Traumatic Brain Injury

Here is the link to my site detailing my troubles from when my VA issued mobility scooter seat broke loose and pitched me into a stone wall headfirst. I have tried to get a lawyer, but could not deal with it, due to my disabilities of depression, anxiety and the TBI. I need a lawyer to see the evidence and offer to sue for me. I've contacted some in the past, but one thing was they say I waited too long. I waited until I knew I was in a bad way upstairs, and it persists to this day and will be with me till I die. The headaches and memory loss, confusion talking to people. 

Scooter Seat Fail

ursusdave@hotmail.com

Baltimore Teenager Turned Maine Guide

 I was a 1968-era kid, from the Baltimore suburb of Dundalk, who moved to Maine. I was hard working, skilled, and successful at becoming a professional outdoorsman - guiding bear hunters. I became good friends with Mainer country folk of all ages. In those different American communities, I fit right in. Learn on here how I compare the life of an active teenager in both places. It is like a book, where you can go to any page to enjoy it. If you wanna truly know me, check it out.

https://katahdinlodge7photos.blogspot.com/2018/01/a-baltimore-teenager-turned-maine-guide.html

Aberdeen Proving Grounds Scam by John Infantino

A con man named John D. Infantino has a video online purporting that he built a military anti-terrorist complex at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. It is a grievous crime against America. This must be acted on by authorities. 

It is shocking to see how many Department of Veterans Affairs properties are listed on Infantino's websites. Also some active military places, with the most angering to me being a video claiming that Infantino's Federal Development scam did tons of work on the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. He does this to convince potential victims of his scams that he led the way in constructing one of the most valuable military installations in the world.

https://youtu.be/-fwiTmtlh-M?si=UxotKGP7P16_Fb8H 

Video of a scam that falsely uses the good reputations of Serena Williams, Venus Williams, and even their sister Isha O. Price as leverage to pry loose investment funds from intended scam victims. The scam artist is John David Infantino.

https://youtu.be/vk5_tLkxXYg?si=mhIQIOja1CEnjW2r

John David Infantino is an international scam artist whose crimes have negatively affected millions of people worldwide. This video reveals enough information about him to have him arrested in numerous countries and American states. My intent here is to convince authorities to do their own investigations of John Infantino and bring him to justice. 

https://youtu.be/AP_-p3u7OgA?si=Kqsc_pmyggNvMS3W

His list of some places where he ran scams, but he professes on his websites that they are good deals done well:

The Way That I See It Is...: John Infantino List Of Where He Ran Some Scams All Over The World

To see all I have on my blog about him go to:

The Way That I See It Is...: Search results for Infantino

 I never expect people to take what I say as truth until they have done a little of their own investigations of International Super Scammer John David Infantino. Simply web search his name and see what is there. But here is a solid place to begin your investigations.

Working Hard and Loving It At Katahdin Lodge

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.

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Outline of Mass of Evidence Against John David Infantino

John David Infantino is an international scam artist whose crimes have negatively affected millions of people worldwide. This video reveals enough information about him to have him arrested in numerous countries and American states. My intent here is to convince authorities to do their own investigations of John Infantino and bring him to justice. 

Evidence from Scam Falsely Claiming Serena and Venus Williams are Involved In a Tennis Complex

Video of a scam that falsely uses the good reputations of Serena Williams, Venus Williams, and even their sister Isha O. Price as leverage to pry loose investment funds from intended scam victims. The scam artist is John David Infantino.

Video best seen clicked onto fullscreen.

 

Army Comrades and I Enjoying Life Off Post on Okinawa

Okinawa 1971, my camera's self-timer allowed me to be in the shot. L -R: that's me wearing bell bottoms; then Colorado mountain country boy John; California biker Earl; and Chris from the upper Midwest. All warriors who could trust each other in combat. That's Chris's chain driven Honda Sports Car, which did not have a radio but the driving sounds while riding in it were music to our young men's ears. We were in front of an off-post house Chris and John rented for $45 a month. The bars on the windows were protection from typhoon blown objects. The house was furnished with old thin Army mattresses for sitting and sleeping, a coffee table, a TV on a stand, nice stereo equipment on stands for the hippie style record album collection, and a spider web painted parachute set up hanging over the living room. The chute was Day-Glo painted psychedelic fashion for the black light they had, plus each room had a regular lamp. Shoes were left outside Japanese style, as those Asians normally do not have chairs or modern beds. 

It was a party pad, back in an all-Okinawan neighborhood. In GI housed areas, we'd have been busted for living off post because only married guys with wives there were supposed to be staying off post. Plus, there sometimes was pot smoke smell in and around the place. Many cases of cold beer and bottles of other boozes were enjoyed in that humble abode off-post. We were polite, considerate and not one of us and other friends and buddies - who sometimes partied there - ever got out of hand being drunk in the neighborhood. The Karate trained, average, Okinawan males would have run us out if we had been jerks. 

When Okinawans smelled and saw us smoking, they'd smile and say, "Happy smoke, happy smoke," even though no weed was grown on Okinawa - due to the soil not being good for marijuana plants - so it was imported from Southeast Asia. Very few natives had ever tried the dried flowers. 

Earl had an apartment where he lived with a cool-chick Okinawan lass who had graduated high school the previous year. Chris had a true-love Okinawan girlfriend who came over on days off school and sometimes with a couple of her female high school friends; a cute one of whom I had hooked up with for a while. John was having an affair with some other GI's wife, and she sometimes came there and got loaded with us. I was with a 20-yr-old Okinawan woman, a bar hostess, for a couple of months, who had smoked cannabis with previous American boyfriends and lived in her own apartment; she was the only local at all with whom we shared pot pipes or joints. Females working in bars hustled drinks and conversed with GIs, but only girls in brothels who possessed health department registration cards were paid sex workers. Most had graduated high school a year or two prior and were working off loans their fathers had made from the brothel mamasan, and that was a shame on the entire society.

For several months, I rented an apartment across a little valley (see photo below) from Chris' and John's place, above the neighborhood convenience store.

 

We never offered, nor would allow any of our buddies to offer, the Okinawan girls any intoxicants; the girls showed no interest in alcohol or catching a buzz. Delightful young Asian ladies whom we did not wish to change abruptly by them consuming any intoxicants. The Okinawan girls' families were against them being with Americans, so had one gone home high we may have had a serious problem with their fathers. Those girls were not as sophisticated as some of the ones we GIs each knew back home, who had been getting drunk and/or stoned with us since our early teens. 

When we were in the store and kids were there, with their parent, we might offer to buy the children each a candy bar after clearing it as OK with the parent and the store owner papasan. In respect of what the parents wanted the children to have in their diets, plus definitely due to fear of diabetes; then also there is the "never take candy from a stranger rule" we were taught while growing up. 

One Saturday, when we were at the house with several other buddies, John told us he had promised his Okinawan papasan neighbor that the next time enough of us were around we would remove the remnants of a typhoon toppled tree in his garden that most of it had been sawed off for usable woods. Unfortunately, the wood salvagers had left a huge stump with large roots sticking all out of it higher than our heads. John couldn't stand the sight of that, due to his family living off their garden and not only was the huge stump taking up a lot of space in the small garden - in a crowded suburban neighborhood - the stump shaded some of the plants. 

With 7 or 8 young military members together for a friendly physical challenge like that it was, "Yeah man! Let's do it." We got all around the stump then hoisted it up by hand and set it off to the side. Damn we loved that. After that, the usually politely cordial, but Asian society reserved, Okinawan neighborhood who had accepted us there were really happy to exchange greetings when we walked past their homes. 

A few months later, I was in the house watching TV with Chris, when John came walking back from somewhere and spoke into the window telling us to come outside. There was an Okinawan family there with the front tire of their car in the small benjo ditch next to the road. Sewage ran from buildings on out to somewhere in often partly open cement trough benjo ditches. The three of us may have been able to lift the small Japanese car ourselves, plus there were two full grown 30-some-yr-old Okinawan men and two women from the trapped auto. 

As we three GIs approached the smiling men and two women out around the car making unsuccessful attempts to lift it, John reached his hand out across my and Chris's chests to stop us a second and look in the back seat. There was a 4- or 5-year-old girl in there with her fingers holding closed a deep bloody gash behind her ear. We three smiled with warm feelings of respect and care for the brave child. We appreciated and honored the Asian ways of how they raised their kids to be reserved, calm and collected during all times. We also knew that there was a medical clinic up the road they were heading to. It was a swift lift of the auto by we five men and away the Okinawan family went. 

On time, six of us American friends were playing touch football up the road a couple of blocks away on a bare dirt school yard, when some Okinawan kids over on the other side of the schoolyard kicking around a soccer ball got up the nerve to walk over and see what that was we GIs were playing. I was surprised they didn't know what the game of American football is. The oddly oblong ball puzzled them, so we handed it to them and indicated they should show us what to do. 

One boy, all were smiling inquisitively friendly, dropped the ball like it was a round soccer ball and they began to pass kick it to each other while laughing wonderfully at how the oblong ball moved zanily as a soccer ball. One of us picked up the pigskin ball as one of us said, "Let's teach them like it was football practice." 

We six young American Army men in their home country got them to form two lines, then had them run out for passes. As they got a good grip on what's the deal in catching footballs, we six took turns drawing the lines a receiver would make on a pass catching run. Then every time a kid got it right, we'd dig a coin out of our pockets and reward them. Thier parents made an average of a meager 25 to 35 cents an hour at work and candy bars were one nickel plus sodas a dime, so our coin rewards were welcomed by the boys. We Army dudes drew out the receiver's running patterns to be more complicated to small degrees - just like football practice should be - and it was a whole lotta fun. 

Schoolboys on Okinawa were taught Karate at school and by men in their families. It was assumed by GIs that all Okinawan men know some Karate and some are 100% deadly dudes. One hot evening after sunset, 5 or 6 of us friends were out in front of the house and over sitting on the low wall of the neighbor's garden, sipping beers and relaxedly passing a joint. Suddenly, we hear this strange swishing sound coming at us from out of sight just up the road. A group of about 40 young Okinawan men our age were in karate gis jogging barefoot, in tight formation, on the tar surface behind a mature man karate instructor - their sensei. The swishing was due to them not placing their feet in normal running form straight down then up with every step but each step was made by pushing their bare feet down in a forward action across the rough tar surface in order to toughen the soles of their feet. 

Us guys knew not to say anything to them, because it could be misconstrued as being rude or actually be rude. Karate is a lot about self-control, and it would have required some seriously aggressive stupidity on our part to anger any of them enough to launch into physical attack against us, but if one or more of them had walked over and insisted, we'd sure enough been convinced to apologize. All told, respect for all Okinawans was a lot more palatable to the friends I had on Okinawa. It allowed us to walk through back street neighborhoods to and from Ft. Sukiran or the shopping, bar, legal brothel and steam bath massage parlor districts any time of day or night.

Late at night, when walking through the neighborhoods, a few times we encountered an Okinawan man sitting cross legged at his front door and skillfully playing a stringed instrument. The men usually wore American style clothing out in public, but the musicians were dressed in their colorful, comfortable, native Asian style. The first time we stopped and smiled appreciatively approvingly, the man got up and went inside. After that we knew it was offensive to be Americans in his country and have us be friendly to a man peacefully playing his beautiful music. After that, on the 2 or 3 other occasions we were blessed to encounter one of those musicians at night, when no vehicles were moving about, and the majority of the residents were asleep in dark homes, we'd walk down the road a ways then stop and listen - in the darkness of backstreets not lit well by street lamps. For brief, magical moments. 

(photos best viewed clicked on to enlarge)

Across the small road next to the house, and looking down into the little valley. My apartment & the neighborhood store were one of the cement-style, two-story structures at the top of the photo.

 

4 Bears I Just Helped to Trap Live in Baltimore

Photos of four bears I just helped 

to live trap 

in Baltimore and are now

in a truck headed for 

Western Maryland.

April FOOLS!!!!!