{This is Section 3 of a 4-part document that is read from the top of this blog down--from the latest Northern Maine Adventures / The Movie blog post, down through the older ones; just the opposite from how blogs are normally read. I guarantee that this well written document is full of interesting, entertaining, and even shocking snippets---all the way through. I do believe that you'll enjoy this. Read on! }
I know that Fin and Marty Clarke have declared that my stories are full of lies. Somehow, their ignorant bullshit has made its way down here to my father’s side of the family, and I am pissed off about that.
Hows’ comes’ big bad, considerably wealthy and well armed—lead based and legally—Uncle Finley did not head on down the road to Maryland and get right up here in my face about it?
Why is it that they have not taken any defensive action against me?
Hmmm?
They must know that their near-impoverished nephew does not have the funds needed to properly defend himself in court, or to bring a lawsuit against them up in Maine. They must know, because they hear stuff about me the same as I hear stuff about them.
I can’t even afford to go to Maine for any fun and enjoyable reasons—and it is killing me to miss out on every beautiful fall foliage display, every Deer and Moose and Bear and bird season (no matter if I get to harvest any wild game or not, it's always well worth going hunting just for the time spent out in the woods that I love), all that fishing, them deee-lightfully attractive Maine Mommas, the snowmobile riding, the hiking, the camping, visiting with any local Mainers and fellow travelers as well, or just relaxing on the front porch of a lakeside cabin, loving life.
How about a lawsuit against my editors in Maine who publish those supposedly falsified, libelous stories on the World Wide Web?
Why have there never been any lawsuits instigated in my direction, by Fin and Marty?
My stories are true, that’s why.
Every other single individual who is featured in any of these stories and who has read them knows that they are true. And they tell some of their family and friends that this is so. Some of those individuals have emailed me and a few have spoken to me on the phone, and they tell me that the stories are as true as they can be.
Finley K. Clarke died on Thursday, April 27, 2006. There was no mention in his obituary of his side of the family—my side of the family. No mention at all. That's Marty for ya'.
If Marty were not a driving force behind the separation of Fin from his family, then she would have written about us in his obituary. Whenever Finley wasn't around, she usually did what she wanted to. That's why, in 1979, she took in far more than the twenty bear hunters per week that Fin had told her to, because Fin was not in the Lodge's office when she was taking the hunter's reservations, for week long bear hunts. And it was why, one day while Fin and I were driving out of the Lodge's driveway, Finley had stopped the truck, had turned to me, looked me straight in my eyes and said, "David, I've gotten myself into something that I can't get out of."
The obit included:
Besides his wife, Martie of Shin Pond, Finley is survived by two sisters-in-law, Mary Jane Thomas and Bette Thornton, both of Maryland; many nieces and nephews; and close friends, the Birmingham family, Chuck and Karen Chanadet, Jack Swartz, Wayne and Linda Melvin, Bob and Jeanne Smallwood, Vic Drew, The "Italians," Diane Lane with her special care and many, many more, too numerous to list. Finley loved his "Maine Family."
Reading that obituary, and not seeing Finley's natural family mentioned in it, in anyway at all, makes me feel like I have been shot at and missed, but shit at and hit.
The following sentence belongs in Finley's obituary: Finley is survived by his brother Nelson Clarke, of Maryland, and is predeceased by his sister Doris Mae Crews.
And some obituaries include info about the deceased person's parents, but not always, especially when the deceased is as old as Finley was when he passed away.
By leaving out the info about Fin's sister, brother and parents, and by strategically placing many nieces and nephews after Finley is survived by two sisters-in-law, Mary Jane Thomas and Bette Thornton, both of Maryland, then stating Finley loved his "Maine Family," it is clear to me that Martha is neither including me, my sisters or cousins in the many nieces and nephews part of this obit. She is outright implying that Finley had no love for his blood relatives at all.
I do not believe that. Because at one time, he was too close to his natural family to not always feel some love for us, for his entire life. Finley's loving feelings for his family were all messed up by his anger. My Uncle Finley was a victim of PTSD aggravated anger—extrememly intense anger that is very difficult for its bearer to control or to understand, without Veteran's Administration PTSD counseling. The VA is very good at PTSD counseling now, so if you know any vets who need that kind of help, it is available to them.
But that was a fair enough mention of his closest, long-time friends. That is good and right. The statement, his "Maine Family", is fair enough with me. They were all very close. I have no problem with some of those folks getting parts of Finley's estate—some of his guns and other things and maybe some money or some of the land holdings that he and Marty had together in their names.
John Birmingham, a member of the Birmingham family who are mentioned in the obit, is the son whom Finley never had but always wanted. John worked at the Lodge, until Martha refused to give him a raise in salary that Finley had told her to. I heard this from friends in Maine and from my parents too. John was worth every penny of what he had been paid at the Lodge, and more, but Marty would not pay him that "more." John Birmingham is about as good a woodsman as has ever lived; he is the best shot with a rifle or shotgun that anyone, whom I knew in Maine, had ever seen shoot. John was home on leave from the Army, one time, and he volunteered his guide services at the Lodge. John worked with me, and we had great times putting out bear baits together. John was a lot of fun to work with. Before that, when John was on leave a different time, while Fin and Marty were visiting family down in Maryland, and I was watching the Lodge, John and I hung out at the Lodge a lot, and we did some wild snowmobile riding together. Had John come back to work at the Lodge after his first hitch in the Regular Army was up and he had remained Fin's number one guide until Fin retired, as Fin had so desired, and Fin and Marty had paid me what I had earned, including the respect, then I would say that John should get the most out of Finley's estate. John still does deserve a nice chunk of it, but that amount has to be balanced against what is rightfully mine.
After it was clear to Fin that John was never coming back to work for him, he had hoped that I would take over the business after he had retired. He had let me know this, but I could never trust Marty in there handling the Lodge's business paperwork. She always cheated me. And Finley had, at one time, written me up in his will to receive 2/3's of his estate. But he later rewrote his will and cut me out of it, after he had committed that one final, grievous wrong against me, in 1979, when he had accidentally cut me while we were skinning a bear together, and I would not allow him to blame me for what he himself had done wrong.
But that crap about, Finley is survived by two sisters-in-law, Mary Jane Thomas and Bette Thornton, both of Maryland; many nieces and nephews, is all part of a well planned out design to exclude myself and my side of the family from getting anything of Finley's. We won't get old photos, some of which will be thrown away after Marty dies, or maybe some have already been thrown away. We won't get his war medals or any other personal mementoes. We won't get a small selection of his firearms, hunting knives or any other hunting gear. He had plenty of tools, but none are going to be set-aside for us down here in Maryland to go up and retrieve. We sure won't be given any money, land or motor vehicles, and Fin and Marty had plenty of it all. Marty has it now.
Marty's sisters, and the rest of her family, did not ever have much to do with Finley, at all. Shit! Most of those many nieces and nephews have no real idea who Finley is, or was. They'd probably have never even recognized him if he had knocked on their front door. Not only that, during the past five years or so, there was a long stretch of time when Marty and her family weren't even on speaking terms with each other, because of Finley. Someone in her family had died, and Finley had not allowed Marty to come down here, to Maryland, for the funeral. Some of Marty's family members live in my neighborhood, and I heard this directly from them.
A member of the Thomas family informed me that Mary Jane Thomas, Marty's sister Janie, is a proud lesbian who married another woman.
That's all fine with me; I accept that. I am strictly heterosexual, but that's me, not everybody.
Finley, though, oh lordy-lordy, Finley, though, had no tolerance for the homosexual lifestyle. Marty didn't used to either; she sure hated gay men, and I'd bet that she still does. She should be fully accepting of her sister Janie's sexual preference, but Janie and her wife(?)/husband(?) sure as hell were never going to visit Martha, at least not as an openly gay couple, while Finley was still alive. I don't know for certain, but it is doubtful that Janie ever was up there while Fin was alive. Janie can feel free to contact me and set me straight on whether she has ever gone to Maine to visit her sister Marty. I do not hold any animosity towards the Thomas family, but they have to understand that Marty committed grievous wrongs against me.
It is outright hogwash to imply in that obituary that Janie and Bette and the rest of the Thomas family will miss Finley. They certainly may very well be sorry for Martha's loss. No one has ever doubted that Martha and Finley truly did love one another. But most of the Thomas family members sure-as-flyin'-flip ain't gonna' be missing ol' Finley Kenneth Clarke. Not one bit.
I believe that Fin's friends deserve about a third of his and Martha's estate, and Martha's family gets a third, and my side of the family gets a third.
But I say that until all that I am owed, by Finley K. and Martha Clarke, is dispersed to me, nobody gets a thing.
And fuck anybody who views things differently.
If I had ever possessed the funds necessary to take my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley to court, I would have done so a long time ago. Now the stakes are much higher. If there is ever anyway for me to afford to bring a lawsuit against Martha Clarke, alive or dead, I will.
Unfortunately for the main character in this proposed movie, as he ages up and past 50 years old, his disabilities gradually worsen. Consequently, he cannot get a photography business going. He remains unemployable and has no money coming in from his photographic or written work. He has to accept his fate, so he applied for and now receives a small, monthly, non-service connected disability check from the Veterans Administration. To receive such a regular disbursement, a veteran must be totally and permanently disabled for life.
He is fully, painfully aware though, that his screwed up military experiences warrant him a 70 to 100% service connected disability rating. He applies for it several times, is given the royal run around by Veterans Administration doctors, and is denied his benefits. But he is determined to continue fighting for those completely well deserved benefits, that which are immediately due.
Based upon his own VA Hospital inpatient experiences, during 90 days worth of alcohol and drug rehab stays plus a total of 5 1/2 months in VA Hospitals due to his degenerative back disease, he writes three, very well-done articles about how more than eighteen of our country’s Veterans Administration Medical Center properties are immorally being leased out to private developers and being turned into condominium complexes (for vets and non-vets alike), and/or turned into anything else but better veteran’s health care facilities. State of the art medical facilities that we veterans and our families desperately need. Those three articles inform the veteran’s rights protection world about what is happening, and many of the individual peoples and veteran’s groups who are active in that world take action to try to save their local VAMCs for veteran’s health care only. His articles are either republished on or linked to from every kind of veteran’s issues oriented web site imaginable. From far right wing, old hard charging veteran's web sites, to a Department of Defense web site, and all the way over to the far left—where the anti-US Guv’ment ranters and ravers dwell.
The combined successes of all of his published written works gave him what he had, for a very long time, needed to be able to write important letters to the local newspaper editor. And those writings were published in that newspaper.
He currently lives a rather dismal, reclusive life. Can’t afford a motor vehicle. He rarely ever goes anywhere farther than a half mile from his home. Never got married or had children. Hardly has contact with any of his family, except for his very young grandnephew. And his primary means of communication with the rest of the world is through the Internet.
His work receives very little, to no, attention or respect from his family. He has tried and tried to convince most of his family members to read, view and enjoy his World Wide Web published works, but most of them simply ignore him.
Most of his old friends are all either dead, burnt out on alcohol and/or other drugs, or are off somewhere successfully living their own lives. He sees a few of them now and then, is relieved to be able to tell those old friends about his success on the Internet, but they hardly ever go look at his well published work.
There are many people whom he has never met in person who have emailed him and told him how much they enjoy and appreciate his work, but that's about it for any complimentary, positive feedback he receives.
Even though he has achieved significant portions of his life's goals, he does not actually fee like anybody or anything. He has reached his goals of having some of his short stories nearly all the way written out, published, and then read by thousands of people; he has achieved some of his goals of having his photography published, viewed and greatly appreciated by thousands of people; he has always needed to have his true explanations of just what really did happen up there in Maine and over in Okinawa published where all the world could see them; another goal that, for many years, he so desired to achieve and has finally achieved is to be able to write comprehensive and effective articles about veterans affairs and also community issues. Of all of those thousands of people who have read and/or viewed his published works, only a very few are his family members or his friends. He himself has no real idea who writes his stories or produces those wonderful photographs or who it is that builds his blogs. He very rarely connects in any way to that part of his personality. When he receives any, of the numerous enough, positive comments from strangers about his work, any resulting self-satisfaction or any pride that he ever feels, well, unfortunately for all, those good healthy inner feelings are fleeting, to say the least. Generally speaking, he has no idea that he even walks around in that prolific and proficient writer, photographer and blogger's skin.
He is far too deeply humiliated by his living conditions, his poverty and lack of professional success as a photographer and writer to be going out in public very often.
But he is fairly well known, somewhat popular, and much appreciated on the World Wide Web.
Though the main character has no children of his own, when his grandnephew lost his father in a road accident, the little boy's great-uncle (the main character) took over as the male authority figure in the life of the fully deserving young child. The child has no uncles, and the grandfathers are irresponsible, flaming assholes who refuse to have anything to do with the child, so the next in natural line of family responsibility is the child’s great-uncle. The great-uncle has never regretted a moment of shouldering that responsibility. He loves all that it entails.
The boy is a lot like his great-uncle. And those two guys are the best of friends who enjoy the outdoors together at every chance they can get. They teach each other plenty about how to live good lives. They love each other dearly. The great-uncle sacrifices anything he has to in order to help raise the child. The child adores his uncle. So much so that his uncle lovingly gives the little boy the Indian style nickname, "Little Shadow".
One thing that I have often thought about is, what angle do we tell this movie's story from?
Should it simply be a “period piece” that starts at the beginning, stays in the 1969 era, and goes to where ever it ends?
The main character did go back to try and work at the Lodge in 1977 and ’79, so it could be told from that more matured view of the main character. He could be there for that two and a half weeks in ’79 and seeing things around him and talking to people and all of that can trigger specific memories of 1969, and then the film pans back to that time. It was in 1979 when his uncle blamed him that one final time for something Finley himself had done wrong to him; then, the nephew being steeped in his resulting, exploding, justifiable anger, he saw strange things floating through the air, and he walked off down the road to keep from throwing the chair that he was sitting in through the window and beating the crap out of that sum-beechie uncle of his. Which was better than his first thoughts of cramming a loaded shotgun up under Finley’s chin. This part is already written out in my story, “Then They Own You.”
I was in two different Veterans Administration alcohol/drug rehabs. Though my problem is mainly the booze, I had to put up with a bunch of jive-ass junkies in the first rehab. It damn near ended as a running battle between them and me, and I won.
While there in those rehabs, I thought about how the main character in this movie could begin to tell his story to a councilor, a group meeting, or to a good buddy in there. Maybe he could tell part of his story to someone else, then just be shown thinking through his memories of Maine as the film moves into the flashback stage.
He could very effectively be shown in a depressed state of mind going over his past in his head, while in any number of different locations.
The plot could be written from when he has no warm place to stay and is sleeping in his best friend’s unheated garage loft, nearly freezing to death and wondering how his life had gone that way.
What about having him telling his grandnephew stories about the photographs of his Northern Maine Adventures that are hung up on the main character's living room wall? Or talking to the child about the same ones that are on his blog?
Yeah, that is good, a totally 21st Century way of telling the story. Have him telling his grandnephew some of the story while they are looking at the blog together. Then, after his grandnephew goes to bed, or gets bored with looking at photos and hearing old stories told, like kids do, and goes back to playing with the toys on the floor, have the main character begin going over certain parts of the story in his own head, pan to flashback. Make it a full weekend with them two together and spread the parts of the Maine story out between brief, gentle scenes of his life today. This is an excellent way to have that nice ending that American moviegoers always want to see.
Yes, America loves a winner—a nice ending to every story. How else can that come about? By showing the main character as part the movie making process? By showing how he is living after he gets paid some of his money for his story? Ayy?
Will he narrate the story? Narrate from what age and from where?
Or just have him begin telling it to someone, anyone, then let the flashbacks take over.
His story could be told from that courtroom where he has always wanted to confront his Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha on even ground. That could work out well. More ways for the filmmakers to portray drama and emotion, comedy and errors, that’s for sure.
These are all excellent ideas for the scriptwriters to work with. Or, one or more of the writers or someone else may come up with a different and more effective angle to tell the story from.
After I was worked over all mean and nasty by Fin and Marty, and I enlisted into the United States Army and was sent to Okinawa, I ended up in an even more screwed up situation over there—that is all completely laid out, for the entire world to see, on my two blogs, “30th Artillery Brigade Okinawa 1970-71” and “An American GI On Okinawa 1970-71.” The Fin and Marty experiences caused me to loose faith in my family, and then the 30th Arty Bgde experiences caused me to loose belief in my country. Consequently, by the time that I was 21 years old, I had pretty well lost any sense of family and country. The deeply painful combination of those two separate sets of fucked up experiences hit me with a one-two punch that damn near knocked me out of myself completely, and the rug was pulled right out from under my feet. I fell hard.
For a long time after that, I wasn't much good for anything useful.
After my honorable discharge from the US Army, in November of 1971, all that I have ever wanted to work as is a professional outdoorsman, photographer and writer. Not only had I had earned the right to do so, there has always been plenty of room within these combined professions for me to have worked hard and been successful at them, in every possible way. When I became an accomplished professional outdoorsman, then when I also became a US Army trained photographer, a very good photographer with a natural eye for capturing great images in photographs—no one can teach a person that natural quality of a good photographer, because it must come from within you—once I had become that outdoorsman and photographer, I was never able to be anyone else.
After my military discharge, in order for me to remain being that person meant that I must continue doing most of the exact same things that had more or less cost me my family and my country. You may not understand this, but for the following 28 years, I was rarely ever able to work at what I was best at, within the chosen professions that I had fully earned the rights to work in, because I could not find anything much left to work for. Though that was an unhealthy reaction, which made an extremely bad situation much worse, very rarely does a person ever want to walk right back up a trail where they had just been viciously mauled by two Tasmanian Devils, then robbed by bandits.
Severe depression caused by that set of experiences still dogs me to this day.
I do have to take responsibly, though, for the fact that when I more or less crawled off of that trail and on into the underbrush, to try and figure out how to recover from those deep wounds caused by my devastating losses of family and country, I drank too much booze. I must take responsibility for any bad effects that I, and others around me, suffered through when I was heavily abusing alcohol.
My spending so much time getting drunk and emotionally numb was no way to solve any of my problems. I apologize for doing that, and for all that I did that was wrong.
Up until my last gulp of ethyl alcohol, in 1994, I had gotten sober a number of times. Then relapsed.
Whenever I got sober, one remaining problem always was, though, each time that I got the soul and psyche anesthetizing booze flushed out of me real good and clean, and the low hanging clouds of fog cleared out from in front of my eyes, about all that I could see and feel was that I still had no returning sense of family and country.
But when I was a growing American boy, family, country, American style freedom and the higher power of yours or my choice was all that I had ever believed in. Family, country and freedom—including our God given freedom of religion—have always been and always will be our most valuable treasures. I have always been and always will be most willing to love, nurture, defend and to work, sacrifice, fight, kill and die for those principles. The sum total of my work that is now published on the World Wide Web provides full testament to this.
Telling the world about the personal frailties and vulnerabilities that allowed me to become so severely depressed by what had happened to me while in Maine and then on Okinawa, to have to inform you here that most of my adult life has been lived all down and out and out of touch with the rest of society then barely back on my feet again, is excruciating for me. But telling about these things is only fair for your well-balanced consideration of who I am and for you to be able to decide if you are willing to work with me on this movie project.
Now I am back on my feet again. Barely so. But fighting back with all of the inner strength I can muster. Fighting fair but hard, by continuously working for long hours on my Internet projects and struggling to survive on a day-to-day basis. It is a decidedly dismal life I am living through today, but you could never know that this is so by looking at my photographic and written works that are published in numerous places on the World Wide Web.
All of what has been written about on here will provide a lot of challenging and rewarding work for screenwriters, directors, a casting agency, set designers, set builders, cinematographers, various technicians, costume designers, makeup artists, caterers, security personnel and everyone else who is needed for the movie, which includes me.
Besides working with and advising the scriptwriters, location scouts, director and cinematographers, one job that I shall be performing myself is, I will be taking candid photos of the film production team and anyone else who happens to be on the movie sets. And there will be copies of my photos given out amongst them all, for them to keep for themselves or to give to their family or friends. This is the one type of photography that I do about as well as has ever been done, or ever will be done. I love capturing complimentary photographic images of people being themselves, whether hard at work or hard at play, or just taking a relaxing break from their hard work or play and socializing with others. Like a big ol' Owl studying the forest floor for the most opportune moment to swoop down upon its intended prey, I have a keen eye for determining the exact instant when all of my intended photographic subjects are looking good for a photograph. During those, rather thrilling, times, a photographer has to sorta' blend into their surroundings, to clandestinely disappear from the conciseness of their intended subjects; the photographer must to stay alert, and also already be agile, swift and skilled at using their camera gear, in order to be able to capture a great photographic image of all of the individuals, in any given group of people, looking good at the same exact moment. I was well known for fully mastering that photographic technique, in 1970, when I was performing my military photographer duties at US Army social events.
This movie definitely should be made somewhere in Northern Maine. The Patten area itself may not be the right place for filming it, and that is to be decided later. There are far to many unknown and fully expected variables when choosing the best locations for filming in. All filmmakers will know this.
During the times when some of the cast and crew will be working on movie sets somewhere up in Maine, those individuals will be spending a lot of time with the local Maine population there. That interaction will greatly add to any ideas that they have for the film. There will be some local Maine folks working in various capacities on the movie sets, hanging out behind the scenes, and sitting around eating the catered food. At times, non-Mainer members of the cast and crew will be eating in the small restaurants up there, shopping in the stores, carousing in the pubs, and going hiking, fishing, hunting, snowmobile riding, off road four wheeler riding, mountain biking, road biking, motorcycling, taking scenic auto tours through the countryside, canoeing, boating, dating and 'you name it', the film crew will be doing it with local Mainers as their trusty companions. The entire time that those social interactions are taking place, there will be optimum opportunity for the cast and crew to learn more about those wonderful folks in Maine—and to be able to portray them Mainers much more realistically on film. Ya' simply can't be around a bunch of 'um for very long without hearing some really cool stories, told well. Some Mainers' conversation casually overheard by a cast member or a scriptwriter could become the basis for a great scene in the movie.
We could hold an informal competition to see which Mainers can tell the most entertaining and outlandish tall tales for use in the movie; for like when the young nephew is hanging out with some local folks. The Mainers who get their tales written into the script get paid for their stories. Every entry would win something, like having some of our most famous movie stars there for a casual, pleasant autograph signing and photograph taking session. The Maine folks can bring their own little personal cameras. I can take lots of digital, pro quality informal shots of the whole get together. Then we could either print up mighty fine photos right then and there, or give out digital copies on inexpensive CD disks, or email them to the recipient of the Mainer's choice. I'd, friggin' aye right, enjoy that immensely.
If any of this movie is filmed in the Patten, Maine area, then that will bring in good monies to good folks living there. No matter where the movie is filmed, for years to come Patten will be more popular with money spending tourists. This movie will provide a considerable boost to the ailing local economy of Patten, Maine.
Fin and Marty sold Katahdin Lodge years ago. I have had some contact with the new owners. They may very well be willing to allow the Lodge to be used during the filming of this movie. And that place has plenty of room for a large film crew to stay there in comfort. And that crew's free time outdoors activates potentials are simply awesome there. Yeah!!
I will not compromise on the quality of anything that this movie needs for it to be well written, beautifully filmed, entertaining, exciting, memorable, popular with audiences for generations to come, financially successful and a credit to the good folks up in Maine. If you are not interested in working in accordance to those standards, do not contact me.
This story equates to my life's savings. I need the money that I will earn from it as soon as possible. If you are not prepared to aid me in gaining immediate financial wealth and security and if you do not expect me to earn every penny of it as a member of the film production team, then I do hope that when this film is released you will enjoy going to see it even more because you read this today.
You have no idea how pleased and grateful I will be if this film project leads to me getting off of disability pension. I may never be able to work on any more movies after this one, but the money that I will make off of this one will save my life and change it for the better. I will then possess the funds that I desperately need to properly furnish, equip and adapt a photography and writing office so that everything about it prevents and relieves my constant spinal discomfort. I can make regular visits to physical therapists. I can finally go to a Chiropractor and also to afford therapeutic massages. I can hire helpers and personal aides. And I do believe that my depression will subside and quit dog'n me so severely, after all of these positive changes come into my life.
{End of Section 3 of this 4-part document. Please continue on to Section 3, of Northern Maine Adventures / The Movie, in the blog post below this one, the previous post. It'll be well worth your time--I swear to it! READ ON! }
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Section 4 / Northern Maine Adventures / The Movie
{This is Section 4 of a 4-part document that is read from the top of this blog down--from the latest Northern Maine Adventures / The Movie blog post down through the older ones; just the opposite from how blogs are normally read. I guarantee that this well written document is full of interesting, entertaining, and even shocking snippets---all the way through. I do believe that you'll enjoy this. read on! }
The following was added on September 25, 2007 at 3:56 AM
I am bankrupt in just about everyway possible. Each month, I rely on local food banks to survive. I no longer possess camera equipment. I need to have my personally done, custom hand printed photographs professionally matted, mounted and framed. They cannot be displayed in a gallery without that. In 2002, I had to turn down one offer for a personal showing at a local gallery, and there would be other's who would be pleased to have my work displayed on their walls. I have several hundred unused negatives to work with, which, to an old pro like me, means that there are a couple of dozen portfolio quality photos waiting there for me to print. I have so many more photographs planned out that I want to take that it's nearly killing me not being able to. Everyday, I miss great opportunities for doing more outstanding photography. I need top of the line, professional computer equipment and software. I already have displayed, on the World Wide Web, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am talented and I am self-driven towards hard work and success. It takes money to make money. Once I begin receiving profits from this film project, I will be able to work harder everyday.
I also need the monies owed to me by my aunt and uncle, and the monies from my long overdue military service connected disability rating.
I have done everything that I am supposed to do in order to prove the facts about what happened to me up in Maine, and also what it was that happened to me in the US Army on Okinawa. And, yet, another poor excuse for a Veterans Administration doctor, Dr. Jacob (Jackass) Tendler, has declared that all I say about my service on Okinawa is lies. My Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley have always declared that I am thoroughly lying about what happened between us in Maine, and the Army and the Veteran's Administration have refused to believe anything that I say about my being illegally assigned as an official photographer for the 30th Artillery Brigade. Finley is dead, and Martha is dying fast. I say that a large chunk of the sizable Finley Kenneth Clarke estate, that Fin left to Marty, and that Marty is keeping from my side of the family, is mine. The United States Army owes me an apology, and the Veterans Administration owes me a lot of money. Because of those two devastating losses, I live a miserable life.
The money from either one of those debts owed to me could get me what I need to recover the other. The money from the movie would allot me the working capital to take care of both problems.
I have located two 30th Arty Bgde veterans who are witnesses, reluctant witnesses, who can testify that when I was working as an Army photographer on Okinawa, I could neither order equipment nor supplies, that there was no slot for a photographer in the 30th, so I could never advance in rank, and that the photo lab had indeed been illegally and immorally set up in a nuclear fallout emergency decontamination chamber. They are each written about on my blog, 30th Artillery Brigade Okinawa 1970-71. And they know it. They are T. Gordon Barber and Jim Whitcomb. I found Whitcomb through an Internet search for 30th Arty Bgde photographers, and Barber found me through my web published 30th Arty writings and emailed me. I have exchanged emails with Barber, and one time I talked to Jim, on the phone, for over an hour last year. Since then, I have emailed each of them several times, but they do not reply. While on the phone to Jim Whitcomb, he verified to me that he remembers well that all that I say and write about concerning these military matters is true. At the time of that phone conversation, he had no idea what it has meant to my empty life, my lost family, my long gone friends, and me. Both of those witnesses do know it now, but they are not cooperating.
The money owed to me from Fin and Marty is enough for me to do what I legally need to do in order to take care of unresolved military/Veterans Administration related issues. Had the monies owed to me by the Veterans Administration come, when I had proven my service connected disability case to them, it would have been enough and in time for me to have gone to Maine, while my uncle was still living, and remedied the situation with Fin and Marty.
Monies from this movie project will be enough for me to take care of both of those long-term problems.
I have been working on this synopsis for eight days straight, during most of my waking hours. And when I am trying to go to sleep I have to sit up now and then to write down notes of what I just thought about to write out on the computer in the morning. This started out as, "Ten Reasons Why My Northern Maine Adventures Will Make A Great Movie." Now it has a life of its own, and it keeps growing.
Yesterday evening, I was walking up to the shopping center, which is two blocks away from my home, to buy a sandwich, when I heard what sounded like a gun being fired from around the corner of the large building that I was walking next to, on the sidewalk. Then two 13 to 14 year old boys, on one small bicycle, came rolling by from behind me there on the street, and they slowly moved past me. I heard another gunfire-like popping sound and turned around to see another 13 to 14 year old boy on a bike slowly rolling towards my way. I was getting a little scared, but hoping that the pistol popping type of sounds that I was hearing coming from behind, and now also to the far side of that third kid, were from some of those little Snappers that kids throw against the pavement to explode. I was actually afraid to turn back around and look to see if I could see what I did not want to see—a pistol in the third kid's hand. The first two kids slowed down, and one said to the third kid, "Give that guy some. Hey, give that guy some." As the kid spoke those words, he was grinning like the smartass little piece of crap that he turned out to be, and he was pointing his finger at me. I was the only other person out on that side street. As the third kid came up next to me there, about thirty feet away, he pointed a pistol at me, from his waist level, where the gun was being held slightly hidden under his overhanging shirttail. I heard a pop and saw this little puff of white smoke blow out the end of the pistol barrel, right towards my midsection.
I immediately looked down all over at my body to see where I had been shot. I become overwhelmed with an instant, terrifying rush of fear. I also instantly expected my fatally injured body to begin crumbling down onto the pavement, and begin dying. Fortunately, I only thought that I had just been shot and murdered. I don't know whether it was a real pistol that was loaded with blanks, or a loud CO2 pistol, but it made me believe for the longest short eternity that I have ever lived through that I had been murdered.
When I was serving in the US Army, on Okinawa, an Army buddy of mine, a Vietnam combat veteran who had only been out of Vietnam and on Okinawa for a short time, told a group of us guys who were drinking a case of beer together with him, "If you're ever in combat, or if anybody ever shoots at you, back home, always check yourself over real quick to see if you've been hit. I always do, because you don't always feel it when you get hit. Sometimes it burns and hurts like hell, other times you don't feel a thing. Always check yourself for wounds."
When that punk, in Dundalk Shopping Center, pulled that trigger, if he'd a had that gahdamned gun crammed right up in close to my midsection, I would have had no way of realizing that I was not actually being shot. When I saw the end of that gun barrel pointed right at the very vulnerable center mass of my body, had that kid with the gun been close enough for me to have reached out and grabbed him, I would have had no other reasonable choice but to hurt him badly. I know a little about self-defensive movements, just a little, but enough to have had him, or even a much larger aggressor, on the ground and disabled in an instant. Had he wheeled over closer to me, or had he been on foot and had walked right up to me, and pointed that pistol and popped off that round of lead free air in towards my gut, I would not have had the time to realize that I had not been shot before I would have taken the initiative to prevent him pulling that trigger again. In order to prevent him from pulling the trigger more times, I literally could have been forced to seriously injure him, and to quite possibly severely maim him for the rest of his life, in self-defense. Now how in the hell was I supposed to deal with the knowledge that I had been forced to critically injure a kid?
Had that incident with those three punks occurred in closer quarters, with the shooter so close to me that I could have grabbed a hold of him before I realized that there were no murderous bullets being fired into me, well now, we all best thank the Saint of Circumstance, that it had not gone down that way.
That crime against my person happened in Baltimore County, Maryland, and within about a 1/4 of a mile from the Baltimore City line. Baltimore! Ten times the national average murder rate. Baltimore, Maryland. Bodymore, Murderland!
I know that those kinds of punk kids who shot that gun at me have more and easier access to guns than most adults around here do. Just about everybody around here is aware of that!
Being shot at was terrifying! But there mere fact that a kid that age was in possession of a pistol was not that much of a surprise to me, at all. You can expect that here now. In and around Baltimore, you can rightly fear that you will encounter a punk kid with a pistol. Up until around five years ago, it wasn't that way in these Dundalk suburbs, but the neighborhood here has changed.
Two of those punks on bikes were white, and one was black; a white kid had the gun, and the other white boy was the one who sicked his sick little white buddy on me. Some of the kids around here emulate the inner city thug lifestyle, the thug ways of talking and walking, and the gangland/street-corner-drug-dealer clothing styles. The kid with the gun had an oversized shirt on, that is perfectly designed for concealing the shape of a gun that is stuffed down into a person's pants. These kids listen to thug music—music that worships violence. Thug mentality has spread like a social plague all throughout our local young people here, and is influencing them in all of the wrong ways, turning them into thugs, or just lame little thug wanna'bees.
Then add the violent video games, which these kids play, into the mix of bad influences. Then the violence in the movies that they watch, over and over again. They witness many acts of faked or real violent behavior on TV, everyday. Parental Guidance Warnings on video games, music CDs, recorded movies, and TV shows do no good for children whose parents provide little, to no, guidance to their offspring.
If you go to my blog, "Blue Skies Over Dundalk Maryland" you will see plenty of good and beautiful in my neighborhood. But I am an outdoorsman who needs plenty of deep forest near his home. I gotta get outa here.
So anyways, after I realized that I had not been shot, my terror was replaced with instant, overpowering rage. I flipped-the-fuck-out on them punks. I can't really run anymore, so I couldn't go after the little punk who had the fired gun. I can't afford to own a cell phone, to have called the police with. So all that I could do was to let loose with a loud, angry string of extremely furious cursing and swearing at those punks. Anytime that I walk anywhere near a group of those kinds of kids, they are liable to be talking like that too, and sometimes they have parents who talk like that to them, so don't give me any grief about it.
What'd ya' say? Did you just say that I am supposed to be the reasonable, decent acting, clear thinking adult here? Right? Screw you. I was too pissed off to think straight. You do understand that I believed, ever so briefly, but powerfully so, you do understand that, for over a full second, I had believed that one of them had just shot me with a gun and had possibly murdered me, and that they all three of them were thrilled to see it happen? Right!
Unfortunately, that act of emotional violence that they had committed against my person was probably only just a substantial part of the beginning for them three. They won't stop indulging into that senseless garbage until they are somehow made to, or they get put in prison or killed by the police because of it.
After that lead-free pistol shot rang out, as the three little thug wanna'bees slowly pedaled on, they were loudly laughing, grinning broadly, evilly, and yelling curse words at me all the way—with pure, self-satisfactory pleasure written all over them.
If I could have gotten my hands on that punk with the pistol, well, you can imagine what I would have done, and how it would have played out in a courtroom.
As I walked along the sidewalk cussing and screaming at the top of my lungs at those smiling and laughing little punks, I knew that, because I am so deeply sunk down into poverty, that I have no money to defend myself in court with. I usually don't even have the money for taxi fare to the county court house.
I can't take this any longer.
I went on up the street and bought my sandwich. But instead of eating it in the café there as I had planned, I was still raging inside, far too intently, so I took my food home to eat it. I thought that I might be having a heart attack or a stroke, so I looked up the symptoms for each, on the Internet. All that I could think off was that the discomfort was only from stress, and would subside without killing me. I was more fearful of calling the Ambulance, and then later on having to take a bus home at 3AM, than I was of dying at home last night. A Baltimore bus at 3AM? Screw that. I don't have any money for a taxi. If I wasn't having a heart attack or a stroke, I don't have anyone whom I could have called, in the middle of the night, to come get me from the hospital. I couldn't deal with going out of my house to go be in the hospital, either. I couldn't stand the thought of being in the hospital over night, so that tests could be done on me. I chose to stay here and whatever was going to happen was going to happen.
Now I have to worry that every time that I am walking around outside in my neighborhood here, those punks will come rolling on by me again, or walk up to me, then begin to belligerently and mercilessly harass me, come real close to me, threaten to physically assault me, and I will get my hands on them. It is very difficult for a person not to always feel some residual anger towards their once perceived, cold-blooded murderers. For as long as any victim of a once perceived murder lives, they will most likely retain some of the resulting, raging anger that an assault like that instills in a person. Mine sure as hell hasn't subsided very much. Though I only felt those horribly intense, gut-smashing feelings of being murdered for a second or so, the anger at my attackers remains.
Those three boys are punks with piss-ass parents who don't raise them right. Parents who are probably used to trouble; they probably are trouble themselves; and they may be used going to court, every few years or so. They may very well be family neglecting, abusive drug addicts and/or drunks. And them three boys have plenty of punk-ass friends who would all cop the attitude that those three little idiots were just playing around, and that I did not actually get shot, so what's the problem? They can do what they want to whomever they want to. They're bad-asses. But if I booted them three punks' butts around some, they would be portrayed in court, and in the media, as innocent, harmless little children. (He's a good kid, would do anything to help anybody, he was just playin' around. He didn't do anything bad to that big, mean old man.) If I see them again, they will harass me. If I ever encounter them within a larger group of teenagers together, they will jump me. During the past couple of years, there have been several older men jumped, by punks like them, up in our small, local parks here. Those little felons have no respect for anyone else, at all.
Last night, I lost all patience with the rest of the world. No, my patience had been worn down to next to nothing; then those three little punks destroyed the rest of it
My life is a mess. My home is the kind of a jumbled up mess inside that I never imagined it could be. Due to degenerative back disease, I can't hardly bend down to pick up stuff off the floor, and I can't clean up around here as well as I used to. The depression has also painfully restricted my daily activities. Physical and emotional pain has nearly ruined my life. To top it all of with, the telephone company has a very loud, piercing signal they send out to people who dial a number wrong, in a certain way, and that screaming damned signal pushed my Tinitus right up past tolerable, but my primary care Veterans Administration doctor refused to send me to a hearing loss specialist. The ringing in my ears is LOUD.
For the past decade or so, I have been gathering up items such as tools and other home-fix-it-shop supplies, from the many dumpster dived garage cleanouts that I run into. I have antiques and collectables and plenty of other goodies from dumpster diving; including a Skunk fur jacket, in perfect shape, that I want to sell. I have numerous items for using around the nice sized, single home that I was going to purchase and move into, when my service connected disability checks and the money that Fin and Marty owe me came in. But for now, this stuff that is intended for use in that larger home is piled up all around me—in this smaller sized, low rent townhouse. And I can't take the losses of getting rid of it. I worked as hard as I could to get this stuff. I could stock a nice sized booth at an antiques mall with what I have here, and still keep a few tools and antiques and collectables for myself. I don't have the working capital and the rest of the where-with-all to be able to stock that antique mall both, or to sell some of it on EBAY. This is frustrating and demoralizing.
In the past few years, I have had to pay to have several of my teeth pulled. And there is another tooth that is going to need to be removed, sometime soon. Two years ago, I was ripped off badly by an auto mechanic, so my little truck broke down again, and I could not afford any more money to fix it. I contacted the proper authorities about it, but they did nothing to help me resolve the issue. Then they said I have to sue the crooked mechanic. That truck was then sold for a measly $50. Without that truck, I had no reliable way to get to court for any lawsuit that I could have brought against that mechanic. Due to the costs of the dental work and the mechanical work, I had to pawn my camera gear to survive. Since then, I have never gotten that well earned, much deserved break from my poverty that I have been struggling steadily for, ever since 1998. I have never given up hope for being paid for some of my photographic or written work. So I kept paying monthly pawnshop interest rates, until I could no longer do that, and I lost my camera gear. Now to pay for that next tooth extraction, I expect to loose my stereo equipment. And I cannot replace my reading glasses or anything else of any value—like my TV set—that gets lost, gets stolen, is broken, or stops working. My computer is scrapped together from dumpster dived and donated parts, it is old and barely makes it on this Internet.
If I do not take care of this well stated Maine, and also the military/Veterans Administration business within a very short period of time, I can't survive. Because surviving without collecting those two debts owed to me, or without selling my story and turning it into a good movie, means selling off almost everything that I own.
Then what?
An empty heart, barely beating inside of a worn down, constantly pained body, a heart surrounded by an ailing soul that is fiercely struggling to survive, that is inside of a person who dwells in a nearly lifeless home. A person who is wracked with tremendous anger aimed at their debtors—anger eating away at their insides. That nearly empty person receives harassing daily phone calls from the entities that they owe money to. How can I pay my debts if I can't collect the ones owed to me? Hardly anyone else besides a few entities I owe money to call me on the phone, and it rings several times a day. Good thing I was given a used phone with an answering machine to screen my calls. I only talk on the phone an average of 2 or 3 times a week, and usually for very short lengths of time. But the worst part of this bummer here is that as a 100% disabled person living on a tiny pension, I am supposed to be relieved of my largest debt, federally backed college loans. But those debt collectors did not accept, as true and legal, the information on the form that my Veterans Administration doctor filled out and signed for them, the form that declares me to be 100% disabled for life. For some reason, one friggin' asswipe US Government agency does not accept the legal word of another.
I am stuck here in this small, messy home, without benefit of the protections of many of my rights, here in this grossly limited, lousy life, with no hope for the future, outside of the hope that this future movie project allots to me. And with no way to go where the movie makers are, to be able to approach them with the full, detailed information about this project, that is presented here within this synopsis.
How long could you last like that?
The following was added on September 25, 2007 at 3:56 AM
I am bankrupt in just about everyway possible. Each month, I rely on local food banks to survive. I no longer possess camera equipment. I need to have my personally done, custom hand printed photographs professionally matted, mounted and framed. They cannot be displayed in a gallery without that. In 2002, I had to turn down one offer for a personal showing at a local gallery, and there would be other's who would be pleased to have my work displayed on their walls. I have several hundred unused negatives to work with, which, to an old pro like me, means that there are a couple of dozen portfolio quality photos waiting there for me to print. I have so many more photographs planned out that I want to take that it's nearly killing me not being able to. Everyday, I miss great opportunities for doing more outstanding photography. I need top of the line, professional computer equipment and software. I already have displayed, on the World Wide Web, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am talented and I am self-driven towards hard work and success. It takes money to make money. Once I begin receiving profits from this film project, I will be able to work harder everyday.
I also need the monies owed to me by my aunt and uncle, and the monies from my long overdue military service connected disability rating.
I have done everything that I am supposed to do in order to prove the facts about what happened to me up in Maine, and also what it was that happened to me in the US Army on Okinawa. And, yet, another poor excuse for a Veterans Administration doctor, Dr. Jacob (Jackass) Tendler, has declared that all I say about my service on Okinawa is lies. My Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley have always declared that I am thoroughly lying about what happened between us in Maine, and the Army and the Veteran's Administration have refused to believe anything that I say about my being illegally assigned as an official photographer for the 30th Artillery Brigade. Finley is dead, and Martha is dying fast. I say that a large chunk of the sizable Finley Kenneth Clarke estate, that Fin left to Marty, and that Marty is keeping from my side of the family, is mine. The United States Army owes me an apology, and the Veterans Administration owes me a lot of money. Because of those two devastating losses, I live a miserable life.
The money from either one of those debts owed to me could get me what I need to recover the other. The money from the movie would allot me the working capital to take care of both problems.
I have located two 30th Arty Bgde veterans who are witnesses, reluctant witnesses, who can testify that when I was working as an Army photographer on Okinawa, I could neither order equipment nor supplies, that there was no slot for a photographer in the 30th, so I could never advance in rank, and that the photo lab had indeed been illegally and immorally set up in a nuclear fallout emergency decontamination chamber. They are each written about on my blog, 30th Artillery Brigade Okinawa 1970-71. And they know it. They are T. Gordon Barber and Jim Whitcomb. I found Whitcomb through an Internet search for 30th Arty Bgde photographers, and Barber found me through my web published 30th Arty writings and emailed me. I have exchanged emails with Barber, and one time I talked to Jim, on the phone, for over an hour last year. Since then, I have emailed each of them several times, but they do not reply. While on the phone to Jim Whitcomb, he verified to me that he remembers well that all that I say and write about concerning these military matters is true. At the time of that phone conversation, he had no idea what it has meant to my empty life, my lost family, my long gone friends, and me. Both of those witnesses do know it now, but they are not cooperating.
The money owed to me from Fin and Marty is enough for me to do what I legally need to do in order to take care of unresolved military/Veterans Administration related issues. Had the monies owed to me by the Veterans Administration come, when I had proven my service connected disability case to them, it would have been enough and in time for me to have gone to Maine, while my uncle was still living, and remedied the situation with Fin and Marty.
Monies from this movie project will be enough for me to take care of both of those long-term problems.
I have been working on this synopsis for eight days straight, during most of my waking hours. And when I am trying to go to sleep I have to sit up now and then to write down notes of what I just thought about to write out on the computer in the morning. This started out as, "Ten Reasons Why My Northern Maine Adventures Will Make A Great Movie." Now it has a life of its own, and it keeps growing.
Yesterday evening, I was walking up to the shopping center, which is two blocks away from my home, to buy a sandwich, when I heard what sounded like a gun being fired from around the corner of the large building that I was walking next to, on the sidewalk. Then two 13 to 14 year old boys, on one small bicycle, came rolling by from behind me there on the street, and they slowly moved past me. I heard another gunfire-like popping sound and turned around to see another 13 to 14 year old boy on a bike slowly rolling towards my way. I was getting a little scared, but hoping that the pistol popping type of sounds that I was hearing coming from behind, and now also to the far side of that third kid, were from some of those little Snappers that kids throw against the pavement to explode. I was actually afraid to turn back around and look to see if I could see what I did not want to see—a pistol in the third kid's hand. The first two kids slowed down, and one said to the third kid, "Give that guy some. Hey, give that guy some." As the kid spoke those words, he was grinning like the smartass little piece of crap that he turned out to be, and he was pointing his finger at me. I was the only other person out on that side street. As the third kid came up next to me there, about thirty feet away, he pointed a pistol at me, from his waist level, where the gun was being held slightly hidden under his overhanging shirttail. I heard a pop and saw this little puff of white smoke blow out the end of the pistol barrel, right towards my midsection.
I immediately looked down all over at my body to see where I had been shot. I become overwhelmed with an instant, terrifying rush of fear. I also instantly expected my fatally injured body to begin crumbling down onto the pavement, and begin dying. Fortunately, I only thought that I had just been shot and murdered. I don't know whether it was a real pistol that was loaded with blanks, or a loud CO2 pistol, but it made me believe for the longest short eternity that I have ever lived through that I had been murdered.
When I was serving in the US Army, on Okinawa, an Army buddy of mine, a Vietnam combat veteran who had only been out of Vietnam and on Okinawa for a short time, told a group of us guys who were drinking a case of beer together with him, "If you're ever in combat, or if anybody ever shoots at you, back home, always check yourself over real quick to see if you've been hit. I always do, because you don't always feel it when you get hit. Sometimes it burns and hurts like hell, other times you don't feel a thing. Always check yourself for wounds."
When that punk, in Dundalk Shopping Center, pulled that trigger, if he'd a had that gahdamned gun crammed right up in close to my midsection, I would have had no way of realizing that I was not actually being shot. When I saw the end of that gun barrel pointed right at the very vulnerable center mass of my body, had that kid with the gun been close enough for me to have reached out and grabbed him, I would have had no other reasonable choice but to hurt him badly. I know a little about self-defensive movements, just a little, but enough to have had him, or even a much larger aggressor, on the ground and disabled in an instant. Had he wheeled over closer to me, or had he been on foot and had walked right up to me, and pointed that pistol and popped off that round of lead free air in towards my gut, I would not have had the time to realize that I had not been shot before I would have taken the initiative to prevent him pulling that trigger again. In order to prevent him from pulling the trigger more times, I literally could have been forced to seriously injure him, and to quite possibly severely maim him for the rest of his life, in self-defense. Now how in the hell was I supposed to deal with the knowledge that I had been forced to critically injure a kid?
Had that incident with those three punks occurred in closer quarters, with the shooter so close to me that I could have grabbed a hold of him before I realized that there were no murderous bullets being fired into me, well now, we all best thank the Saint of Circumstance, that it had not gone down that way.
That crime against my person happened in Baltimore County, Maryland, and within about a 1/4 of a mile from the Baltimore City line. Baltimore! Ten times the national average murder rate. Baltimore, Maryland. Bodymore, Murderland!
I know that those kinds of punk kids who shot that gun at me have more and easier access to guns than most adults around here do. Just about everybody around here is aware of that!
Being shot at was terrifying! But there mere fact that a kid that age was in possession of a pistol was not that much of a surprise to me, at all. You can expect that here now. In and around Baltimore, you can rightly fear that you will encounter a punk kid with a pistol. Up until around five years ago, it wasn't that way in these Dundalk suburbs, but the neighborhood here has changed.
Two of those punks on bikes were white, and one was black; a white kid had the gun, and the other white boy was the one who sicked his sick little white buddy on me. Some of the kids around here emulate the inner city thug lifestyle, the thug ways of talking and walking, and the gangland/street-corner-drug-dealer clothing styles. The kid with the gun had an oversized shirt on, that is perfectly designed for concealing the shape of a gun that is stuffed down into a person's pants. These kids listen to thug music—music that worships violence. Thug mentality has spread like a social plague all throughout our local young people here, and is influencing them in all of the wrong ways, turning them into thugs, or just lame little thug wanna'bees.
Then add the violent video games, which these kids play, into the mix of bad influences. Then the violence in the movies that they watch, over and over again. They witness many acts of faked or real violent behavior on TV, everyday. Parental Guidance Warnings on video games, music CDs, recorded movies, and TV shows do no good for children whose parents provide little, to no, guidance to their offspring.
If you go to my blog, "Blue Skies Over Dundalk Maryland" you will see plenty of good and beautiful in my neighborhood. But I am an outdoorsman who needs plenty of deep forest near his home. I gotta get outa here.
So anyways, after I realized that I had not been shot, my terror was replaced with instant, overpowering rage. I flipped-the-fuck-out on them punks. I can't really run anymore, so I couldn't go after the little punk who had the fired gun. I can't afford to own a cell phone, to have called the police with. So all that I could do was to let loose with a loud, angry string of extremely furious cursing and swearing at those punks. Anytime that I walk anywhere near a group of those kinds of kids, they are liable to be talking like that too, and sometimes they have parents who talk like that to them, so don't give me any grief about it.
What'd ya' say? Did you just say that I am supposed to be the reasonable, decent acting, clear thinking adult here? Right? Screw you. I was too pissed off to think straight. You do understand that I believed, ever so briefly, but powerfully so, you do understand that, for over a full second, I had believed that one of them had just shot me with a gun and had possibly murdered me, and that they all three of them were thrilled to see it happen? Right!
Unfortunately, that act of emotional violence that they had committed against my person was probably only just a substantial part of the beginning for them three. They won't stop indulging into that senseless garbage until they are somehow made to, or they get put in prison or killed by the police because of it.
After that lead-free pistol shot rang out, as the three little thug wanna'bees slowly pedaled on, they were loudly laughing, grinning broadly, evilly, and yelling curse words at me all the way—with pure, self-satisfactory pleasure written all over them.
If I could have gotten my hands on that punk with the pistol, well, you can imagine what I would have done, and how it would have played out in a courtroom.
As I walked along the sidewalk cussing and screaming at the top of my lungs at those smiling and laughing little punks, I knew that, because I am so deeply sunk down into poverty, that I have no money to defend myself in court with. I usually don't even have the money for taxi fare to the county court house.
I can't take this any longer.
I went on up the street and bought my sandwich. But instead of eating it in the café there as I had planned, I was still raging inside, far too intently, so I took my food home to eat it. I thought that I might be having a heart attack or a stroke, so I looked up the symptoms for each, on the Internet. All that I could think off was that the discomfort was only from stress, and would subside without killing me. I was more fearful of calling the Ambulance, and then later on having to take a bus home at 3AM, than I was of dying at home last night. A Baltimore bus at 3AM? Screw that. I don't have any money for a taxi. If I wasn't having a heart attack or a stroke, I don't have anyone whom I could have called, in the middle of the night, to come get me from the hospital. I couldn't deal with going out of my house to go be in the hospital, either. I couldn't stand the thought of being in the hospital over night, so that tests could be done on me. I chose to stay here and whatever was going to happen was going to happen.
Now I have to worry that every time that I am walking around outside in my neighborhood here, those punks will come rolling on by me again, or walk up to me, then begin to belligerently and mercilessly harass me, come real close to me, threaten to physically assault me, and I will get my hands on them. It is very difficult for a person not to always feel some residual anger towards their once perceived, cold-blooded murderers. For as long as any victim of a once perceived murder lives, they will most likely retain some of the resulting, raging anger that an assault like that instills in a person. Mine sure as hell hasn't subsided very much. Though I only felt those horribly intense, gut-smashing feelings of being murdered for a second or so, the anger at my attackers remains.
Those three boys are punks with piss-ass parents who don't raise them right. Parents who are probably used to trouble; they probably are trouble themselves; and they may be used going to court, every few years or so. They may very well be family neglecting, abusive drug addicts and/or drunks. And them three boys have plenty of punk-ass friends who would all cop the attitude that those three little idiots were just playing around, and that I did not actually get shot, so what's the problem? They can do what they want to whomever they want to. They're bad-asses. But if I booted them three punks' butts around some, they would be portrayed in court, and in the media, as innocent, harmless little children. (He's a good kid, would do anything to help anybody, he was just playin' around. He didn't do anything bad to that big, mean old man.) If I see them again, they will harass me. If I ever encounter them within a larger group of teenagers together, they will jump me. During the past couple of years, there have been several older men jumped, by punks like them, up in our small, local parks here. Those little felons have no respect for anyone else, at all.
Last night, I lost all patience with the rest of the world. No, my patience had been worn down to next to nothing; then those three little punks destroyed the rest of it
My life is a mess. My home is the kind of a jumbled up mess inside that I never imagined it could be. Due to degenerative back disease, I can't hardly bend down to pick up stuff off the floor, and I can't clean up around here as well as I used to. The depression has also painfully restricted my daily activities. Physical and emotional pain has nearly ruined my life. To top it all of with, the telephone company has a very loud, piercing signal they send out to people who dial a number wrong, in a certain way, and that screaming damned signal pushed my Tinitus right up past tolerable, but my primary care Veterans Administration doctor refused to send me to a hearing loss specialist. The ringing in my ears is LOUD.
For the past decade or so, I have been gathering up items such as tools and other home-fix-it-shop supplies, from the many dumpster dived garage cleanouts that I run into. I have antiques and collectables and plenty of other goodies from dumpster diving; including a Skunk fur jacket, in perfect shape, that I want to sell. I have numerous items for using around the nice sized, single home that I was going to purchase and move into, when my service connected disability checks and the money that Fin and Marty owe me came in. But for now, this stuff that is intended for use in that larger home is piled up all around me—in this smaller sized, low rent townhouse. And I can't take the losses of getting rid of it. I worked as hard as I could to get this stuff. I could stock a nice sized booth at an antiques mall with what I have here, and still keep a few tools and antiques and collectables for myself. I don't have the working capital and the rest of the where-with-all to be able to stock that antique mall both, or to sell some of it on EBAY. This is frustrating and demoralizing.
In the past few years, I have had to pay to have several of my teeth pulled. And there is another tooth that is going to need to be removed, sometime soon. Two years ago, I was ripped off badly by an auto mechanic, so my little truck broke down again, and I could not afford any more money to fix it. I contacted the proper authorities about it, but they did nothing to help me resolve the issue. Then they said I have to sue the crooked mechanic. That truck was then sold for a measly $50. Without that truck, I had no reliable way to get to court for any lawsuit that I could have brought against that mechanic. Due to the costs of the dental work and the mechanical work, I had to pawn my camera gear to survive. Since then, I have never gotten that well earned, much deserved break from my poverty that I have been struggling steadily for, ever since 1998. I have never given up hope for being paid for some of my photographic or written work. So I kept paying monthly pawnshop interest rates, until I could no longer do that, and I lost my camera gear. Now to pay for that next tooth extraction, I expect to loose my stereo equipment. And I cannot replace my reading glasses or anything else of any value—like my TV set—that gets lost, gets stolen, is broken, or stops working. My computer is scrapped together from dumpster dived and donated parts, it is old and barely makes it on this Internet.
If I do not take care of this well stated Maine, and also the military/Veterans Administration business within a very short period of time, I can't survive. Because surviving without collecting those two debts owed to me, or without selling my story and turning it into a good movie, means selling off almost everything that I own.
Then what?
An empty heart, barely beating inside of a worn down, constantly pained body, a heart surrounded by an ailing soul that is fiercely struggling to survive, that is inside of a person who dwells in a nearly lifeless home. A person who is wracked with tremendous anger aimed at their debtors—anger eating away at their insides. That nearly empty person receives harassing daily phone calls from the entities that they owe money to. How can I pay my debts if I can't collect the ones owed to me? Hardly anyone else besides a few entities I owe money to call me on the phone, and it rings several times a day. Good thing I was given a used phone with an answering machine to screen my calls. I only talk on the phone an average of 2 or 3 times a week, and usually for very short lengths of time. But the worst part of this bummer here is that as a 100% disabled person living on a tiny pension, I am supposed to be relieved of my largest debt, federally backed college loans. But those debt collectors did not accept, as true and legal, the information on the form that my Veterans Administration doctor filled out and signed for them, the form that declares me to be 100% disabled for life. For some reason, one friggin' asswipe US Government agency does not accept the legal word of another.
I am stuck here in this small, messy home, without benefit of the protections of many of my rights, here in this grossly limited, lousy life, with no hope for the future, outside of the hope that this future movie project allots to me. And with no way to go where the movie makers are, to be able to approach them with the full, detailed information about this project, that is presented here within this synopsis.
How long could you last like that?
If you have not yet gone over to the site that has the set of great photographs about my Maine adventures on it, then now is the time do so. These photos will definitely aid you in visualizing this future movie.
All of this together, all that is written in this synopsis here, the stories, the photographs, and the other blogs of mine that are published on the World Wide Web, all provides you with more than enough to convince you that this will be made into a good movie someday. If it does not convince you, then you are not right for this project. In that case, I do hope that you got something good out of reading this. It was my pleasure.
Thank you for reading this. I hope that you at least found it to be thoroughly entertaining.
{End of section 4 of a 4-part document. If you didn't start reading this document at its beginning, please go to Section 1 / Northern Maine Adventures / The Movie from there. It'll be well worth your time--I swear to it! }
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
dundalk maryland
writing
creative
photography
movie producer
screen writer
movie director
30th artillery brigade
okinawa
veterans health care
veteransveterans affairs
writing
Friday, September 21, 2007
Synopsis Of A Movie To Be Made That Is Based On My Northern Maine Adventures
This blog post has been rewritten into 4 other blog posts on here. Sections 1 through 4 of Northern Maine Adventures / Movie Synopsis. It all started out as 10 reasons why my Maine adventures will make a good movie and it took on a life of its own. Now here it is over 19 days later and I have been working on it steadily ever since 19 days ago. It is damn near a masterpiece now. You should check it out. If I delete this blog post it still shows up on search engines, so I am leaving it on with directions to where the document in it went to.
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
dundalk maryland
writing
creative
photography
movie producer
screen writer
movie director
30th artillery brigade
okinawa
veterans health care
veteransveterans affairs
writing
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
dundalk maryland
writing
creative
photography
movie producer
screen writer
movie director
30th artillery brigade
okinawa
veterans health care
veteransveterans affairs
writing
This Blog Post Supports The One Above It
I have told my stories about Maine to many, many people throughout my lifetime, who loved hearing them.
As an example, when I was camping out in public campgrounds, it would always seem to me that we friendly, fellow campers were all equally swapping stories around the campfire. Then, the next morning, someone would come up to me and say, “Hey man, my friend told me that you were telling stories around the campfire last night. She said it she really enjoyed it. Tell some stories.”
But it would be breakfast time. I’d not be in a wide-awake enough frame of mind yet to be able to tell any of them thar’ obviously entertaining tales. Besides that, the night before, we happy campers had all been settin’ round what I called “my all natural color TV set” and sippin’ cold beer, while sometimes passing a warm pipe around, so that had loosened me up and relaxed me quite a bit for the sharing of wild and crazy and fun and interesting and historically informing, accurate stories.
That complimentary feedback concerning my story telling always surprised and puzzled me though. Because I thought that, all along as I told my stories, I had been prompting me campfire mates into telling their similar life experiences too, and had shut my fly trap closed tight when it was their turn to tell their own personal tales of life, fun and adventure. Evidently, even though I had enjoyed listening to their stories as much as they had liked hearing mine, it was my oral history of a very different life up in Maine and in the Army that the other campers enjoyed hearing about the most—point being: we have the basis on this entire blog here for making a popular movie.
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
dundalk maryland
writing
creative writingphotography
movie producer
screen writer
movie director
As an example, when I was camping out in public campgrounds, it would always seem to me that we friendly, fellow campers were all equally swapping stories around the campfire. Then, the next morning, someone would come up to me and say, “Hey man, my friend told me that you were telling stories around the campfire last night. She said it she really enjoyed it. Tell some stories.”
But it would be breakfast time. I’d not be in a wide-awake enough frame of mind yet to be able to tell any of them thar’ obviously entertaining tales. Besides that, the night before, we happy campers had all been settin’ round what I called “my all natural color TV set” and sippin’ cold beer, while sometimes passing a warm pipe around, so that had loosened me up and relaxed me quite a bit for the sharing of wild and crazy and fun and interesting and historically informing, accurate stories.
That complimentary feedback concerning my story telling always surprised and puzzled me though. Because I thought that, all along as I told my stories, I had been prompting me campfire mates into telling their similar life experiences too, and had shut my fly trap closed tight when it was their turn to tell their own personal tales of life, fun and adventure. Evidently, even though I had enjoyed listening to their stories as much as they had liked hearing mine, it was my oral history of a very different life up in Maine and in the Army that the other campers enjoyed hearing about the most—point being: we have the basis on this entire blog here for making a popular movie.
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
dundalk maryland
writing
creative writingphotography
movie producer
screen writer
movie director
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The Bulk Of My Photography Portfolio
Most of my digitally filed photography portfolio is now on my new myspace site. There are Maine 1969 photos, and Okinawa 1970-71 photos, and this century's Baltimore City and Fells Point and Baltimore County and a lot of superb Dundalk Maryland photographs, plus a solid variety of other shots on my myspace pics pages.
I believe that there is something on there for most everyone to enjoy.
You can see the strength and breadth and depth of my talent for certain.
You will see who I am inside.
Just keep in mind that I am a very low-income US Army veteran disabled by a bad back and a good dose of depression, who had to produce this work without the benefits of any financial gain. I was forced to use old banged up photo equipment at times. And I worked hard at my photography.
Most of the photographs on here were custom hand printed by me in the wet lab at Dundalk Community College. Most notably, my Urban Design Assistance Team pics were not. I had to use generically printed ones for that web page.
I have more great photos printed and many good negatives to work with.
I have desperate and determined plans for many more photographs I desire to produce.
Unfortunately, I am about bankrupt in everyway.
So consider the photographic and written work I have published on here and in numerous other places all over the Internet to be a damned good example of what I have done, am doing, and will do, when and if I can.
I have a lot of work to do to be anywhere near satisfied at all.
I hope that you enjoy some of the photographic work which I have on there, and also on other web sites too.
Thank you.
My myspace name is ursusdave.
www.myspace.com/ursusdave
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
dundalk maryland
dundalk 4th of july
dundalk 4th of july parade
parade
dundalk 4th of july fireworks
fireworks
dundalk heritage fair
jmj properties
bethlehem steel
sparrows point maryland
millers island
fort howard maryland
baltimore
maryland
fells point
us army
30th artillery brigade
okinawa
blues
photography
I believe that there is something on there for most everyone to enjoy.
You can see the strength and breadth and depth of my talent for certain.
You will see who I am inside.
Just keep in mind that I am a very low-income US Army veteran disabled by a bad back and a good dose of depression, who had to produce this work without the benefits of any financial gain. I was forced to use old banged up photo equipment at times. And I worked hard at my photography.
Most of the photographs on here were custom hand printed by me in the wet lab at Dundalk Community College. Most notably, my Urban Design Assistance Team pics were not. I had to use generically printed ones for that web page.
I have more great photos printed and many good negatives to work with.
I have desperate and determined plans for many more photographs I desire to produce.
Unfortunately, I am about bankrupt in everyway.
So consider the photographic and written work I have published on here and in numerous other places all over the Internet to be a damned good example of what I have done, am doing, and will do, when and if I can.
I have a lot of work to do to be anywhere near satisfied at all.
I hope that you enjoy some of the photographic work which I have on there, and also on other web sites too.
Thank you.
My myspace name is ursusdave.
www.myspace.com/ursusdave
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
dundalk maryland
dundalk 4th of july
dundalk 4th of july parade
parade
dundalk 4th of july fireworks
fireworks
dundalk heritage fair
jmj properties
bethlehem steel
sparrows point maryland
millers island
fort howard maryland
baltimore
maryland
fells point
us army
30th artillery brigade
okinawa
blues
photography
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
The House Fire
The House Fire
by David Robert Crews
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.
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.
The Story Begins
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 to 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 north bound 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."
The End
Epilogue
If you also read or have read my other stories about Maine, you will see that when I went to work for my Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha, a few months after this first story took place, that they had decided that I was to work for them for nearly nothing for the bulk of my adult life and be their much abused quasi-slave; or, as far as they were concerned, I was to go straight to Hell.
That unnecessary bullcrap of theirs has caused my family and me a lot of problems. Most of what happened concerning these facts is all written out in my stories. Fortunately, there’s a lot of wild fun and good times in my stories too. Plus, you will learn some of what I learned about all kinds of things back then.
Between November 1968, when I began working at Katahdin Lodge, and November 1969, when I entered the U.S. Army, I learned more while working at the Lodge and living amongst the local Mainers then I ever could have learned in four years of college.
Epilogue
If you also read or have read my other stories about Maine, you will see that when I went to work for my Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha, a few months after this first story took place, that they had decided that I was to work for them for nearly nothing for the bulk of my adult life and be their much abused quasi-slave; or, as far as they were concerned, I was to go straight to Hell.
That unnecessary bullcrap of theirs has caused my family and me a lot of problems. Most of what happened concerning these facts is all written out in my stories. Fortunately, there’s a lot of wild fun and good times in my stories too. Plus, you will learn some of what I learned about all kinds of things back then.
Between November 1968, when I began working at Katahdin Lodge, and November 1969, when I entered the U.S. Army, I learned more while working at the Lodge and living amongst the local Mainers then I ever could have learned in four years of college.
david robert crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
writing
creative writing
northern maine
Dundalk Maryland
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.
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
northern maine
photography
writing
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.
David Robert Crews
ursusdave
patten maine
bear hunting
northern maine
photography
writing
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Baltimore Sun Newspaper Article, About Sparrows Point Maryland Steel Mill, Which Quotes Me
The legacy of Sparrows Point
Steel mill, company town, center of community life
By Tricia Bishop
Sun reporter
August 5, 2007
For the better part of three decades, as Richard Offley grew from a boy to a man on the peninsula between the Patapsco and Back rivers, the Sparrows Point steel mill was at the center of community life.
Back then, it was still owned by Bethlehem Steel Corp., as it had been since 1916, and many of its employees lived in its namesake company town. The mill put food on their tables, maintained their schools and churches and sponsored the softball teams.
"'The Company,' we called it, whatever the Company wanted, that's pretty much what happened," said Offley, 62. "They owned the town, they owned the fire department, they owned the police department. Basically, they ran everything that had to do with our lives."
But those days are gone. For some locals, Sparrows Point is essentially dead and news of its pending sale to a group led by Chicago-based Esmark Inc. unremarkable. When the announcement was made Thursday, it drew little more than comments about domestic owners versus foreign ones and the occasional shared memory.
"This is the fourth owner in four years," said Lionel van Dommelen as he perched on a bar stool and surveyed the lunchtime crowd at his Dundalk restaurant, the Sea Horse Inn. "It's not a big shock."
Back when the mill was in its prime, steel workers drank their way through 70 barrels of beer at the inn every week, he said. Now, the bar sells 10 to15 barrels' worth, mostly to retired General Motors workers. Only a handful of van Dommelen's customers work at Sparrows Point.
The mill that armed America during World War II and helped turn Baltimore into a major port has a tenth of the work force it had in its heyday.
Shopping plazas that once bustled with mill family business are barren. Many of the bars where mill employees had their first after-work beers are gone, as is the town of Sparrows Point itself, dismantled in 1973.
The pensions of many retirees have been gutted. And graduates of Sparrows Point High School now head off to college, not the mill.
"It's only the older people who remember what it was like," said Offley, who spent summers toiling at the mill while he was in college, preparing to become a teacher. Now retired, he volunteers at the Dundalk-Patapsco Neck Historical Society and Museum.
"The younger people, their interests are elsewhere, their employment is elsewhere for the most part. I don't think it means as much to them by a long shot."
For many of those raised in the area, the mill's ghosts are everywhere -- on street signs with names like Steel Avenue and Bethlehem Boulevard; in the independent welding and excavation shops dotting Dundalk and Edgemere, many begun by laid-off mill workers; and in the Turners Station neighborhood, which is still predominantly African-American. Black mill workers were allowed to live there -- but not Dundalk -- during segregation years.
Across the street from the mill, machines could be heard faintly humming. The dirt they stirred up lingered in the air over nearby Edgemere, where new homes mingle with the old.
And at North Point Boulevard and Sparrows Point Road, Jocelyn Palmer, 19, stood behind a restaurant counter on a recent afternoon, taking orders.
The structure was built in 1941, originally a Gulf station selling gas for 19 cents a gallon, but Palmer knows it as Pizza Roma. She's worked there three years, returning this summer after semesters spent in college out of state studying hospitality management.
From the front door, Palmer can see the mill, straight ahead on the horizon. Her grandfather worked there once. So did an uncle.
"Way back, when our parents were growing up, it was booming, and now it's dead," she said.
No one she knows from her 2006 graduating class at Sparrows Point High School went to work at the mill. No one even talked about it. "I think, one day," she said, "there will be no business there at all."
Teenagers of the 1940s, '50s and '60s living in the Sparrows Point company town, and in neighboring Dundalk and Edgemere, knew that well-paying careers were always waiting for them at the mill. They counted on it.
But their successors, who watched parents and grandparents lose mill jobs one by one as the company cut costs, rarely even consider it.
"What kid wants to go to work at a place where their father was laid off more than he worked?" said Joe Cristy, who grew up in Dundalk and still lives there.
"Now, when kids come out of school, they have to find jobs that they use from their shoulders up, their mental faculties, not from their shoulders down, their physical labor. Those jobs don't exist anymore."
Cristy was a third-generation mill worker, taking his first position there in 1966, when he was 18, before he earned a degree from the Johns Hopkins University. At the time, Sparrows Point had about 27,000 employees, down from a peak of almost 31,000 in 1959. The numbers kept falling as the demand for steel waned. Today, fewer than 2,500 people work there.
Cristy said he knew the jobs he relied on growing up wouldn't be there for his son, who's now 30 and lives in North Carolina with his own family.
"I knew the financial situation of Bethlehem, I knew the import/export situation, I knew we weren't putting money into the facilities," said Cristy, whose final post at Sparrows Point was as general foreman of the No. 3 rod mill. He was laid off in 1991.
In 1997, Bethlehem Steel sold its shipyard. In 2003, Bethlehem went under, and Ohio-based International Steel Group bought what was left of it, including the mill. Then, in 2005, Netherlands-based Mittal Steel Co. NV bought International Steel. And Thursday, Mittal agreed to sell the Sparrows Point mill under a Justice Department order so it could complete a merger with another steelmaker.
But the community is largely unmoved.
"Nobody's going to believe [in the mill] now," said David Robert Crews, 57. "The guys' pay got cut, pensions got cut, medical got cut, seniority was wiped out for some of them. I don't know all of the details, but it was pretty bad."
Crews' parents grew up in Sparrows Point as he did, before the town shut down. He now lives in Dundalk and pays homage to the region through his blog, "Blue Skies over Dundalk Maryland" (davidrcrews2.blogspot.com).
"It's changed," Crews said. "Now, nobody I know really trusts [the mill]."
Last month at D.A. Designs in Edgemere, George Morgan pulled out his wallet to pay for a fresh haircut, cradling the small oxygen machine he carries to help him breathe. Morgan has pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs often associated with inhaling irritants, such as dust and dirt.
He worked at the mill for 31 years. "I hated the job," he said.
At 81, Morgan has stories to spare. He and his sister were the first set of twins born in Sparrows Point, he said, delivered by a doctor who drove a Model-T Ford door to door on his rounds. He remembers hot summers before the days of air conditioning, hanging out on porch swings, spraying friends with hose water.
When he was 15, his family built the Gulf gas station that has since become Pizza Roma.
When he was 22, he went to work for the mill. There, he met his wife of 66 years (a telephone operator), and they raised six children, all of whom got college educations and scattered throughout the state.
"It was a good life," he said. But now it's gone, along with much of his pension. "For all people around now, it's a done issue."
For the better part of three decades, as Richard Offley grew from a boy to a man on the peninsula between the Patapsco and Back rivers, the Sparrows Point steel mill was at the center of community life.
Back then, it was still owned by Bethlehem Steel Corp., as it had been since 1916, and many of its employees lived in its namesake company town. The mill put food on their tables, maintained their schools and churches and sponsored the softball teams.
"'The Company,' we called it, whatever the Company wanted, that's pretty much what happened," said Offley, 62. "They owned the town, they owned the fire department, they owned the police department. Basically, they ran everything that had to do with our lives."
But those days are gone. For some locals, Sparrows Point is essentially dead and news of its pending sale to a group led by Chicago-based Esmark Inc. unremarkable. When the announcement was made Thursday, it drew little more than comments about domestic owners versus foreign ones and the occasional shared memory.
"This is the fourth owner in four years," said Lionel van Dommelen as he perched on a bar stool and surveyed the lunchtime crowd at his Dundalk restaurant, the Sea Horse Inn. "It's not a big shock."
Back when the mill was in its prime, steel workers drank their way through 70 barrels of beer at the inn every week, he said. Now, the bar sells 10 to15 barrels' worth, mostly to retired General Motors workers. Only a handful of van Dommelen's customers work at Sparrows Point.
The mill that armed America during World War II and helped turn Baltimore into a major port has a tenth of the work force it had in its heyday.
Shopping plazas that once bustled with mill family business are barren. Many of the bars where mill employees had their first after-work beers are gone, as is the town of Sparrows Point itself, dismantled in 1973.
The pensions of many retirees have been gutted. And graduates of Sparrows Point High School now head off to college, not the mill.
"It's only the older people who remember what it was like," said Offley, who spent summers toiling at the mill while he was in college, preparing to become a teacher. Now retired, he volunteers at the Dundalk-Patapsco Neck Historical Society and Museum.
"The younger people, their interests are elsewhere, their employment is elsewhere for the most part. I don't think it means as much to them by a long shot."
For many of those raised in the area, the mill's ghosts are everywhere -- on street signs with names like Steel Avenue and Bethlehem Boulevard; in the independent welding and excavation shops dotting Dundalk and Edgemere, many begun by laid-off mill workers; and in the Turners Station neighborhood, which is still predominantly African-American. Black mill workers were allowed to live there -- but not Dundalk -- during segregation years.
Across the street from the mill, machines could be heard faintly humming. The dirt they stirred up lingered in the air over nearby Edgemere, where new homes mingle with the old.
And at North Point Boulevard and Sparrows Point Road, Jocelyn Palmer, 19, stood behind a restaurant counter on a recent afternoon, taking orders.
The structure was built in 1941, originally a Gulf station selling gas for 19 cents a gallon, but Palmer knows it as Pizza Roma. She's worked there three years, returning this summer after semesters spent in college out of state studying hospitality management.
From the front door, Palmer can see the mill, straight ahead on the horizon. Her grandfather worked there once. So did an uncle.
"Way back, when our parents were growing up, it was booming, and now it's dead," she said.
No one she knows from her 2006 graduating class at Sparrows Point High School went to work at the mill. No one even talked about it. "I think, one day," she said, "there will be no business there at all."
Teenagers of the 1940s, '50s and '60s living in the Sparrows Point company town, and in neighboring Dundalk and Edgemere, knew that well-paying careers were always waiting for them at the mill. They counted on it.
But their successors, who watched parents and grandparents lose mill jobs one by one as the company cut costs, rarely even consider it.
"What kid wants to go to work at a place where their father was laid off more than he worked?" said Joe Cristy, who grew up in Dundalk and still lives there.
"Now, when kids come out of school, they have to find jobs that they use from their shoulders up, their mental faculties, not from their shoulders down, their physical labor. Those jobs don't exist anymore."
Cristy was a third-generation mill worker, taking his first position there in 1966, when he was 18, before he earned a degree from the Johns Hopkins University. At the time, Sparrows Point had about 27,000 employees, down from a peak of almost 31,000 in 1959. The numbers kept falling as the demand for steel waned. Today, fewer than 2,500 people work there.
Cristy said he knew the jobs he relied on growing up wouldn't be there for his son, who's now 30 and lives in North Carolina with his own family.
"I knew the financial situation of Bethlehem, I knew the import/export situation, I knew we weren't putting money into the facilities," said Cristy, whose final post at Sparrows Point was as general foreman of the No. 3 rod mill. He was laid off in 1991.
In 1997, Bethlehem Steel sold its shipyard. In 2003, Bethlehem went under, and Ohio-based International Steel Group bought what was left of it, including the mill. Then, in 2005, Netherlands-based Mittal Steel Co. NV bought International Steel. And Thursday, Mittal agreed to sell the Sparrows Point mill under a Justice Department order so it could complete a merger with another steelmaker.
But the community is largely unmoved.
"Nobody's going to believe [in the mill] now," said David Robert Crews, 57. "The guys' pay got cut, pensions got cut, medical got cut, seniority was wiped out for some of them. I don't know all of the details, but it was pretty bad."
Crews' parents grew up in Sparrows Point as he did, before the town shut down. He now lives in Dundalk and pays homage to the region through his blog, "Blue Skies over Dundalk Maryland" (davidrcrews2.blogspot.com).
"It's changed," Crews said. "Now, nobody I know really trusts [the mill]."
Last month at D.A. Designs in Edgemere, George Morgan pulled out his wallet to pay for a fresh haircut, cradling the small oxygen machine he carries to help him breathe. Morgan has pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs often associated with inhaling irritants, such as dust and dirt.
He worked at the mill for 31 years. "I hated the job," he said.
At 81, Morgan has stories to spare. He and his sister were the first set of twins born in Sparrows Point, he said, delivered by a doctor who drove a Model-T Ford door to door on his rounds. He remembers hot summers before the days of air conditioning, hanging out on porch swings, spraying friends with hose water.
When he was 15, his family built the Gulf gas station that has since become Pizza Roma.
When he was 22, he went to work for the mill. There, he met his wife of 66 years (a telephone operator), and they raised six children, all of whom got college educations and scattered throughout the state.
"It was a good life," he said. But now it's gone, along with much of his pension. "For all people around now, it's a done issue."
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
I'm Kickin' Ass and I Know the Names
You know the old saying, "kickin' ass and takin' names" ?
It is Wednesday August 1, 2007 at about 4:44 PM in the afternoon, from here on, at this point in time, let it be known that I am kicking ass and I know the names.
david robert crews
ursusdave
Dundalk Maryland
JMJ Properties
Dundalk Heritage Fair
us army
heritage fair
army
photography
dumpster diving
veterans rights
veterans health care
Okinawa
30th Artillery Brigade
okinawa
patten maine
fells point
baltimore
canvas tent
camping safety
college
equestrian photography
bear hunting
It is Wednesday August 1, 2007 at about 4:44 PM in the afternoon, from here on, at this point in time, let it be known that I am kicking ass and I know the names.
david robert crews
ursusdave
Dundalk Maryland
JMJ Properties
Dundalk Heritage Fair
us army
heritage fair
army
photography
dumpster diving
veterans rights
veterans health care
Okinawa
30th Artillery Brigade
okinawa
patten maine
fells point
baltimore
canvas tent
camping safety
college
equestrian photography
bear hunting
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