Katahdin Lodge and Camps of Patten, Maine In 1969

Look at all that front lawn I had to mow down there at Katahdin Lodge and Camps, in the summer of 1969.

Anytime Finley Clarke's Nephew, that'd be me, David Robert Crews, was living and working at Finley's Katahdin Lodge and Camps, I was happy to be the Lodge's sole grass cutter and weed whacker.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

And my Uncle Finley and his wife, my Aunt Martha, both completely agreed with me.

In November of 1968, I moved, from where I grew up in Dundalk, Maryland, a Baltimore County suburb of Baltimore City, to Katahdin Lodge of Patten, Maine, to begin living and working at the Lodge. In effect exchanging the crowded, industrialized sights, sounds and smells of suburban sprawl for the quiet, sometimes gentle/sometimes harsh, natural beauty and fresh air of the heavily forested, sparsely populated Katahdin Valley.

The very first time I had entered that wide, rolling, deep green, mountain and valley landscape, was during summer vacation of 1966. I was a 16 year old passenger in my father's car. Dad, my mother, younger sister, cousin Nelson and I were on our way, up from Maryland, to spend a week at the hunting lodge my Uncle Finley, my mother's younger brother and my father's best friend, had bought the year before. We were driving about 6 miles south of the Lodge, when I was blessed with my first full, sweeping look from the northern Appalachian Mountains to our left, then back across Rural Route 11 and out across the wide, rolling Katahdin Valley to our right.

I felt the very soul of me expand -- powerfully -- outwards in all directions around our moving car -- with such secure, natural warmth that I can not fully express. Something previously unknown to me, from deep inside of my living spirit, reached out and embraced the countryside. It instantly mingled all in amongst the multitudes of tall, healthy green trees. Then slid back inside of me.

For the first time in my life, it felt like I had finally arrived at home.

I had found my most comfortable place on earth. I was destined to love that sweet, rough section of God's Country more than anyplace else I have ever been.

Which is why, at the end of Thanksgiving Day Week of November 1968, after my father and I had spent that week at the Lodge, I accepted my Uncle Fin and Aunt Marty's request that I stay there at Katahdin Lodge to live with and work for them, instead of going back home to Baltimore to join the US Merchant Marines, as I had told everyone in my family that I was planning on doing.

I graduated from Dundalk High School on June 5, 1968, and had planned on joining the Merchant Marines before my official Army draft notice came. That way, I could not be drafted into the US Army, trained as an infantryman and sent to die in Vietnam. At that time in our nation's history, most young Americans thought that all military draftees were sent to Vietnam as infantrymen. And that few ever returned home fully alive.

In November of '68, I figured that I had about another year before my draft notice arrived in the mail. So I stayed at Katahdin Lodge, and my father drove back home to the Baltimore suburbs alone.

And I experienced my first wintertime in northern Maine.

Eventually, after a great winter spent at Katahdin Lodge, with my Uncle Fin and Aunt Marty, a few paying lodge guests, along with plenty enough of the finest kind of Mainers, especially the country girls, and after doing a whole lotta' snowmobile riding, but mostly doing a whole lotta' hard, often dangerous physical labor, I became a Registered Maine Guide--who specialized in guiding bear hunters.

I was the right man for the job.

Especially when it came time for keeping the Lodge's roofs, walkways, parking areas and large horseshoe shaped driveway shoveled or plowed free from the record snowfall of the winter of 1968-69 and for keeping the Lodge's substantial, rocky lawns mowed and looking good.

All through my teenage years, while still living in Dundalk, I had shoveled neighborhood sidewalks and driveways, and had mowed and trimmed neighborhood lawns for money.

My way of viewing doing that work was similar to how some other young men view being on an organized football team.

Participating whole heartedly in football practice and playing football games is a very physically, mentally and emotionally demanding challenge. And in order to be, and feel, successful, and to win any games, football players must love 'tackling' those multiple layers of challenges. They must also learn to understand and respect their opponents.

You already know that mowing lawns or shoveling snow can also be a very physically, mentally and emotionally demanding challenge. Many teens, especially today's computer dependent teens, do not want to mow any lawns or shovel anything at all around their house, or anybody else's. Other teens love working out in gyms and being on sports teams. The average kid thinks of lawn mowing and snow shoveling as being a serious, frustrating hassle. But I approached it from a different angle.

I thought of it all as, "How can I understand the varying challenges of each individual mowing or shoveling job, in order to do each job the easiest and most efficient way, while setting and maintaining a steady pace at working that neither drains my energy and strength too quickly, nor takes me too long? And I want to evenly exercise and strengthen my body as much as possible. But, I must respect my own abilities and limitations, and weigh them against the various degrees of difficulty that each job possesses."

When lawn mowing, I started each lawn by first looking the yard all over, and figuring out how to make the most of the terrain along with the layout of typical yard objects like a swimming pool and a birdbath. It was the challenge of creating a geometric mowing pattern that allowed me to git-'er-done right. A pattern to be used every time I mowed that lawn. I always wanted to make as many passes as possible with the mower facing in the same direction, with the cut grass blowing out from under the mower only one time--to avoid building up too much cut grass under the mower. That meant pulling the mower backwards almost as many times as pushing it forwards. Which also exercised my body more evenly. I have never seen any other old or young mowing pro doing this. I guarantee you that most power lawn mowers cut the same going in either direction. You can use that technique on the fussiest of folk's lawns, and it will look just fine.

But it also means having the common sense to realize that bagging cut grass and putting it out for the trash man to collect is asinine. Because you are taking natural fertilizer away and wasting it. I ask you, so what if a little bit of cut grass gets dragged into your house? It won't kill you or cause cancer in your offspring, but the chemical fertilizers you may use on your lawns can kill by causing cancerous type medical conditions.

For shoveling snow, first I see if the walk or driveway is lower at one end. I always start at the lower end, no matter how slight the angle of the grade is, because it allows for you to not have to reach as far as in reaching downhill with the shovel, and each shovelful will be lifted up a slightly shorter distance. Each snowfall is either dry and light, or wet and heavy, to varying degrees, so I find out how heavy each shovelful of snow feels. I scoop up the same basic amount of snow in each shovelful and set a pace and rhythm that is akin to the rhythm of old time field hand laborers' work songs.

Everything I did to mow or shovel like I have told you counts towards a better outcome, like shaving fractions of ounces off of football players', heavy, protective gear by using lighter, space age materials when making the helmets and padding. The lighter the gear, the faster and further the players can run. And by coming up with separate strategies, 'running different patterns', for each mowing or shoveling situation, it was even more like playing a football game against each and every shaggy lawn or snow covered sidewalk and driveway job that I 'tackled'.

Ya' see what I mean by comparing playing football to mowing and shoveling? It is similar. Unfortunately, mowing and shoveling don't earn ya' any cheers from a crowd of spectators, no scholarships are awarded, and there's no ego boosting or busting attention from the media. But mowing or shovelling still isn't the terrible and unpleasant chore that most kids think it is. It is all about how you view the challenges and overcome them.

After a good snow in Dundalk, when you walked down the street I grew up on, Dunmanway, you could usually tell which sidewalks I had shoveled. My shoveling jobs were almost always wider and straighter than any other sidewalks on the block. When I finished up mowing and trimming a lawn, it looked neat and tidy. I couldn't stand the sight of any blades of grass sticking up above the rest. It all had to be cut and trimmed to a reasonably even level.

It simply makes good sense to me to do the job right. And that personal maxim made me a good employee of my Uncle Finley's, because Fin fully personified that work ethic--every working day of his life.

While I was growing up, my parents had provided me with plenty enough clothing, other necessities of life, toys, model car kits, and then, as I passed age 14, Rock and Roll record albums became my preferred Christmas and birthday presents. My father worked in steel mills most of his life, and my mother usually had a good part time job. My entire extended family lived quite well enough, just about right in the middle of the American middle class.

But I wanted to purchase certain items that my parents could not afford. So I started my own little lawn care and snow shoveling business.

The Baltimore area does not receive a lot of snowfall each winter, but it was enough for me to earn maybe a hundred to a hundred and twenty bucks a winter. That snow shoveling business of mine allowed me to afford plenty of model car building kits (AMT Three In One Kits), record albums and some clothes.

Then all through the spring, summer and into the fall, the money from my lawn care work flowed into my bank account mighty darned good and steadily. Sometimes it garnered me better average hourly wages than those of the Bethlehem Steel Mill and Chevrolet Plant employees whose lawns I mowed.

Using a power mower is one of my all time favorite forms of exercise and outdoors activities. I kid you not.

After my body had matured enough to be nearly through the personal trials and tribulations of passing through puberty, and my brain had begun to achieve some solid degree of common sense and job site safety sensibilities, and I had grown strong enough to mow my family's large 100 x 60 foot yard, with a gas powered lawn mower, my father never had to tell me when to mow the yard. I did it because I was naturally compelled to pitch in and help take care of our home, it's good exercise and it paid well.

From the time that I was 12 or 13, until I moved away from my childhood home, our lawn there on Dunmanway never went for more than a week and a half without me cutting and trimming it to near perfection. It felt so good. And dad paid fair wages too.

After our lawn was done, I went on and mowed and trimmed other neighborhood family's yards for more money.

I can't stand self-propelled mowers. They don't actually make the work any easier. And my well honed, sculptor-style technique of mowing requires unapposing, fully dexterous control of the mowing machine at all times.

My all-time favorite lawn mower was a gas powered Lawn Boy, with a 15-inch blade. That little buddy and I could git'er done. We worked well together, through most of my teen years.

Now, when using a 15 incher, the smallest sized power mower blade I have ever known of, you have to make more passes on a lawn. But anything with a blade over 18 inches wide is too big and bulky for my personal, particular mowing technique. I'd rather zip right along with a lighter 15 or 18 inch mower, but do more zigs and zags, then to push a heavier, lunky darn 20 to 24 incher along for fewer, but slower and much sweatier zigs and zags. It seems that everybody else in America believes that the wider the mower blade, the quicker and easier they can mow a lawn, but that just ain't so. I know, because I'm an old pro.

Never had a power lawn trimmer either, and I've rarely ever used one. I do most of the trimming with the mower. That's why I prefer smaller bladed, lighter mowers that are not self propelled. They're easier to maneuver up against fences, above ground swimming pools and buildings. For me, them old timey scissor lookin' hand clippers were the right tool for doing any small amounts of trimming that I couldn't get done with a mower.

But I was younger and much more supple at the time.

Today, ten minutes work with a pair of those hand clippers, and I'd end up hobbling towards my medicine cabinet, with a screamin' sacroiliac steadily reminding me that those manual tool lawn care days of mine ended when my lower back was operated on.

Yeah, I know, I'm older, overweight and I get in the way sometimes, of those Spanish dudes who do the lawn care work for this rental townhouse and apartment complex I live in.

But I'm still gonna' tell you that my personal motto, concerning lawn mowing, has always been that the job isn't done until the sidewalks and driveways are swept clean.

I hate everything about them thar' new fangled, ear splitting, lung burning, back breaking, heavy darned gas powered leaf blowing machines. It is much easier and more peaceful to use a simple ol' broom to sweep the grass clippings off sidewalks and driveways--if you'll accept my opinion of it.

In my younger days, I mowed a lot of grass in Maryland and in Maine. I actually enjoyed it. But there was one humongous difference between mowing lawns in Maryland and mowing lawns in Maine:

THAT FRIGGIN FOUR FOOT THICK CLOUD OF MAINE BLACKFLIES, MOSQUITOES AND NO-SEE-UMS STEADILY SWARMING ALL AROUND MY BUG BATTERED HEAD!!!!

All I can say here is, "Praise the Lord and pass the Old Woodsman Bug Dope".

See this website as a book, viewing it a page at a time. Turn the pages by clicking on that OLDER POST button below. 

Click on HOME under this to go to the first page.

There is a table of contents over in the right hand column at the bottom of every page- under BLOG ARCHIVE. 

Patten, Maine and Dundalk, Maryland-- Two Small, Somewhat Similar American Towns

In order for you to understand what my Northern Maine Adventures truly meant to an eighteen-year-old, Baltimore area, suburban kid you must know a little about where I lived, and what my life was like, just before I moved to Maine.

Throughout this new web site of mine, "The World's First Digital Coffee Table Book," I am telling both northern Maine and Baltimore, Maryland area based, 1968-69 era, fact filled, fun filled historical stories.

For those good reasons, I am going to show you a photo of "downtown" Patten, Maine and a photo of "downtown" Dundalk, Maryland. The photos were taken 40 years apart, but neither downtown area has changed very much during those 40 years.


Nah' folks, there really wasn't a dirt road going through Patten, Maine, circa 1967, when the photo was taken. Main Street was being dug up, repaired and repaved.

They had to dig so deep down under where the surface of the tar topped street had been because there used to be whole logs embedded under it all across the entire center of town there. Whole logs had been installed back in the olden days, to provide road support. I believe I heard it was an aggravating engineering mistake of bone shaking proportions from the 1800s. In wintertime, frost "heaves" up anything solid that is under any tar topped road surface up there in northern Maine. Consequently, every winter, it became unbearably bumpy when driving through town, until the street work shown in those two photos was completed.

Compare the above digital, JPEG file copy of my photo of downtown Patten, Maine circa 1967, with the different JPEG file copy of the same photo that is below this text. The above copy is as good as I can do with digital photograph enhancements.


I am sufficiently experienced and fully capable at custom hand printing photographs in a photographic "wet" lab, but I have no digital photography experience. I need to learn digital photography.

The JPEG copy above shows the lower half of the Patten photo best, with fairly discernible detail in the street and sidewalk areas of the photo. The copy below displays the potential for great looking clouds in a digital, full customization of the photo. I am not speaking about over enhancing, adding anything to or faking anything for a final, really nice digital file version of the photo. I simply desire to bring the late 1960s, historic, subject matter, along with its interesting details seen in the photograph, out past the limitations of those two current JPEG files of it. So that we can all enjoy seeing the history much better.

These two JPEG files were created from a print that was copied from an older print, which was developed by my neighborhood, now long gone, Stansbury Pharmacy photo service; and that older print was printed from a negative that had been exposed using a cheap, little Kodak Instamatic Camera.


This is a recent photo of Dundalk Village Shopping Center, in Maryland. This street is Shipping Place. It is the "Main Street" in the neighborhood where I grew up, and where I live today.

You can see that Dundalk's main street has similarities to Main Street in Patten. Both commercial districts have about the same amount of retail space, with apartments above some of the stores. It's just that Dundalk has all of its retail/residential buildings on one side of its main street.

On the other side of Shipping Place there is the small Veteran's Park, in two separate sections; also, over there is the Dundalk-Patapsco Neck Historical Society Museum; and the Dundalk Post Office is on that side of the street too.

When I was taking that photo of downtown Patten, the Patten Post Office was to the right and somewhere behind me. But Patten doesn't need any parks, because it is surrounded by miles and miles of farms and woodlands.

In 1969, when most of the photos on this web site were taken, and when most of my written stories about my adventures in Maine took place, the "downtown" areas of both Dundalk and Patten were very lively places of retail commerce. They were very sociable, small American towns. Friendly places where local teenagers had good times hanging out a lot, but did not cause too much trouble. So when I moved from Maryland to Maine, Dundalk's small town type of lifestyle helped me to fit right in up there in Patten.

If you would like to see more photos of Dundalk, Md., click on the link in the upper right side column for Photo Albums of David Robert Crews on Photocamel.com. There is a Dundalk, and a Maine, photo album on there. The full extent of my photography talents are well represented, in eight photo albums, at the other end of that link.

During 1970-71, I was a US Army photographer. Photos and stories from that part of my life are linked to this page over in the right side column. The links are An American GI On Okinawa In 1970-71 and also Lieutenant T. Gordan Barber and The Stolen Marine Corps Property. But, after my honorable discharge from the Army, I was not an active photographer again until 1999.

From around 1999 to 2003, I was a part time photography student at Dundalk Community College. I had full use of the black and white and color photo "wet" labs at DCC. The labs were top-of-the-line; the instructors and lab aids were fully competent at their professions.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the digital photography revolution is winning a modernization war against film photography; and the terms of surrender for old-time film photographers, like me, is that most wet labs must be shut down. The DCC wet labs I worked in are two of those defeated former bastions of film based photography.

The guy who ran the DCC photo labs, Mark Trojan, is my age, and we have much in common. For one, he and I each attended a 1972 Pink Floyd concert at the acoustically perfect Lyric Opera House in Baltimore, separately, we did not meet until 1999 at DCC, but our memories of that stupendous Pink Floyd concert are nearly-exactly the same. Mark kept a rockin' little ol' stereo system in the photo lab's central, lighted work space. He and I both own large libraries of recorded music, which are quite similar. That all boils down to I did a lot of hard, successful work in those wet labs and had a truly great time at it.

There are photographs of Maine and Mainers and me on here that were scanned from 8x10 photographs, which I custom hand printed in the DCC wet labs, from 1968-69 era negatives.

If anyone is interested in paying to use any of my photographs for commercial purposes, know that some of my photos are capable of looking a whole lot crispier through the magic of multiple ones and zeros. some need digital help, but most are excellent as they are.

You can contact me at: ursusdave at yahoo dot com

I am chomping at the bit to go full digital with my photography and to learn how to do custom digital work on the old photographs on this blog.


See this website as a book, viewing it a page at a time. Turn the pages by clicking on that OLDER POST button below. 

Click on HOME under this to go to the first page.

There is a table of contents over in the right hand column at the bottom of every page - under BLOG ARCHIVE. 

Two Legged Dear Hunting In Patten Maine

This shot was taken at the end of a fantastic week-long stay at my uncle's hunting lodge in Maine. It was Thanksgiving Day Week of 1968. That good-lookin-like-me fellow there is my father. Dad is getting ready to go back to our home town of Dundalk, Maryland, a Baltimore County suburb of Baltimore City.

I had planned on going back home with him, and then joining the U.S. Merchant Marines. That way the U.S. military couldn't draft me and send me to Vietnam.

But I am staying there in Maine to work for and live with my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley K. Clarke, at their Katahdin Lodge and Camps in Aroostook County. They desperately needed manpower to help operate their business, and I was it.

At first, I had my bags all packed up and in the station wagon there. We were all exchanging heart felt so-longs and see-ya-laters, when Fin and Marty launched into psy-ops type maneuvers and manipulations that were designed to keep me there. They promised me use of their vehicles for my spending lots of time in town enjoying the finest kind of country-kid style fun and games; the food was always good and plentiful on Marty's dining room table; and then they said, "You like riding the snowmobiles, think of all the fun you'll have doing that."

That were all she wrote, so to speak. I yanked my suitcases back out from the Ford wagon there, and the rest is history, as they say.

For Dad and I, that Thanksgiving Week was a greatest time of our lives. It was the last week of deer hunting season. But I hadn't become interested in big game hunting yet. I was there for the country girls and good times with all them wonderful teenage Mainer kids up in that part of God's Country.

Around Katahdin Lodge, during that week in late November of '68, it was said that my father, Bob, went out to hunt four legged deer during the day, and his son, David, went out to hunt two legged dear at night.


David Robert Crews Copyright 2008

See this website as a book, viewing it a page at a time. Turn the pages by clicking on that OLDER POST button below. 

Click on HOME under this to go to the first page.


There is a table of contents over in the right hand column at the bottom of every page- under BLOG ARCHIVE.

Splittin' Wood and Workin' Hard

That's me, when I was finishing up with splitting 19 cords of hardwood, for firewood. I worked on that wood pile for 9 or 10 hours a day, for 10 weekdays, during 2 weeks in the late summer of 1969. My Uncle Finley bought the wood and had it delivered to Katahdin Lodge in full length tree sized sections. The Lodge only had wood stoves for heat, and 19 cords was enough to last through the entire upcoming winter. Gary Glidden (Finley's other bear hunting guide) did the chainsawing work to cut the tree length sections up into those short lengths. Then I split 'um up and stacked 'um up good and proper.

According to the way some photographers see it, this is a self portrait. I conceived the shot, directed a helper to stand on the exact spot I had chosen, told them to make sure they could see a certain background object at the left edge of my camera's view finder and also the top of my head in the viewfinder. Then I told them to squeeze the shutter when they heard my splittin' axe kachunck! into the wood -- and it turned out good.


Cleaning up after those two weeks of splitting wood. That's me with my back to you, Finley lookin' at you and two of our paying bear hunters who enjoyed pitching in to help out a little.

Heh, heh, yeah; those other three men were helping me clean up the little wood chips and scraps that were scattered on the ground at the end of my 90-some man hours of wood splitting and stacking; but nobody at all ever got between me and the splittin' axes, mauls and wedges when I was steadily swingin' heavy steel and making small chunks of firewood from great big tree trunks.

Do you see that 1967 or maybe '68 Chevy pickup truck back there, in the photo?

That was my favorite vehicle of all times to drive.

It had: four wheel drive; large sized, heavy duty, all seasons-mud-snow super gripping tires; a flat head type of 290 cubic inch straight six-cylinder engine; a four-speed standard transmission with a "granny gear"; and a stick shifter on the floor.

The granny gear was first gear. It was there to drive real slow with through mud and snow, or to get the truck slowly moving when it had an extra heavy load to haul. We Katahdin Lodge drivers normally used that four speed as a three speed, never employing first gear till the going got really rough--like in a wheel swallowing, mucky, oozing ol' quagmire.

Driving with a standard transmission gives a driver much more control of the vehicle's precise speed. It runs tighter on both the acceleration and deceleration. The deceleration effect also helps slow the vehicle down for curves or going down hills. I knew and had always made good use of the basics of those facts but was actually given a very worthwhile tip for developing better, standard transmission, driving skills by one of the Lodge's paying bear hunters from Massachusetts. The tip was to shift gears less frequently and at slightly higher RPMs than when most people shift. That allows a driver much better control of the vehicle, it is easier to change gears and with much smoother riding--if you do it right. I always had an open mind for learning such things.

The truck had neither power brakes nor power steering. That lack of power assist was best for the way that we had to drive up there in northern Maine in order to get our daily business taken care of. Or when I was just driving around enjoying the wild and wonderful Maine countryside with a girlfriend or other friends.

Having no power assist on the steering makes it much harder to turn the steering wheel, because it gives a lot of resistance to a driver's manipulations of the front wheels. That forces wheel handling efforts to steer the vehicle much more precisely, which was better for driving at higher than posted speeds on Maine's wild and woolly, twisty-turny, hump and downy, two lane tar-topped, gravel or dirt country roads. We always averaged 5 to 15 MPH over the speed limit.

No power brakes made it much less likely that we Katahdin Lodge drivers would brake too hard and fast and bash some passenger's face or head against the dashboard or something. Like when we were carefully traversing the rough old, washed out, rocky, mud puddley logging roads, old overgrown farm fields and such in the back-in-the-woods places where we used to drive when bear baiting. We were constantly, gently applying the brakes in those rough situations. And we definitely did not want to brake too hard and fast and go out of control if a wild animal, domestic pet, pedestrian, stalled vehicle, slow moving piece of humongous farm machinery or maybe a whole herd of milk cows 'suddenly appeared' in the road in front of one of us.

On one late winter, Saturday evening in Maine, just after a cold, quiet darkness had eased on down over Rural Route 11, between the Lodge and the Town of Patten, I was on my way into town for a Saturday night date with my girlfriend, when a whole herd of cows did 'suddenly appear' in front me all across the freezing, friggin road.

To my discredit, this happened at a clearly marked cattle crossing. Cows have the absolute right away at cattle crossings. Cows who have full, uncomfortably expanding udders, and whom are heading for the milking barn, make way for neither man, beast nor fast moving motor vehicle.

Oh jeeze! The plump and pretty little dairy farmer's wife was standing there in the middle of Rt. 11 next to her herd of crossing cows and she was all-a-jumping up and down, frantically waving her arms up in the air and forcefully holding out a tightly gripped, lit kerosene lantern at me.

Fortunately, I knew how to tap brakes like them ABS brake systems do for most of you.

Consequently, instead of plowing into the farmer's wife and a half a dozen or so udder swollen milk cows, I slid sideways and over into the snowbank a bit--whilst skillfully tapping down on the brakes till the truck came to a safe stop.

That was my fought. I was thinking about where my girlfriend and I could go 'parking', after going to see a movie, instead of paying my usual full attention to the road.

If we don't respect the farmer's rights, how in the hell are we gonna' eat?

Man o' day! I was embarrassed and ashamed at making that nearly tragic mistake!

One mistake like that, and I'd have been sent packing back down to my parents' house in Dundalk, Maryland. I'd probably have never seen Patten, Maine again.

But nothing like that ever happened.

Anyways, the point is that I prefer the precise handing capabilities of a standard-shift-it-yourself transmission and no power steering or brakes for when I really wanna' Rock n' Roll out on some good old country roads.

But, then, come to think of it now, for most of you's ("you's" is my Baltimore accent showing through), you's had best stick to power everything and ABS brakes for your vehicles. You may own a big-ass SUV with four-wheel drive and all that lot, but ya' gotta' be able to drive Northern Mainer style to do it how we Katahdin Lodge drivers done it.

That's a well earned bit of braggadocio for sure.


Those barely visible, nice and neatly stacked, piles of firewood over in the woodshed there to the right are just the 'tip of the iceberg' from all that firewood that I split and stacked in the late summertime of 1969. I loved doing it.

And you see those piles of wood there that are not covered? Well they got covered with tarps later that day. I can't stand seeing firewood being stored uncovered. Leaving a firewood supply go uncovered wastes the wood by allowing it to get wet from rain and snow and to rot. That makes it very difficult to get a home heating fire burning good with the moist, partially rotted wood.

There were two things at Finley's lodge that were never left out in the yard uncovered.

One was firewood, the other was tools.

Fin stored his rakes, shovels, mauls, picks, mattocks and other garden type tools in a building or tucked up under a building's eave and hanging from some nails--in order to keep rain and snow off the wooden handles and metal heads. Finley K. Clarke never in his life owned a wooden handled garden tool that had any rust or rot on it.

I appreciate that. Makes sense to me to take care of the equipment right. You never know when you're really gonna' need it.

I believe that splitting wood is better exercise than pumping iron--lifting free weights. Like when using the weight lifting equipment that was set up in the weight room down in the basement of the old YMCA, in my home town of Dundalk, Maryland. During my early teenage years, I lifted weights "at the Y" several times a week.

Neither of those two physical endeavours, though, weight lifting or wood splitting, are as good exercise as swimming.

During four summers of my youth, from 1961 to '64, I attended Red Cross swimming courses, including a life saving course, and swam many laps every summer at Baltimore County's Merritt Beach, in Dundalk. The beach was right down the street from the home that I grew up in. I was still swimming there regularly in 1965, when Baltimore County closed the beach to swimmers; it was closed due to water pollution from Bethlehem Steel Mill in Sparrows Point, Maryland.

Those Red Cross water safety and swimming qualifications made me somewhat more valuable as a professional outdoorsman, a Maine Guide; because I had the ability to save drowning fishermen or fisherwomen, canoeists, boaters, swimmers or somebody who accidentally fell into some deep water.

As a teenager, I also used to get plenty of exercise while being paid to mow and trim lawns in the summer, and to shovel snow from sidewalks and driveways during the winter.

So ya' see, that 1969 wood spitting and stacking experience was my type of preferred exercise. And that "wood chopping" (a quote from my city kid days) work, like the swimming, mowing and snow shoveling, was all done outside, where I enjoy spending my time the most.

Before I started that wood splitting and stacking job each day: I had to water seven hound dogs, two Bobcats and one ornery horse; and I had to help Fin and Gary load some 250 to 450 pound 55 gallon drums full of rotting, stenching, maggot covered bear bait onto Katahdin Lodge trucks.

Then Fin and Gary went out riding 'round the beautiful Maine countryside bear baiting. While I worked steady at the hard labor task of splitting and stacking firewood.

Later, during each evening: I had to feed and water the animals; and like every other evening during bear season, I had to go out and gather up a few of our paying bear hunters from the woods; I had to track any bears that our hunters had shot at--sometimes with Finley and/or Gary and sometimes by myself; even through the deep, dark woods at nighttime, but always unarmed; if any of our hunters killed a bear, we had to carry it out of the woods to the truck; then we guides had some bear skinning to do, when we finally made it back to the Lodge.

Fortunately, during those two weeks, when I was working on that 19 cords of firewood, Monday thru Friday, Fin and Marty only made me mow the lawn and trim the weeds, on their large piece of cleared ground around the Lodge, on Saturday or Sunday.

And I was responsible for cleaning up the dog crap. About twice a week, I had to shovel up what the five hound dogs who were chained to five individual dog houses dropped on the ground. About twice a month or so, I had to scrub out the wooden floored dog pen where two Beagles lived.

The Bobcat pen got cleaned out about twice a month too. It's a dirty job, but someone had to do it. Animals who rely on human care deserve that kind of good treatment.

Except for during those 10 days of building up those humongous stacks of firewood, I performed all of the afore mentioned morning, evening and weekend tasks plus went out bear baiting and guiding bear hunters 6 days a week. Just like Gary and Finley did. I had a lot of fun while doing it all, too.

During the entire time that I worked for my Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley, at their Katahdin Lodge and Camps of Patten, Maine, I never worked less than 9 hours a day, 6 days a week.

In fact, at the beginning of bear season, in June of 1969, I worked no less than 14-15 hours a day, for 2 and 1/2 weeks straight. Without a break at all.

And that 14-15 hours a day is what it figures up to after deducting meal times.

Working at the Lodge was quite a broad based challenge to take on and do well at. I was, and still am, proud to have accomplished what I had at Katahdin Lodge.


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The 1968-69 Katahdin Lodge and Camps Music Soundtrack

My Aunt Martha Clarke At Katahdin Lodge In 1969.

One good thing about the times when my Uncle Finley, Aunt Martha and I were the only ones at Katahdin Lodge, and we all had work to do inside of the main building, was that they had a record player in the dining room that was often spinning out some good tunes.

When we were working, the music sure helped us maintain a good pace at what we were doing.

Fin and Marty had some of the usual record albums middle class Americans bought back then. Mitch Miller, Sinatra, Dean Martin, New Christy Minstrels, Smothers Brothers (I went Marching To Pretoria many a time when that song came on), Patsy Kline, Readers Digest Collectors Edition Original Recordings of Glenn Miller and other Big Bands and Swing Bands, I think there was a Wayne Newton record or two, no Elvis?, and the best of theirs for me was Johnny Cash.

Sometimes, I was hustling between what I was working on inside the Lodge and out to the tool shed, for more nails or something, I'd pass that spinning Johnny Cash album, and I'd go boppin' along like a contented rooster "going, down, down, down into a burning ring of fire" for a few yards to the beat of the music.

What a way to get along. We were working to the rhythm of the singer and the band.

That record collection was often fully enjoyed when family and friends were there at the Lodge to visit. Fin and Marty and other couples did do a little bit of dancing, now and then, but mostly we'd be diggin' the music while playing some Yatzee, Cribbage or another non-betting card game. I don't remember any gambling at all, but they may have played some penny anny poker a few times. Whatever the game was, I sure liked tappin' my feet to the beat of the music while formulating my game playing strategies.

I had brought some of my record albums and a cheap stereo up to Maine from my home in Dundalk, Maryland. I was a dedicated record collector and music listener. Dedicated to Rock and Roll, Blues, and Rhythm and Blues music.

I had that cheap stereo out in my tiny sleeping cabin. Out there, the toads living under the floor heard a lot of Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Yardbirds, Rolling Stones, Them (featuring Van Morrison) and the Best of Muddy Waters.

I'm in a real good mood, so I'll tell you something no one else remembers.

Keep this to yourself, OK.

This here Rolling Stones Fan and Born Again Beatle Maniac from Kladnud (Dundalk spelled backwards) Junction actually requested his favorite Dean Martin album to be played on the Lodge record player a few times. Admittedly, I did dig on Deano's swinging tunes more than I ever thought possible.

Fin and Marty graciously allowed me play some of my albums sometimes on the Lodge's little fold down record player with the fold out speakers attached.

But, naturally, hardly any of my listening library was their cup of tea. So it was usually only barely heard when the vacuum cleaner was roaring.

I had a good sense of proportion though. The only time I played them anything so radical as Frank Zappa and the Mother's of Invention's Help I'm A Rock was when they asked me what Freak Out meant. The Mother's first album is titled Freak Out. And no one up there had heard that now world wide famous piece of slang yet.

Marty had pulled Freak Out out of my record case, because she saw the avant-garde graphics on the album cover, and asked, "What's this Beatnik bullshit? David! What does freak out mean? C'mon, show us what a freak out is."

My parents and sister happened to be there visiting, so I put on an impromptu demonstration of freaking out for them.

On went the album cut Help I'm A Rock. I plopped down cross legged on the dining room rug, started waving my hands and arms into the air way above me, dropped my chin onto my chest and did a Laugh In TV Show comedian style rendition of some basket case burnout trying to bust out from the inside of an invisible boulder.

Marty slid off into the back office and comes out with a double barrel shot gun. She broke it wide open, so everyone could see that it wasn't loaded. We had no tolerance for people screwing around with firearm safety rules, so Marty had made dead certain that the gun was obviously incapable of firing. Then she just pointed it down at the floor right next to me and went "Bang!".

That worked well, the whole joint erupted into roaring laughter.

When I was in high school, there had been a stereo in the school cafeteria, and I was the record committee most of the time. I also brought in most of the records that I played during lunch periods.

Some of the albums that I had with me in Maine were ones that I had played for my schoolmates.

Every lunch period, at Dundalk High School, I parked myself on the end of the table right underneath the locked stereo cabinet that was up about five feet off the floor and bolted to the wall. The turntable and amp were kept in there. I waited by the stereo cabinet till the cafeteria monitor, the male driver's ed teacher who wore hip white shoes, unlocked the cabinet for me. Then I put on a couple of my record albums.

Across the lunch room table from me everyday sat my friend, Edna Galiano. She was a short, well built girl, with very long, pretty hair and a hip sense of style. Edna played bass guitar in an all girls Rock band. She and I never dated, but we were a steady presence around the record machine. We guarded it from Top 40 Billboard Chart 45 RPM records only fans and other lesser minded music owners. We listened to entire album sides at a time, and that was it. So she got her lunch tray first, then I went through the line and got mine.

As the record committee, I turned Dundalk High School onto the first albums of Hendrix, The Doors, Cream, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Country Joe and the Fish, and the ever-obscure West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.

Most of the other kids at my high school were not only often hearing the albums for the first time, they were learning of the musicians for the first time. In those cases, I had often just learned about the band and the album myself, a day or two before, when I had discovered the album sitting in some retail record rack; like amongst the young, fertile isles of the humongous record department at Two Guys Department Store.

The Doors were well received by the kids in the DHS cafeteria, and Cream's first album was an instant success. All kinds of people were coming up to take the Fresh Cream album cover back to their lunch room table full of best friends, so they could all check out who the new, exciting Rock group was.

I don't recall the particulars of any other times I played a new record at school, except for when I played The Jimi Hendrix Experience for the first time. That, now famous, first album caused a near riot of angry protesting.

When I had captained the superb Rock music of The Jimi Hendrix Experience's first album on its maiden voyage into the ears and minds of the DHS school cafeteria music listening audience, it was BOOOED off the turntable. Because all except for about twenty of my good friends, guys and girls who would sometimes turn me onto new music, the kids in the cafeteria all banged trays, plates, forks, knives and spoons, while yelling, hollering and booing at a steadily increasing, very loud decibel level.

Like Jack Crabb - aka Little Big Man - used to say, "That is a true historical fact."

There was a solid percentage of hard core Soul/Rhythm and Blues music fans amongst the white students in many Baltimore area high schools at the time, in 1967.

It was some of the white guys amongst Dundalk High School's Soul/R + B fans who had started the ruckus. It wasn't black kids from Dundalk's all black (in '67) neighborhood Turners Station who started it and made the most commotion. Sure, they were mostly Soul/R + B hearted teens, and they eventually did add a little something to the loud, thick cloud of rude noises too. But they had not yet experienced their God given, previously denied by man, unbridled freedoms of school desegregation long enough to feel strong enough to protest against a white student's choice in what got spun on the lunch room record player. It was the white guys who went wild and rude at Jimi first. Then their good lookin' white girlfriends started jumpin' up and down and adding fuel to the conflagration.

I was so deeply angered by the rude, closed minded antics of the crowd, that I refused to take the record back off the turntable myself.

A buddy of mine sitting next to me, on the lunch room table bench seat, had leaned in close and quietly said, "Dave? What are you gonna do?"

My terse lipped reply was, "Let 'um listen to it. They don't know what the #@*& they're missin."

The record continued playing, while the riotous objections to it roared louder and louder.

It wasn't but a minute more, when the cafeteria monitor, the driver's ed teacher who wore hip white shoes, had to come take the Hendix album off of the turntable and hand it to me.

I looked around the cafeteria, and those twenty or so music sharing friends of mine all had their heads bowed low, with their young faces hanging down near the partially eaten food on their lunch trays. Those faces showed sheer, sad, disgust and disappointment at their couple of hundred classmate's combined first opinion of the, soon to be considered, by many, the best Rock guitarist who ever lived, James Marshal Hendrix.

Six or eight months later though, Jimi Hendrix was roundly appreciated by many at the old green and gold--DHS school colors.

You could tell the percentage of white kids in my school who were hard core Soul and R + B music fans by the way they dressed. The boys wore Wing Tip Shoes, Glenn Plaid Pants and some famous name brand casual/dress shirts that I don't remember the brand names of. But I know it was a style that could be fashionably worn with or without a tie. The girls all wore Saddle Shoes. And they all wore the same kind of skirts and blouses as each other, but I don't know the names of those styles or the brand names. The school dress code dictated that skirt hems be no higher then two inches above the knee, but the Soul music girls wore their skirts with the hems just at the bottom of their knees. I saw that as a straight up self righteous fashion statement against the new coming of the Mod mini-skirt. I didn't want to date any of the Soul fan chicks, but I did want them to show us guys all the leg allowed.

In 1966, '67, '68, the Baltimore/Washington corridor was the Soul Music capital of the world. More of it was listened to and bought there than anyplace else. Hendrix ticked off a lot of Soul/Rhythm and Blues fans at first. DHS's Soul fan base peaked in the fall of '67. Right when Hendrix's first album was made available in our record stores.

My friends and I wore Mod type British Rock and Roll Invasion style clothes. Most of you have only seen that style in an exaggerated form in Austin Powers movies. But we did not look that far-out and colorful. We had much better sense of style and taste in clothing than that.

At our high school dances, the school had to hire a Soul/R + B band and a band that played Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Beatles, etc music. The dance chaperone's soon learned that the Soul/R + B band had to play first, because the fans of those bands hated our music and made a lot of rude noises and fights started. Most of us American Mods liked soul music a lot. But we liked Rock and Roll and Blues Rock better. The side I was on never started any crap, when the Soul band was playing, but we never ran away from any either.

I was fortunate enough not to ever get into any fights at or after a dance myself. But I was always in the half circle of guys who were there to prevent anyone from the opposing half circle of the other guy's friends from jumping into the fight. Those fights caused us to loose out on a lot of future school and teen center dances, because the trouble it caused cancelled upcoming dances.

But I must say, in defence of my generation, it was almost always one on one fights that I was any part of. There wasn't gonna' be any kicking a guy when he was down, either; not by their guy our ours; we'd stop our own from doing it. And there was never a weapon involved, and no retaliation later.

But it still wasn't a nice activity to be involved in. I'd rather be friendly with everyone.

1968-69 Katahdin Valley area social scenes were quite peaceful and non-violent, in amongst the sparsely populated American communities located there.

The fact is, I only witnessed one fist fight/wrastlin' match the entire time I lived in Maine. And that wasn't much 'uv a fight at all.

The big fight occurred on one Saturday evening in Patten, when there was a live Rock n' Roll band playing at a dance, in the Patten Town Hall.

My best friend at the time, Gary McCarthy and I, were standing just outside the front door of the town hall, while finishing off a cold beer apiece, before going into the dance. When all of a sudden, three young teenage boys come poppin' out the door, and two of them 'locked horns', and started to furiously goin' at each other. They fell, with their arms, hands and legs all wrapped around and grappled to each other, just like two young buck deer with their impressive racks of late fall antlers all locked together in territorial combat.

Let em tell ya' now, them two boys were kickin' up some dust from the dry, bare earth they were rolling around on there. But they weren't actually hurting each other very much.

Gary and I thought that it was hilarious, because no one was actually getting hurt, and it was a fair match-up. Gary and I never would have stood there and allowed some bigger kid to beat up a smaller, less evenly matched guy.

Due to the fact that I was not a natural born native of Patten, if I got into a fight there in town with a guy who was also a native of Patten, then Patten native Gary would have had to back up his life-long fellow P-townsman. But I could have helped Gary hold two fighting Patten boys apart, to peace'ify them.

Welp', the larger of them two battling lads says, "Stop! Hold on now!"

The combatants both relaxed their 'death grips' that they had held onto each other with, and the bigger guy lets go of the other boy.

They both stand back up, and the bigger kid asks, "What are we fightin for anyway? You just walked up to me and said let's go, we gotta go outside and fight, but you never said why. I don't wanna fight you. Why are we fighting?"

The smaller, former combatant says, "Because I shot your brother in the ass with a BB gun. And he said that he was going to get his bigger brother to beat me up. So I figured that we might as well get it over with right now."

"What!" Replies the larger, former combatant, "We're fightin' because you shot my dumb-ass little brother in the butt? I don't give a crap if you shot him in the butt or not. Next time, you can shoot him once for me too. C'mon, let's go back inside to the dance and have some fun. I ain't gonna fight you because of that little twerp. I'd rather go kick my dumb little brother's ass, than fight you. I do it all the time."

At that, they each slapped one of their arms around the other's shoulders and proudly walked back inside; to where some girls were most certainly waiting to be asked by one of them to get up and dance. They were proud to have proven that they each could fight fairly hard and take, and that they had shown common sense in choosing not to continue the brief battle.

In the later 1960s, in and around Baltimore, my closest friends and I were painfully aware that Baltimore was averaging one year behind New York City, and two years behind California, when it came to clothing trends, music and 1960s life style changes. One of Jimi Hendix's 45 RPM single releases, either Hey Joe or Purple Haze, was a number one hit in NYC nearly a full year before it was ever even played on a Baltimore radio station. I can't remember which song it was, I just remember some other original Hendrix fan telling me about it, right after I told him about The Great DHS Cafeteria Jimi Hendrix Fiasco.

The well known song Sunshine Of Your Love by Cream was the first Cream song played on Baltimore's only Rock station at the time, WCAO AM. And that song is off Cream's second album. I had that second Cream album, Disraeli Gears, for 3 or 4 months before any of it was allowed on the airwaves in Baltimore.

Several months after that, when I moved to northern Maine, most of the teens up there had never heard of Cream or Hendrix yet. Those cutting edge musician's albums were already for sale in Houlton, the largest town around, a small college town, but it was 35 miles away from Katahdin Lodge. And in the summer of 1969, there was even a few of my kind of albums for sale in a little country store in tiny Sherman, Maine. I was happily surprised to see that. The records weren't selling yet, but they sure did in due time.

Many of northern Maine's young people eventually got into my kind of music. And the very first time I heard one of my favorite Cream songs, Badge, was when it was played by a live band, made up of Maine kids from further south in Maine who played at a dance in the Patten Town Hall. (bawuwm-bawumm-bawumm-ba-wumm-bwumm-bwumm-bwumm-bwumm-bawuumm-bawumm Thinkin' 'bout the times that you drove in my car)

Patten Maine teens were some Rockin' and Rollin' kids, Top 40 records only, but them kids had a natural 4/4 beat poundin' in their hearts. They were some dancin' Top 40 fans too. 1968 Baltimore teenage dancers didn't have a thing on them Mainer kids.

Maine kids were cool in their own ways, that's why I dug 'um so.

It was all Top 40 at the town hall record hops, cabin parties and on the Patten Drug Store jukebox, of coarse.

At the cabin parties and town hall dances rarely were any of the all-white folk there afraid to get up and boogie. Northern Maine was the only place I'd ever been where most young Euro American men at social affairs got up and danced more than they sat around and hoped they didn't do anything to embarrass themselves.

Anytime that I was sitting at the lunch counter in the Patten Drug Store, and a good 1967-68-69 Rock n' Roll song was playing, I could watch out the huge windows there and spot at least one passing pedestrian who was walking to the beat of the music--that could not be heard out there at all.

I conducted controlled social experiments on this phenomena.

I would spend the longest periods of time sippin' sodas and eating tuna sandwiches at the lunch counter, while pretending to have the hots for the sweet, curvy, young thang' working behind the counter; but I was actually confirming my hopeful expectations that Patten did indeed have a Rock n' Roll Soul.

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Hip Shops In 1965-68 Baltimore, Beatniks, Mods, and The Psychedelic Propellor

After you finish reading this blog entry and the one below it, you will definitely wonder how I ever fit right in up in 1968 era Patten, Maine. This entire body of work, this web site, has to do with what I knew, when growing up into my teen years, then what I had discovered about myself and the people and places of Northern Maine, when I first visited that part of God's Country.

The Psychedelic Propellor

Those longhaired lads in this 1967 era photo are The Psychedelic Propellor Rock n' Roll band. They are sitting on the railroad tracks behind the house where I grew up-in Dundalk, Maryland. In the photo are: at the far left, wearing maroon Mod pants and fringed moccasins, is Dale Patten, lead singer; there in the middle of the tracks is my next door neighbor Austin "Aussie" O'Baker, drummer; faux-fearfully pointing at an invisible, speeding freight train coming our way, is Denny Romans, lead guitar; the bespectacled lad in the sandals and yellow checkered Mod slacks, is Chris Cywinski, bass player.

I do believe that this shot hints at some early, natural photographic talent of mine. No wonder I chose Ft. Monmouth's Photo Lab Tech School, when I joined the U.S. Army in 1969.

The Psychedelic Propellor band members and I were some of the small number of Baltimore area teens who wore Mod clothing. We identified ourselves as Mods. In 1966,'67,'68 Baltimore, no one in or around Baltimore was calling themselves, or being called, Hippies. Back then, those four guys were some of the very few longhaired males around Baltimore. And just wearing those maroon pants and fringed moccasins, that Dale had on, was enough to make some other guy want to start a fight with him, at any Maryland high school dance, and a lot of other places, in those days. It was one thing for those guys to be having long hair and dressed in full Mod clothing while up front and playing in the band at some of those dances, but if Dale had dressed like that to go see some other band play at a school dance, he would have been hassled by other teens at that dance--for certain.

Aussie isn't wearing any Mod clothing at all in this photo. He couldn't safely wear it everyday. He was the first male to wear bell-bottom pants in Dundalk. The first day he wore bell bottoms to school, he caused one hell of a stir. We were walking down the school hallway and kids were running thirty feet ahead of us telling other kids what was coming. They were all pointing and laughing at Aussie. He just ignored them. And that happened between every class that day. It would have been the same in any Maryland high school, so don't think it was only Dundalk who was behind in those new fashions.

Denny and his mother lived in a high rent apartment building in a wealthy section of Cold Spring Lane, over across town--Baltimore City. Chris and Dale were from up in the Harford County country type Town of Bel Air, Maryland. Austin O'Baker lived next door to me, in the 7600 block of Dunmanway, from 1955 to 1967 or '68. And they had all four quit school already; you can tell by their long hair. Up until 1969 or '70, local public schools did not allow longhaired boys to attend classes. I wanted to grow my hair longer too, but I wanted a high school diploma more. The band members would all have been in the same grade as I was in, if they hadn't quit. Denny was the only one of the four band members who truly was a rich kid, and was being fully supported in all he did by his wealthy, five times divorced and alimonied, mother; but the other guy's parents had bought them some of their band equipment and also supported them in most other ways.

Aussie, Dale, Denny, Chris and I all had the same basic records in our album collections, wore the same style clothes, and possessed the same brands of humor. We had some great times together.

The band practiced next door to my house in the O'Baker's clubroom. I hung out with them at practice a lot and traveled around with them in their old Cadillac hearse, especially when they played shows. I was their "equipment manager". Which basically meant that I helped them to carry their musical gear in and out of shows. But what it also meant was that high school dance committees, bar and club owners or managers where the band played had to allow me in for free. When the band played where alcohol was sold, I had to either stay right near the band while they played, or, in the case of the old, infamous Baltimore bar named Judge's, which was on Greenmount Ave. just up above 33rd Street, I had to hang out up in the back balcony with the light show guy.

Riding to and from those shows in the back of that old hearse was a right comfortable ride. I thoroughly enjoyed the rides, along with the company of the band members. My favorite way to ride back there was laying stretched out and relaxed on the hard, black side of a big Vox Super Beatle Amp, with a guitar case for a head rest. When on those rides, and during Psychedelic Propellor shows in bars, clubs, or high school auditoriums, my four good friends and I were absolutely lovin' life as we knew it.

The Propellor was a pretty good teenage band. Rock n' Roll with Blues roots and straight up, Rocked out Blues numbers. Denny could do a fairly accurate Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton run on his guitar. In '67, they were the youngest musicians playing in any club in Washington DC's internationally famous Georgetown. I experienced some superfluous times on the streets of Georgetown when I was down there with the band. The people there were mostly pretty hip and mellow. There was one place, some late night eatery, and the sidewalk out in front of it, where we knew some psychedelic drugs were often available, but none of us cared about that. And when the band was Rockin', I was often right there out in front of them on the dance floor with some Rockin' little honey.

Denny Romans {now known as a Demian Bell, and very actively playin' the Blues over in Europe} put the group together, and the band was managed by an older guy named Stu -- Stuart Windsor -- who had set up the very first head shop in Baltimore. The head shop's name was The Psychedelic Propellor. The band was partially conceived as advertisement for the shop. Stu's shop was a neat little place to hang out, for short spurts of time. It was on the north side of W. Read Street, and a little ways east of Tyson Street. Read and Tyson were neat little side streets, in a very hip neighborhood, with Read Street having various little commercial establishments, and Tyson Street being somewhat famous for it's colorful, pastel fronted, tiny row homes.

Above is the first flier, the very first advertisement for the first "head shop" in Baltimore -- The Psychedelic Propellor. Now the question is: did the shop's owner -- Stew -- misspell propeller, with an o instead of e at the end, did Stew misspell it on purpose? I can't remember any talk of it being done on purpose, and guess I'll never know.

The Bluesette Teen Nightclub

The absolute very coolest under-18 teenage place that the Psychedelic Propellor Band ever played was in our absolute most favorite place to be in Baltimore on a Friday or Saturday night--The Bluesette teen nightclub at 2439 N. Charles Street.

It was owned and operated by husband and wife Art and Sharon Peyton. Sharon handled the behind the scenes work and administration to run the club and a booking agency for local bands, and Art was always in the club or working with his bands. Not only was Shjavascript:void(0)aron's way of doing business modeled after her hero, the greatest Rock n' Roll impresario of all time, Bill Graham, I thought that Art actually looked a little like Bill. I have no knowledge of Art's life before the Bluesette, or what he got into after the Bluesette closed. I don't even remember when or why it closed. And nothing pops up on the Internet about either the man or his club.

The club was in a section of row houses that were being used as places of business. You entered the Bluesette through a basement door that was at the front of the converted row house, near the sidewalk. Just inside the door, you showed your Bluesette club card to a smiling and sincerely friendly young person and paid them a small entry fee.

Then, as you walked towards the staircase to the first floor, there was a tiny room off to the right. Band equipment was often waiting there to be carried upstairs to the stage. In the back wall of that very tiny room was the door to the club's only restroom.

When you were walking upstairs, all of the walls from there on up and around were all painted flat black.

At the top of the stairs, on the first floor of the building, was a very small bar, with five or six stools in front of it. They may have served near-beer there, I know I had heard that they did, when I was first told about the place. I am sure I asked for some, as soon as I got up to the bar my first time in the club. But I only remember buying sodas. And nobody was into sneaking any booze in.

The bar was where the kitchen had been. Then the inner walls that had separated the kitchen from the tiny dining room from the little living room from the small front first floor entrance hallway were all stripped down to the 2 x 4 studs. That way it was nice and open and you could watch the band playing from anywhere inside that first floor. The studs were also great for leaning against while talking to other kids who were sitting in typical old wooden nightclub style chairs, at typical small round nightclub tables.

There was a stage at the front of the living room. It was built up about a foot and a half. The drummer set up his drum kit so that his drum throne was sat at the edge of the windowsill for a large, bowed out bay window. That way, the drummer's back was nearly up against the plywood sheeting covered, large square windowpanes. He could sit on his throne and play with plenty of elbowroom, while swinging his body sideways back and forth, while kickin' and poundin' out some driving rhythms.

The main band that played on the Bluesette's stage was The Urch Perch. Art Peyton was their financial backer; he bought them some of their band equipment and also paid for an Urch Perch trip to New York City, where the band cut a demo, 45 RPM record. They played good versions of Blues Rock, Acid Rock, British Rock Music. We kids loved listening to and dancing to it for hours. But, I felt, and still feel, that The Psychedelic Propellor were a better band, with at least a little more musical talent than the guys in Urch Perch possessed. I based that on watching the bands play and very carefully watching for musical mistakes--lost or loused up lyrics, lead guitar riffs, bass runs, drum rhythms etc.. I, intimately, knew a lot of the music that they all played; from often listening to the original songs, which were in my ever expanding record album collection.

There was a small dance floor in front of the Bluesette's stage. From an audience member's point of view, who was sitting at a table in the rear of the club--where the back wall of former dining room was: the dance floor was delineated on the front side by the stage; the left side by the wall between the club and whatever business was in the former row house next door; the rear of the dance floor ended in front of the tables and chairs that sat in the former dining room and up into the back edge of the former living room; the right side of the dance floor was determined by the flat black painted 2x4 studs where the front entrance hall wall had stood and also by a few tables and chairs that were sort of stuffed into where the living room entrance from the front hallway had been.

The Bluesette had the very first strobe light I ever knew about. And it worked real well with those flat black walls and ceilings. You could get to dancin' or jumpin' and runnin' around when that flashing strobe light was on and you truly appeared, and darn near felt like, you were moving in slow motion.

Art also had the first psychedelic light show most of us kids there had ever seen. It was just an old 35MM movie projector. But he had somehow gotten some psychedelic colors-in-crazy-motion kinda' films from out in Frisco; he projected them onto the front of the band and the top torsos and heads of the dancers. He also used old black and white movies to some very good effect in his light shows.

There was never one bit of trouble at the Bluesette. No fights, no kids coming in too drunk; they may have come in a little drunk, but it never showed much. There wasn't much pot or hash in Baltimore yet, so there was never more than a few nickels of weed or hash in the place at anytime. As far as I know, very few pills to get high on and no hard drugs were ever around in the Bluesette. You never saw anyone whacked out, just a talkative kid now and then who was speeding off one of their mama's diet pills. A joint or small bowl of weed was known to have been shared down in the bathroom a couple of times. You could tell by their sly little grins when they came strolling back upstairs.

Hanging Out With The Mods In Downtown Baltimore

On some afternoons, a core group of us teens who went to the Bluesette were Mod kids who hung out together in downtown Baltimore. Some of those Mods had quit school, so they hung out in downtown Baltimore during the weekdays. But for me, during high school times, hanging out downtown only happened on Saturday afternoons and school vacation days. Nothing much happened down there on Sundays back then. But on Saturdays and some summer weekdays downtown Baltimore was a neat place to be.

The main place where we walked around and sometimes shopped was on Howard Street and in the several city blocks in any direction from Howard St. that was known as the Howard St. corridor. On Howard St., there were several of those old style, five or six story tall, name brand department stores, like the Hecht Company, but I can't remember any other names right now. They all had those elevator operators who announced every sales department on every floor.

It was the crowded sidewalks of Howard Street that made it such an attractive, lively, and safe place for us Mods to be.

Like I said earlier on this page, in 1966-68 Baltimore, Hippie hadn't arrived yet. No one I knew in those days ever called themselves Hippies. Anyone, which was almost everyone, in the Greater Baltimore Metropolitan Area who didn't like long hairs or our clothing styles didn't ever call any of us any kind of a dirty Hippie bum. Baltimore was two years behind the West Coast in all that stuff back then. In and around Baltimore, any males wearing bell bottoms, hiphuggers, flowered shirts, love beads, etc., or long hair, were subject to threatening hassles at any time. Longhaired, or just Mod clothes wearing, males were called weirdos, odd balls, and "What're you's queers?".

Any longhaired and/or Mod clothes wearing man who was old enough to drink in a bar, tavern, or club would have never lasted long in almost any 1968 era Baltimore booze joint, before he was punched out. The Psychedelic Propellor Band played in Judge's Bar, but none of the band members would have ever been so naive as to go there when they were not being paid to and were being protected by the bar owner and employees.

In those long gone days, job opportunities for fully capable longhaired males were nearly zilch. No department store or any other shop in the Howard St. corridor would hire a longhaired male back then. Nor would most other local places of business or industry.

The thick, busily flowing crowds on the sidewalks of the very popular Howard St. corridor offered us Mods natural protection from being singled out and hassled. Just like a small group of one kind of fish moving around in the ocean while snugly mixed in with a school of a different kind of fish. So that predator fish, like sharks or shitheads, can't easily dart in through all those other fish to attack the small, different looking group in amongst the steadily moving crowd.

General Music Store

Down around the corner from Howard St., on Baltimore St., across from the Civic Center, the 1st Mariner Arena now, was the most fantastic recorded music store I have ever known of--General Music. Though the name sounds generic, that store was anything but, generic. The name General was equal to the store's rank amongst all recorded music stores there ever was. That place was so jam packed full of entire walls of record albums, floor to ceiling, and crowded racks of records covering most of the floor space, all of it neatly cataloged and displayed, that it's a wonder the place didn't sink into the ground from all that weight.

I believe that the salesmen in there were mostly Jazz, Folk or Classical Music aficionados. Those ready, willing and able salesmen there could find any rare record they had in stock in a jiffy.

Not only did they stock Baltimore's best selection of Jazz, Classical and American Folk Music, the store must have had about the most diverse world music, folk and popular albums from around the world, that there ever was. I heard customers make some very weird requests in there. And by-yimminy a salesmen would roll a shelf stocker's ladder over to a wall rack, climb up and retrieve that "Popular Folk Songs Of Lower Slobavovia Played By Left Handed Angry Gypsies" album, or whatever the request was for.

General Music did get in some new Rock n' Roll albums before any other music store around did, and their Rock n' Roll shelves were very nicely stocked. But it was rare old Blues albums that my musician friends were mostly looking for in there. I had close friends in two of the best teen Rock bands in the Baltimore music scene. They wanted old Blues songs to listen to, learn from and maybe turn into newer sounding Rock songs.

I have been a Blues fan since I was about 14. It started out with the "British Invasion" white guy's versions of the Blues. Then I bought the Best of Muddy Waters album, when I was 16, at the advice of a published interview with Mick Jagger. A lot of the early Rolling Stones' recordings are Rocked out Blues tunes. I've always liked some original Blues music. I first began to seriously buy and listen to a few original Blues albums when I was in the Army. But it wasn't till about 20 years ago that I began to seriously collect and listen to a whole lotta' old and new Blues albums. Nowadays I listen to newer, digitally recorded, and older, digitally remastered, Blues by the bushel full.

Ted's Music Shop

During the '60s, Baltimore had one of the most fantastic musical instrument shops there ever was, Ted's Music Shop. It is still in business, but I just found this:

Blogger1947 posted this on Sunday, 19 March 2006:

"I had occasion to stroll the blocks south of Mount Vernon place recently, and it's not Don Swann's old neighborhood any more. Ted's Music Shop is but a shell of its former glory. You can actually see through the show window to the back of the shop."

Blogger1947 obviously also remembers Ted's from a few decades ago. Because back then, Ted's was absolutely packed with musical instruments and many were from all around the world.

The shop is in the same neighborhood as the world famous Peabody Institute. If you do not know about the Peabody, here is a quote from their web site:

"The Peabody Institute has a preeminent faculty, a nurturing, collaborative learning environment, and the academic resources of one of the nation's leading universities, Johns Hopkins."

Only the most talented and well financed students of classical and Jazz music attend the Peabody. Ted's was well stocked to serve that prestigious community of students, instructors, and visiting professional musicians. Not only was Ted's well stocked with the finest of instruments that are normally played by classical or Jazz musicians, but the shop was very well stocked with quite rare and beautiful musical instruments that most of the average students, instructors, or visiting pros at Peabody had never even seen any photographs, drawings or paintings of before they walked into Ted's and saw the real thing for the very first time.

But my friends and I went to Ted's for the Rock n' Roll gear that he also stocked to similar grand proportions. The only thing I ever bought at Ted's was a harmonica. My visits there were with band members from the Psychedelic Propellor and also 1966-68 Dundalk's best Rock n' Roll Rolling Stones music based band, the Rysing Suns. I knew all the guys in that band from long before they formed the band. The lead singer, Dave Collins, had lived down the street from me since he was 13, and was one of my best friends. So between the two bands, I got to go into Ted's and watch his wonderful salesmanship in action a bunch of times.

My take on Ted was that when one of my buddies asked Ted for the price of an instrument or amp, Ted would always give the lowest price he could afford to. You know how it is when you are comfortably standing off to the side of two people doing business, and you can easily hear all they say, while watching the facial expressions and body language of both parties in the deal? It always appeared to me that Ted would stop speaking to my friend for a moment, while Ted gently rubbed or halfway squeezed the skin of his own chin. Ted always appeared to take a quick glance down at the floor in front of him while doing a clandestine scan of how my friend's pants and shoes looked. Then based on the fact that we teens were all dressed casual, not tatty or dirty, but not expensively, Ted would offer the guy a truly fair price for what they both might be able to afford to handle dealing with. I may have been, and may still be, wrong about this, but I have always believed that Ted gave certain, special discounts to young, struggling musicians. It always appeared to me that Ted was going to do what he could to help a struggling young musician do well in their, hopeful, music career.

All any of the musicians in Ted's had to do was to mention something they were interested in, and Ted went looking for it. I can remember a young musician or two simply admiring and then complimenting Ted on some very strange, beautifully constructed wooden stringed instrument. A rare collector's piece that had originally come from somewhere like a mountain village in the Himalayas. The next thing you know, Ted is reaching for it to allow the guy handle it and strum its extremely difficult to replace strings. The young musician would simply be flabbergasted by Ted's kindness and respect for the kid.

We all respected and admired that man.

Ted had instruments displayed and stored all throughout his building and hung all over the insides of it. You didn't have to be a musician to be attracted to the internationally known appeal of that shop. It was so visually exciting to see so many old and new instruments in very good to mint condition. Ted surrounded himself with rooms packed full of some of the finest quality musical instruments, parts, accessories, and necessary gear on earth. It was simply a stunning place to be. And Ted never seemed to loose track of where anything was displayed or stored.

Ted was an all-round fine and humble human being. I never witnessed or heard of anyone not being satisfied with a purchase at Ted's.

One thing I never thought of back then was: what world famous musicians had shopped in Ted's, or had just hung out there, while enjoying Ted's company and maybe trying out some of his rare, imported instruments? I know he had some autographed photos of famous musicians around. He must have had a solid world wide reputation amongst all card carrying Musician's Union members as the man to visit in Baltimore, when you're in town to play a concert, visiting, vacationing, or just passing through.

From Ted's front door you can see all of Baltimore's Washington Monument and some of the four, small beautiful parks surrounding it. I am a man who has always been into photography, to some degree, and I now realize that Ted's was the perfect bait for drawing famous musicians into where I could casually, quite possibly convince them to stroll on over into the parks for some informal portraiture. Between the parks, the monument and the magnificent architecture of the old buildings in that whole neighborhood, there is a fantastic choice of backgrounds for informal portraits.

And I have known all the little side streets and alleys and how to get from Ted's to, let's say, some very nice little eatery, ever since I was a Mod kid spending numerous afternoons walking around up there for hours and exploring it all. I'd not only be the musician's, and any of their traveling companions', portrait photographer for a little while, I'd be their city guide.

It's that old saying in its most appropriate usage, "If only I had known then, what I know now."

Sherman's Book Store

At the corner of Park Avenue and Mulberry Street, about a ten minute, easy, stroll from Ted's, was Sherman's Book Store. That was a true Baltimorean's place to shop.

Abe Sherman owned and ran that bookstore, and, when I first went into his store, Mr. Sherman was well over 60 years old. In fact, he was the oldest man in Baltimore to be accepted into the U.S. Army during World War Two. I think Abe was in his early 40s in 1942. He may be Abe to me now, but I wouldn't have dared address him as anything but Mr. Sherman back then.

Abe was the first in Baltimore to sell posters of Rock n' Roll bands. I bought Rock n' Roll record albums once or twice a month, during every month that I was in high school. I knew when all of the latest stuff came out in local record stores and in the record departments of large department stores. That includes General Music on Baltimore St., Modern Music in Eastpoint Mall, and a very nice and slightly 'ahead of the pack' record store in one of the wealthiest sections of Baltimore, on Cold Spring Lane. Sherman's had the very first Rock n' Roll posters sold in Baltimore. I bought my first poster there. It was a black and white photo of the Rolling Stones, which sold for a-buck-fifty. And that was the first time I was ever in Sherman's. For years after that, I shopped there just about anytime I was in that part of town.

As I was paying for that first poster, I looked over Abe's shoulder, and there behind him were the very first buttons I had ever seen that had Hippie style sayings on them: "Make Love Not War"; "Draft Beer Not Students"; and the famous peace sign. I was standing there in Sherman's with two friends. We gleefully read the sayings on all those buttons, then I purchased several buttons along with that huge photo of the Rolling Stones. It all, absolutely, blew our young minds. We were awe-struck and mighty thrilled by that experience. Baltimore was becoming a brave new world to us.

I searched on the web for Abe Sherman, and I found this, from a guy who had moved to Baltimore and begun working for Abe Sherman in 1979. Tom Chalkley wrote:

"The strangest thing about Sherman's was its collection of faded black-light posters and other leftovers from the psychedelic era. It seems the neighborhood was full of head shops once, but Abe had no use for hippies until his son pointed out that the freaks were pumping millions of dollars into the economy. So Abe--a crusty, cynical septuagenarian--began to stock incense, New Age literature, and huge images of Jimi Hendrix and the Who."

But that's just his guess on how it began. The text says, "It seems the neighborhood was full of head shops once, but Abe had no use for hippies until his son..." But Abe actually started it all in his neighborhood. Before any other head shops or any Hippies were around there. He was into it before the Psychedelic Propellor Head Shop opened. I was in the Propellor the first week it opened. That fresh, new kind of a shop was big news to my friends and I. Also, when Abe started selling posters, the Jimi Hendrix Experience did not even exist yet. I was there and heavily into it when it all began in and around Baltimore. And "you can take that to the bank", as they say.

But it was really neat for me to read Tom's article and finally find out how Abe got the idea to sell that stuff. Because ever since that first purchase in Sherman's Book Store, I have often wondered about that and have commented to other people about it. That part of the Tom's story would be true. It's just that Ted's son had to have been talking about what was happening, mostly, out on the West Coast and in New York City, but Ted's son had to have known that trends like that spread across America. I'm going to try and contact Tom. He seems like a nice person, he just didn't actually live the history he was surmising about.

Abe Sherman was a tough and scary man, until he got to know ya'. But he always watched every move every customer made, in his store. He would stand right behind you, while you looked at magazines or books, with his arms folded over his chest and a thoroughly unfriendly look on his face. He admonished any customer who did not put a book or magazine back exactly where they had picked it up from. And you had to perfectly and evenly straighten up any pile of magazines or books that you took one from.

But when he got to know that you were serious about buying any of his avant-garde, or other, types of publications, posters, or Hippie pins, he was one neat old dude. He found out what you liked and showed you where there was more of the same kind, or something similar. Sometimes, he would guide me over across the store to show me a section of publications I had never read anything like before. I believe he honestly thought I might like them. I rarely purchased any of his suggested books or magazines, but he never became gruff or cross about it. And he turned me onto one or two items that I was very excited to learn about.

Still though, like I said, Abe was a tough and scary old guy; a Jewish man who had joined the U.S. Army at about age 40, to go try to kill that screamin' German demon, Adol'f Gitler (SHikl'gruber).

Here's something from D. Borsella on Baltimore Timeline:

"Abe Sherman was a known Baltimore character who ran the bookstore at the SW corner of Mulberry and Park Avenue. You went to Sherman's if you fancied being insulted. After 3 seconds: “Are you buying or reading! If you wanna read, go over to the library."

Susan Fradkin of City Paper Online wrote:

Abe Sherman terrified generations of book buyers at his newsstand (he yelled at me once for standing too close to the magazines).

Long time Baltimore newspaper columnist Michael Olesker wrote:

You know you’re a Baltimorean if you ever lasted 15 minutes without Abe Sherman throwing you out of his bookstore.

One time, my two friends and I, who had gone into Sherman's together for the first time, were in the store looking at new posters, when Mr. Sherman said, "You like that poster? You guys wanna see some better ones? C'mere."

So Mr. Sherman leads us over to an open basement doorway, and he walks down the basement steps. We had walked, about eight feet behind him, over towards the basement doorway, but had stopped and were patiently waiting a little ways back from the open doorway; we were expecting Mr. Sherman to bring the posters up to us. Now, we had never worked in any stores; we had never been down in any retail storage areas like a basement--where customers are traditionaly forbiden to enter. Had it been any other store, we may have reacted the same way and would have stood there not daring to enter the basement. We were always fairly reserved, when shopping in Sherman's, and completely respectful to Mr. Sherman, so we did not dare at all to enter his basement storage area. But Mr. Sherman takes a few steps back up towards us, smiles warmly, motions with his hand for us to walk towards him, and says," C'mon down here."

We replied, more or less stammering in unison, "Wawawhat? UhUs? You mumumean we can go down there? You'll let us go down there!"

We then proudly crossed a boundary line that we never thought anyone but Mr. Sherman could cross and live to tell about. It really made us feel good about ourselves. Mr. Sherman had recognized us as being true citizens of the brave new young world we liked living in.

Abe Sherman sold the latest, hippest, premium Rock n' Roll magazines and other solid quality items that go with a Rock n' Roll album music collector's lifestyle. And a goodly number of my friends and I purchased as much of it as we could possibly afford.

Beatnik Encounters

Here's something else from D. Borsella on Baltimore Timeline. He or she talks about Sherman's Book Store, but first he or she says something about the block where the Psychedelic Propellor Head Shop had been located:

"Remember beatniks? In the 1960's they had not quite made the transition to hippies. Baltimore's beat street was Tyson Street, Read and Tyson..."

He goes onto tell other info about Baltimore Beatniks I never knew. But it was the Beatniks and Mod types who became Baltimore's first Hippies. I saw Beatniks a couple of times.

The first time it was when I spotted a guy and gal Beatnik sitting in a booth in a downtown Baltimore sandwich shop. They were having a wicked bad argument. My two Sherman's Book Store shopping friends and I were on a bus heading towards Howard St.. As the bus waited at a red light, I saw the two Beats in the sandwich shop, and I excitedly pointed them out to my two buddies. But then, I was totally shocked to see two Beatniks screaming at each other like a pair of Tasmanian Devils. I thought they were all into peace and staying cool, man, cool.

The second time, the last time I ever spotted any Beatniks, was one Saturday night after the Psychedelic Propellor Band had played a show at the Bluesette teen nightclub. The club closed by 12 PM, and it took us an hour or so to load the band's equipment into their old hearse.

From 2-5 AM, the Bluesette turned into the Blues Back Alley after hours Jazz club. We teen clubbers were well aware that Beatnik types frequented that after hours club. We were also well aware that the older, Jazz style hipsters did not want to mix in with us younger, Rock n' Roll style hipsters. Because to the older crew, we weren't so very damned hip at all. So, if we had still been in the club when they came in, we would have been a little shy about talking to them. We knew they didn't want to talk to us. They were like the big league pros, and we were young beginners at being hip and cool. Due to the probable possibilities of what would happen if any Beatniks met any Mod kids face to face, wherein the Beats get mighty well miffed at being spoken to by mere, non-Beatnik, teenagers, the club's owner, Art Peyton, always wanted us kids out before the Beats began arriving at around midnight.

That night when I saw Beatniks for the second and final time, Aussie the drummer had driven his mother's Cordova Brown, '64, Chevy Impala up to the Bluesette. And I was riding "shotgun", in the Chevy. We met Dale, Denny, and Chris at the club, then helped them to unloaded the band's equipment from the hearse and take it into the club, through the backdoor.

On that Beatnik spotting Saturday night, after the Psychedelic Propellor finished playing for the teen crowd at the Bluesette, we packed the band's equipment back into the hearse. Dale and Denny drove home in the hearse, to their new bachelor apartment--I mean bachelor pad, they drove the hearse to their cool pad.

By that time, it was just about midnight. The time when the teen nightclub turned into a very hip Jazz club.

That was right when Aussie, Chris the bass player, and I had gotten into the Chevy Impala. It was parked with its front end up close to the rear wall of a building that was just a few doors down and across the alley from the backdoor of the Bluesette. Aussie eased his mother's Chevy backwards out of the parking place. It took some tight, tense, very careful maneuvering, between other parked cars and some old, rusted, metal backyard fences on both sides of the skinny little alley back there behind the club. Aussie got 'er out of there without scratching any of the pretty, Cordova Brown paint on the Impala. Then he put the car into drive, and we went forwards, motoring, very slowly, up that skinny little alley.

All of a sudden, we spotted two, outright, hardcore, mustached and goateed male Beatniks walking up the club's back steps. Steps that, ten minutes earlier, we had been using ourselves while hauling out heavy amps and all.

Aussie, Chris, and I had been paying very close attention to the young, barely experienced, teenage driver's difficult task of getting the Chevy out of that tight parking spot. Aussie had needed Chris' and my extra two pairs of eyes to see how close his mother's car was to everything that was all tightly in around the car back there. Consequently, none of us had noticed the two Beatnik Jazz musicians who had walked up the alley and were now walking up the back steps of the Bluesette/Blues After Hours Jazz Club, and onto the back porch.

One Beatnik was carrying a big fat, stand-up bass in its case, and the other Beat carried a guitar in its case. Chris spotted them first, from the back seat, and he thought that Beatniks were really cool; we all three did. So Chris rolls down his window real quick, dives about halfway out the rear side window, he's got his left arm extended all they way out and his finger pointing at the Beats. He practically screams, "LOOK AT THAT!"

I'm up front in the passenger seat, the club is on Aussie's side, and I tell Aussie, in a loud voice," "Whoa man! Stop! Look at that!"

When I was in elementary school, kids dressed up as Beatniks for Halloween, and one time I had too, daddy-o. I used my mother's eyebrow pencil to make a mustache and goatee on my face.

Beatniks were unseen legends to us. Nobody saw Beatniks in any Baltimore suburbs.

Aussie stopped the car and rolled his window down. We were going to say something benignly friendly to them, like, "Hey, what's up? We just left the club. Our band played there tonight. You guys are Jazz musicians, right? That's cool. All right man. Far out. Catch ya later."

Unfortunately, for all of us, we never got past loudly saying, "Look at that!" Because we Mod kids were happily flippin' out and almost yelling, in a friendly, laughing way, at those two Beats, and that friggin-aye-freaked them two Beatniks right out.

The Beatnik holding that big heavy bass hears us and turns around real fast and fearfully glares at us--with a look of sheer terror on his face and all in his body language. Then he grabs the other Beatnik by his shoulder and yanks him part way around backwards, whilst fearfully and frantically pointing at us. The guitar carrying Beat in front quickly moved up to the backdoor and began trying to stick a key to the backdoor into the backdoor's lock. He's bent slightly forward under the rear porch light trying to keep his shadow off the keyhole, so he can see where the key goes in. At that point in time, the bottom of his guitar case was resting on the floor of the porch.

Those old Baltimore City row homes have very tiny backyards, so we were very close to them and could see them very clearly from the alley at the end of that tiny, short backyard behind the club.

They must have thought we were some inner city toughs who were gonna' get out and go beat their asses good. They were terrified, and I mean truly terrified. Those cats obviously rarely ever went out into the sunshine very often. Their pale faces showed shear, white faced fear, under the bright, bare light bulb that hung down from a battered, sloppily hanging back porch light socket.

The Beat in front starts frantically yanking and shoving on that back door, while furiously fumbling with the key in the keyhole. Finally, the door pops wide open, and the Beat in the back, with the bass, starts shoving his guitar carrying buddy through the door, really hard; while the Beat in front's trying to grab a good hold onto his guitar case, but was tripping over it; then the Beat in the rear scrambles--his feet were quickly moving up and down like has was running through the alley, to get away from us kids in the Chevy, instead of standing there on the porch feeling trapped by us--he scrambles forward, while jamming that big, heavy, awkward, stand-up bass case right in up against his buddy's back; he pushed the bass case hard up against his buddy's back and was pushing his buddy in to 'safety'. They practically fell forward into the club, then slammed the backdoor closed tight and locked it loudly, behind them.

The scene looked like when a war weary soldier was protecting his longtime, combat buddy from a hand grenade that had just been tossed over onto the porch behind them.

We felt kind of bad and a little bit embarrassed by what we had accidentally done. We did not intend to shake them up like that.

Beatniks lived in a culture we had some things in common with. Beat literature and poetry was read by many teens in the 1950s and '60s. Not by me, but some of the Psychedelic Propellor members had probably gotten into reading some Beat writings. Beatniks' music was considered to be very advanced and exploratory Jazz. It is very difficult to play. We were no Jazz fans, but we knew how hard it was to play well and how important Jazz was as an intelligent influence on Rock n' Roll. Beatniks were against the War in Vietnam. And we three young men in that Chevy knew that any one of us might some day be drafted into the Army and sent to Nam.

Here is Dan Akroyd on how he came up with the Blues Brother's world famous stage and movie wardrobe:

"I showed him (John Belushi) this album cover, John Lee Hooker, and there was John Lee Hooker and he had the hat and the shades on. And I said this is the look. I said if we ever put this together (the Blues Brothers), this 'id be the look. The suits and the ties came from the Beatnik era. In the '50s and '60s Beatniks, and Beat poets, and musicians, Bop, Be Bop and Jazz musicians would wear straight apparel so that they could go out into straight society and not be hassled..."

Those two Beatniks, that Chris, Aussie and I scared the be-bop-be-jeezums out of, were wearing a style of cheap, dark overcoats and hats that a 1960s low wage earner would wear to church on a rainy Sunday--very nondescript and fashionably forgettable. But the way they had shaped their hats, we all shape our hats to fit our own individual personalities, the musical instruments they were carrying, but mostly the fact that they were wearing '60s hipster style goatees just screamed, "WE'RE BEATNIKS!"

Even if we hadn't known to expect seeing Beatniks going into the Blues Back Alley Jazz Club, we three teenagers still would have known they were Beatniks.

Hardly any other men in or around Baltimore but a Beatnik would have had their facial hair grown out and artistically trimmed like the two Beatniks that we saw had theirs grown and trimmed. Not at the end of the age of the clean cut American Male. Unless you were Amish, you'd almost never see a man with any shape of a beard in the congregation of any American church, when I saw two of the last of Baltimore's Beatniks.

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