; to be pushed till I was exhausted and well-trained.   

Throughout my youth, I anticipated serving several years in the military and was determined to do my natural duty. Basic training was a miserable incomplete in my life. Same as it was for most of my fellow soldiers who shared the damned experience.

It was depressingly disgusting. 

Ever since, I have wondered how bad it was for basic trainees who went on to advanced training where they needed to know how to bivouac, run an obstacle course, etc that we were not trained at. I know some men went to war without proper training and did that precipitate any injuries or deaths in combat. I once took my basic training yearbook list of men in my barracks and compared it to the list of Killed in Vietnam and none of the guys I had lived and trained with for 8 weeks was on it. That is a relief.   

The United States Army owes an apology to me, all the fellow basic training veterans from Fort Dix along with their loved ones who suffered that, plus to all Americans for doing that. 

It demoralized us trainees and completely destroyed any trust that the Army does what is right. It still sickens me, which is why I have never before been able to write it out though for decades I've been planning to. 

Time For Ft. Howard VAMC Property To Be For Veterans Uses

 It is time to get this straightened out. Two decades ago, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs incorrectly declared that they were going to have a "veterans-focused" residential community developed on their property of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Fort Howard, Maryland. Two leases with unqualified 'property developers' and more later and the property has never been developed but allowed to be trashed, vandalized, misused, arsoned and to rot in the Chesapeake Bay Waterfront weather. Approximately 70 other such development projects - across America - are successful. 

Not only has this been extremely disappointing to many of us, but some vets thought they were going to move to Ft Howard and sold their homes. Those vets and others had put deposits down on future rental residences on Ft. Howard, and they may not have gotten their deposits back. John David Infantino did that to them, as he was running similar scams all over the world and had already run a few against the VA and the military.  All while making fictional grandiose claims of many real estate successes - including being property and/or asset manager to several VA facilities. He caused many financial and social tragedies all over the globe. 

The second lease holder - Tim Munshell - followed suit with Infantino (whom Munshell knows) and Munshell had the same lack of security guards for the property along with very little work done. Except that Munshell never tried the deposit scam, though he allegedly attempted to make a $10,000,000 loan ("seed money") from the Iron Workers Union Retirement Funds. 

Neither Munshell nor Infantino had any chance of bringing the massive amounts of financing required of them for the large project.

The Ft Howard VAMC property is well known among people who have explored the place for all these 20-years, thinking it was abandoned, interesting and spooky. I know of over 50 lockups made against young trespassers on Ft. Howard when VA Police were temporarily reassigned to the property. Plus other times when County police were called by neighbors. 

It is a terrible situation for the small civilian community of Ft. Howard. Eight arsons that even burned down the three most beautiful 1900-era wooden homes that were well-built for Army officer families. I have photos and videos online showing all I say of what damages are there on the Ft. Howard VAMC property. Other people have posted their numerous photos and videos online of them walking all over the property and in buildings. 

Nothing has ever been said by the authorities to Munshell or Infantino about the messes they made. Neither lived up to their signed agreements. 

John Infantino sued the USA over the VA canceling his lease for Ft Howard, and in the court case he partly proved himself to be as conniving a conman as I say he is.

I have copies of signed agreements, court reports, websites, online articles about Infantino or Munshell, and more. 

This situation has caused me years of depression and anxiety, as I did over a thousand hours of research, writing, photographing, posting and emailing about this. I can't take it anymore; this damned garbage is pushing me into my grave.

Day by day I wake up so sick inside I can hardly do anything. I am one of many who can have better life if the truths about this are presented to the world by a major publication.

I'm an old disabled vet, with one chance to have more years on Earth: I have to make this story happen and know of the ensuing legal actions against John D. Infantino and Timothy Munshell. 

I have a great deal of info in posts on this blog at: https://davidrobertcrews.blogspot.com/search?q=fort+howard

The entrance to the Fort Howard, Md. VAMC Property seen on 9/19/2022. You can see that there are tree debris on the road surface, which would have been cleared off by passing vehicles if any real work was going on towards the development project, but the grass was being kept cut so somebody has something to do with the place. Why are they not developing it!?!