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".

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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.

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.

John Birmingham and Katahdin Lodge's Trusty Old Land Rover

John Birmingham and the Lodge's Land Rover.

Look over at the right side of this photograph, past the top of The Rover's hood, and check out the high, sloping snow bank on the side of the woodshed. That pile is there from when my Uncle Finley and I had had to go up on the roof and shovel off four foot deep snow, or the building would have collapsed. It was an all day task.

On that day, after we ate lunch, I waddled on in to the living room and plopped my carcass down onto the sofa. I wanted to rest there while we waited the 20 or 30 minutes it takes stomach action to digest food enough that you won't get cramps from hard physical activity. This is in full accordance with what was taught me at Red Cross swimming safety classes. You know the oft stated maxim: never swim with y'ur tummy full.

Friggin Finley looks in there at me trying to get comfy on the sofa, leans a little forward, and in towards me, grins mischievously, and says, "What the hell'r you doin?"

My honest answer was, "I'm digesting."

Fin bolts upright, like he just got hit in the butt cheeks by static electricity, "You're digesting?"

Now I swear to you that I was as serious as a heart attack, when I answered, "Yeah. Well it's like from what I learned during swimming lessons, you know, you'll get cramps if you swim after eating, and that's hard exercise, like swimming is, up on that roof. We don't wanna get cramps do we?"

Dear o' dear me.

Finley then made a soon-to-be famous statement that I was forced to hear him and/or Marty repeat many a time to many a person--when they jovially teased me about that day of hard shoveling. Fin had told me, "You can git back up there on that roof and digest with a shovel in y'ur hand!"

John Birmingham is one of the most capable woodsmen who ever lived. He is also reputed to the best shot with a rifle who ever set foot upon Katahdin Lodge's dooryard.

John is the son Finley always wanted.

But life is not fair, so Finley and Martha never had any children. I never knew the unfortunate, natural reason why Fin and Marty never had children. They were securely in love with one another, and I believed that they made mad, passionate love, or sweet, tender love, often. They went to doctors, when they lived in Maryland, to see if anything could be done so that they could conceive children. But there were no good results.

In 1979, Finley, his top-notch guide Richard Libby, and I were out in the dooryard there talking about John. Richard told us about a time when he and John were standing there talking, when John suddenly shouldered a loaded rifle he was holding, aimed it at a little bird that had just lit upon the telephone wire, up there running alongside Rt. 11, and John fired off a quick shot. And poof, went the birdie.

Then Richard said, "It was amazing, I never saw anything like it before. That bird just disappeared into a tiny pink cloud of floating feathers. POOF! Just like that! By jeeze if that son-uv-an-oar had cut that wire we'd a been in deep shit. Can you imagine? As tiny as that bird was John never even made the line sway or move. He hit that bird dead center. If he hadn't it would have just been knocked off the wire."

Richard looks up at Finley, gives him a big wide grin, and adds, "I know the guhdamned bullet never touched the wire. When he pulled the trigger, time froze for a split second, and my mind zoomed right in on that wire. You know how clearly you can see things at a time like that? Well, all I could think off was what you were gonna say to John if he had cut your telephone or electric line."

We had a good laugh on that thoroughly thought out sentiment. Fin would have been ferociously furious if John had screwed up on that deal.

Were I given the chance to 'turn back the hands of time', and was given the choice of traveling the world with The Rolling Stones, as their personal photographer, or the choice of living and working as a woodsman in Maine, I would choose Maine.

Yep! I would chose time spent in the woods of Maine, with the finest kind of Maine country folk, over equal time spent with the world's greatest Rock n' Roll band, my all time favorites, The Rolling Stones. Because the Maine Guides I worked with were/are as good as a modern woodsman can be. They were/are super-stars in the Great Outdoors. And the women in northern Maine were/are my kind of gals. I prefer wholesome, healthy lookin', great cookin', good lovin' ladies like the Town of Patten produces over the gold digging, hot and nasty, groupie chicks whom I would be around with the Stones.

The heaviest factor weighed into that Stones vs. Maine decision is: I flat-out prefer spending most of my time out in the natural splendor of the woods.

When that photo of John Birmingham and the Land Rover was taken, John was home on leave from the U.S. Army. There he was an expert shot, a physically fit woodsman, a man who had tracked many a wounded bear or deer at night. And what does Uncle Sam do? He makes John an Army clerk. John was sent to Vietnam for a year, but he never saw combat. He spent the entire time in Saigon. He later said that when he was drinking in a crowded Saigon bar, all he had to was start telling bear stories, then he never had to pay for a drink for the rest of the night.

John returned from Vietnam unscathed, and eventually made a career as an Army Recruiter.

When the photo of John and The Rover was taken, Fin and Marty were down to Maryland visiting family and friends. My Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley had lived in Sparrows Point, Md., and then over in Dundalk, till 1965, when they purchased the Lodge.

Fin had been a bricklayer "down the Point"--the Bethlehem Steel Mill at Sparrows Point--and Martha worked in the main office there. Fin and Marty grew up next door to each other. My father's family also lived "on the Point"--in the company owned mill town--so all of our families knew each other well. We were together for every American holiday, and we all visited each others' homes on a regular basis.

My parents, two sisters and I spent wonderful hours each holiday at both of my grandparent's homes, along with most of our aunts, uncles and cousins. Fourth of July was at my parents' house. Dundalk's world famous 4th of July Parade ended three blocks up the street from my house. Our yard was 100 x 60 ft. Plenty of room for picnics, badminton, croquet and all that was fun and games for a large family.

There was a really cool freight train track at the end of our yard. The railroad tracks were up on an embankment, and dad had planted tons of sticker bushes at the bottom of the hill there so that when us kids were little we would stay back off the tracks. The hill was hard to climb too. Trains went by real slow, and that was super for when the whole family was out there during a picnic. We would be smiling and waving to the passing train's engineers, while we were yanking on invisible air horns, until the smiling, waving engineers blew the train whistle for us. And we sent back cheers of joy to them.

I learned how to drive standard transmission, manual clutch and stick shift equipped vehicles by giving that Land Rover something to worry about.

The Rover was old and well used, but my personal nickname for it was, "the Cadillac of the woods." It was that darn comfortable on the worst of all woods roads, with the heaviest of loads.

With The Rover, I hauled a lot of hunters, great guys, good buddies out into the woods to take them bear hunting, while having interesting and enriching conversations, in that British made four wheel drive buggy. It eventually came to mean so much to me as one of the best aspects of my time as a Registered Maine Bear Hunting Guide, that I have taken the liberty in this narrative to write "The Rover", instead of the Rover. I heartily adored and deeply respected that machine.

When I first 'met' The Rover, I was up at the Lodge for my 1968 summer vacation, with my parents, both sisters, one brother in law and two little nephews. My family always pitched in to help around the Lodge, and I wanted to help out with some bear baiting for my uncle. Gary Glidden was Fin's only hired hunting guide that summer, and he was in the front passenger seat of The Rover the day that Uncle Finley decided it was time for me to learn how to drive a stick shift. Damn near gave Gary whiplash, till I got the giant, jumpin', jack rabbit out from under The Rover, and gained control of that clutch pedal and stick shift assembly.

I "rabbited" The Rover out the Lodge's driveway and slowly jerked my way out onto slender Rt. 11 there. The Rover was moaning n' groaning rather dismally, while a whole crew of family members, a female lodge employee or two, paying hunters and hound dogs out there in the dooryard howled with laughter.

I stalled out, turned red, tried to swallow a mouth full of dried spittle, and looked back to see if Fin was gonna' call it off. But he just cupped his hands around his mouth, and hollered, "Hold on Gary, everybody jack rabbits the first time."

Then Fin waved us on down the road. My fear struck eyes were bulging out a bit, as I scanned the road for moving vehicles, cranked The Rover back up, and bopped on down the line.

Gary, like Finley, was one of the most highly skilled motor vehicle operators who ever 'turned a wheel'. He coached my driving so well that day that I was shifting smooth and in the groove by the time we returned to the Lodge, several hours later.

That was during the infamous summer of '68, when America was metamorphosing from being 100%, tried and true, red-white-and-blue, to being the land of Hippie protesters, clouds of Pot smoke, and radical new found ways of conducting one's relationships with the opposite sex.

But none of that had hit Patten, Maine yet.

During the year when I first worked at the Lodge, in 1968 and '69, there was never ever one single longhaired man who worked or hunted there.

After my high school graduation from Dundalk High School in June'68, I had been letting my hair grow out for the first time. Because, believe it or not, when I was going to school in Maryland, any guy with long hair got expelled from school. EX-FREAKIN-EXPELLED!

Like many of my schoolmates, I had wanted long hair for a couple of years before I ever got to grow it out. And, like myself, most of us did grow it out, after we either quit school or graduated.

Then, in November of '68, I moved to far-north Maine, where no longhaired males were welcomed. So I cut mine shorter and had many great times as a plain-clothed-cop sorta' quasi-Hippie-type kid turning into a professional Maine outdoorsman.

Aunt Martha and Uncle Finley were painfully aware of that little bit o' Hippie in me.

One day during August of '69, five, young, American, college kids on a camping trip stopped in at the Lodge, after one of their cars had broken down just up the North Road (Rt.11) a short ways. They were in a Corvette that was towing an old, worn out, raggedy looking, junker SAAB.

As the two car college caravan eased on into driveway, Fin, Gary and I just happened to all three be there in the driveway. We were looking at our clipboards, which held lists of bear baits that we had discovered fresh bear sign on that morning, and we were discussing which hunter was going on what bait stand. We all three greeted the young college crew, but I instantly began to see the approaching storm.

The junker-SAAB had dropped its motor fan onto its radiator, and had ripped some healthy leaks into it. All that the young college friends cheerfully asked of us at the Lodge was to borrow some tools to use right there.

In that part of the world, in those long gone days, there was no refusing such a request. Way up in the woods like that, people rely on each other for their shared survival.

The group of friends consisted of: (just like in the college road trip movies) One quintessentially real good looking blond haired boy; one blond haired girl who was knockin' my socks off, as she pranced around the scene; one OK looking brunette chick; one average looking guy; and one rather goofy looking fellow who owned the SAAB.

They were all obviously of above average intelligence--book wise, not woods wise--and also from wealthy homes. Rich college kids often receive their family's older 'second' car, when they go off to school. Back then, the USA's rich folks, nor any of us, weren't so financially well off as Americans are today. Today, the cars are much nicer in the student parking lot. I was from a blue collar neighborhood, so in the '60s, the only old foreign cars like a SAAB that I ever saw were being driven by university students to Rock concerts. So as soon as them kids turned into our driveway at the Lodge, I had 'um pretty well pegged for what they were, and what was happening. So I was the first of we three Katahdin Lodge hunting guides to greet and meet them.

My mistake.

OH! The college kids were sure enough in great spirits, unfazed by the mechanical situation, loving life in Maine, and happy to see me; it was every other single individual at the Lodge that day who were the problem. They took an instant dislike to the strangers, because the young men had long hair. And when it was learned that none were married, and all five were sharing two tents together, it was immediately assumed that these five were all about "free love", and Pot smoking-tent shaking orgies in the woods. That was all a no-go in that part of Maine, at that juncture of time.

After no more than a minute in the company of those welcomed-only-by-me strangers, I sensed the discomfort broiling in Fin and Gary. I had to walk away from that scene in the driveway. I let Fin and Gary lend them the required hand tools and make small talk while a quick-fix repair was done well enough for them to drive both cars the 10 miles into town where the closest garage was.

The sweet middle aged country woman who baked all the fresh breads and deserts for the Lodge was stomping through the dining room and kitchen, while tersely declaring, "SHACK RATS!! SHACK RATS!! All they are is shack rats!"

And the whole crowd in the Lodge in there were taking turns glaring out the long row of dining room windows and voicing their full agreement with the baker lady. So I moved on out towards the woodshed, to look for something that needed done.

Jeeze o' wizz! I popped out the kitchen door as Marty was coming in with a basket of freshly air dried bed clothes. She was muttering something unintelligible into the clean sheets and pillowcases, which she had just pulled off the clothesline, when she spotted me.

Aunt Marty grits her teeth tight, leers out angrily at me, through squinched down eyelids, into my pale, young eyes, and gripes, "THOSE ARE YOUR KINDA PEOPLE DAVID! THOSE ARE YOUR KINDA PEOPLE."

I stayed out behind the woodshed, until it was over.

Then, some weeks later, our new Life or Look Magazine comes in the mail with a special edition, full insert, extra magazine issue on the Woodstock Music Festival. Three days of music, mud, drugs, some sex, and a whole lotta' mild mayhem that defined the end of the '60s.

The magazine with the Woodstock insert in it was opened in the Lodge's dining room, when we had all just finished eating our afternoon meal. There were all the Lodge staff there, plus a hand full of bear hunters passing the magazine around amongst themselves. They were simply livid.

That magazine was my first look at what Woodstock meant.

Unfortunately, I couldn't even take a peak at it till the rest of everyone who was in the Lodge at the time left the dining room. I had learned my lesson on the day the longhaired males, unmarried males and females, but still camping together anyways, young Americans came. I was not going to allow myself to be caught looking at photographs of a half a million of 'um. Fin and Marty would have 'laid right into me'.

So when the dining room emptied, I slid on over and flipped the pages of the magazine, while it was still laying down on the table there, because I did not want to get caught with it up in my hands.

I had record albums, out in my little sleeping cabin there at the Lodge, from about half the bands at Woodstock. Several of my lifelong friends from back in Dundalk, Md. went to Woodstock. I'd have probably been there at the festival too, if I had still been living and working in the Baltimore area. But way up there just above Patten, Maine, the young people did not know about it.

I recognized musician after musician, and said to myself, "What'd I miss?"

That missed out feeling didn't last long.

I loved it up in the woods.


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Mod Clothing, My 1966-68 Bedroom, and Some Of My Good Friends In High School

In order for you to understand what the people and places in and around Patten, Maine mean to me, you need to know what kind of a young man I was, and where I came from, just before I moved to the Katahdin Valley area of Maine. It would be one thing if I had been a country boy from Northern Baltimore County, Western Maryland, or Maryland's Eastern Shore who had grown up working outdoors on his family's farm and had hunted and fished his entire young life. But it was another thing for me, because I was a Mod clothes wearing Rock n' Roll minded kid from the Baltimore suburb of Dundalk, Maryland. I had quite quickly become a country kid up in Maine. And I loved it.


There I am in 1966 or '67, at 16 or 17 years old. I'm sporting an elongated "Joe College" hair style, and wearing a Mod flowered shirt. That's a wide Mod belt holding up some tight fitting, Mod hip-hugger pants. I'm standing in my suede Mod boots, while standing on a rottin' Mod log. I'm holding up an old Mod door, in front of the fallin' down Mod shack that it fell off of. When I went Mod, I went all out for it.

But I could not grow my hair into a long Mod style, because I was still in school. When I graduated from Dundalk High School, in 1968, most Maryland schools did not allow a male student to wear his hair one fraction of an inch down over his ears. Long haired boys were expelled.

And Hippie hadn't hit Baltimore yet. Except inside of publications like Life or Look Magazine.

That amateur fashion shoot, up there, was shot right over in a thin strip of woods that runs along side of the railroad tracks behind my family's Dundalk home, on Dunmanway.

That busted up shack was an abandoned "colored people's house", on railroad property. The railroad never allowed anyone to move in after the previous family had left. Which had made sense in the modern 1950s, when that last family had left, because there was no running water in the place. The railroad had not allowed any such improvements, just a little electric service.

Inside of that moldy old shack was where I fell for the greatest practical joke of the 1960s, when I tried smoking dried banana peels.

They tasted lousy.

And didn't do a thing for me.

A San Fransisco Haight-Ashbury Rock n' Roll star, Gary "Chicken" Hirsh, of Country Joe and the Fish, was credited with starting that ridiculous, substitute for reefer, rumor. Way back then, in much of America, a lot of us kids had only heard of pot smoking, but never had seen any weed. It was already being smoked heavily in Frisco though.

I had heard of several ways that you had to prepare the banana peels to smoke them. There were recipes for boiling it in water, or rubbing alcohol; and then drying it in various combinations and ways of drying it slow or fast or in complete darkness, or up under your left arm pit while you flapped your arm or something. Or whatever some birdbrain could come up with to try and prove they were hipper than thou.

It was written later that the Rock star rumor starter had read that there actually is a psychoactive substance in the white lining of banana peels. But a lot of, freely circulating, opposing falsehoods were written and/or spoken about the origins of that zany idea.

About a year and a half after I had tasted the bitter smoke of that great, practical joke, I am in Patten Maine on a Saturday night. I walk upstairs above the stores in town, to a small apartment or rented room up there, where some buddies of mine were hanging out. I walk in, and there are three or four of them up there just a grinning and a giggling like fools. I look over to the far side of the room, and there's one of 'um flippin' banana peels on the hot radiator by the window, to dry them out.

I laughed and said, "I know what y'ur doin! You're dryin' out banana peels to smoke 'um. I tried that once, but it didn't work."

One of 'um replied, "Yeah, well we're still gonna try it. We can't get any pot to smoke up here in Patten, and we want to try something. You're not going to tell anybody, are you?"

I was grinnin' and gigglin' almost as bad as they were by then, when I replied, "Shoot no man, I ain't gonna tell nobody! I just told ya that I smoked it once myself."

Smoking dried banana peels didn't do anything for them either.


I was not drunk, or any other kind of stoned, when that photo of me laying there in amongst a pile of old junk was taken. The empty beer bottles are simply part of a conceptual piece of instant on the spot junk art--something to express the rebellious and avant-garde artistic flavor of the Mod experience.

Although I did way too much underage beer drinking over around that old shack--it was a very popular neighborhood place for that illegal act--I can 100% absolutely guarantee you that I did not drink the beer that was in those empty National Beer, Nat'y Boh, Nasty Boh bottles. I never drank a quart of National or a long neck, deposit bottle of that watery crap in my life.

After I got out of the Army, in '71, and I was drinking a little too much beer almost everyday, my father usually had part of a case of National cans in our refrigerator. I never took but one, one time. It gave me a headache. And, during my entire thirty-one-year alcohol consumption career, I never again drank any of that most famous Baltimore beer, with Mob Town's (Mob Town is Baltimore's Civil War legacy nickname) beloved, famous, winking Mr. Boh on the label.

Thirty-one-years full of heavy drinking times, not drinking times, heavy drinking times, than not drinking at all again was enough.

I'm retired now.


This is my 1966-68 bedroom at home on Dunmanway. I had curtains that matched the bed spread.

And I had bought a record album carrying case with the same design on it. In 1968, I packed that case full of records and took it to Maine with me.

The photos on the walls all came out of magazines that I sure wish I had copies of now. I read the best Rock mags on the market, and they are worth some money now. The only magazine name I can remember right now is Crawdaddy. And there must be some photos up there on the wall that came out of Life or Look Magazine. All from what are some of the more valuable collector's issues now.

The photo on the wall that is at the bottom left is of Frank Zappa and The Mothers. That photo up above the Mothers and to the right could be Jim Morrison sitting behind the TV in a closet. The red one at the top with its head missing is The Crazy World of Author Brown, with his flaming hat on. I liked his one song, Fire, and the wild photo, but never had any of his albums. That is Cream--Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker on the railroad tracks, in the photo at the top, middle. On the far wall, at the top, is my favorite drummer of all time, Ginger Baker. I'm lost on the rest of it.


This is my bulletin board, with a well thought out collage on it. What I was thinking at the time, though, I couldn't tell ya'. And the eyes were on a mobile.

In the lower left corner of the bulletin board, it seems like that could only be Janis Joplin belting out a blues wailer. I got real artsy-comical with the feet under the tomato, and it is probly Jack Bruce as the tomato's harmonica playing head. I believe I spot a black and white shot of Ginger Baker playing his drums near Jack's head. To the top left, in red and playing left handed guitar is Jimi Hendrix. I see another shot of Hendrix in red all the way over to the right, middle. At the top left, that double image is of Owsley Stanley, the Grateful Dead's longtime soundman, Bear. The regal black woman in the magnificently colorful dress was simply a great centerpiece for the collage. The WJZ TV bumper sticker was there at the bottom of the bulletin board's frame because of the goofy elephant graphic and whatever goofy graphic was at the other end of it.

That round disc of cardboard tacked into the top right corner of the wooden frame is a Sgt. Pepper Album cut-out insert.

I have an uncut Sgt. Pepper cut-out insert sheet in my living room. It is made of light cardboard and it's almost the same size as an album cover--the cut out is 12 x 11 13/16. I paid twenty bucks for it at an antique show, a few years ago. The disc on my bulletin board looks like I cut it out from one of those famous cut-out sheets, but I didn't. Nobody did. A machine did it. Because I bought the Pepper album a few days after it was released, and I will never forget how overjoyed I was when I opened up the album, carefully slid out the paper sleeved vinyl disc and along with it comes a whole lap full of separate cut out inserts.

"What's this?" I joyously shouted to my parents and sister, who were in the living room with me. The whole cardboard sheet cut out version came in later runs of the album. So there's a bit of Beatles collectibles trivia for ya'. If you ever see a used Sgt. Pepper Album at a yard sale, flea market, etc., or in a dumpster, check that baby for the machine cut cutouts in it. That would be a very valuable find.


That hip looking, long haired young lady is one of my best friends from high school, Patricia MacNeil.

Pat designed, created and sewed most of her own clothes. She was fashionably far ahead of the other girl's at school, with her own natural sense of style. But she never acted like she was or would ever say so. Her clothing creations were visually pleasing and very attractive; but not attractive in a "look at me" kind of way. Her handmade dresses, blouses and skirts seemed to gently flow from within her, and she looked just exactly like she should have. She probably made the pants she is wearing in the photo. And she may have created her coat too, or at least redesigned it to some degree. Her best work, though, was in creating her beautiful blouses, skirts and dresses.

This photo of Pat had to have been taken on a Saturday or other day when there was no school in session, because girls had to wear skirts to school. It was probably taken after an afternoon spent together in downtown Baltimore, while shopping and hanging out with our usual group of friends who also dug the hip places in and around the once bustling Howard Street corridor.

Pat and I and about a half dozen of our other friends all walked part-ways home together from Dundalk High School, everyday during our senior year.

About the only major difference of taste, or opinion, in our shared teenage lifestyles was: Pat and Nancy Becker could not talk me into listening to any of their acoustic Bob Dylan albums.

I had Dylan's electric Highway 61 Revisited and was a serious listener of it. When I told my group of friends that I had begun to really get into all of the music on Highway 61 Revisited--to me, it was all as good as the '60s anthem from that album, Like A Rolling Stone, that we have all heard many times--Nancy and Pat got all too gushy like and said, "Ohhh Dahhve. If you like that, you have to come listen to his first few albums. The lyrics are so good."

But I had heard bits of his acoustic music before that, and it wasn't for hard rockin' me. Till about fifteen years ago, when I began to collect, and listen to, all of Dylan's early stuff.

Each day after school, Pat and I were the last two walking together--after all of the others in our after school quorum of hip, high school kids had broken off to go their shortest routes to their homes. Then Pat had to take a left at Robinwood Rd, and I went on the farthest of all, to Dunmanway. But many a day I walked with Pat up to her house. Then we hung around the bird feeder, out in the front yard, for a while, sharing warm and humorous conversation.

I took that photo during the final half of our senior year.



This is Carmello Krocheski. She was also one of my best friends from high school, and a member, in fully fledged good standing, of the after school walking home together crew with Pat, Nancy Becker, and I. Carmello died young, from Lupas. I think she was about 28-years-old.

I took this photo just after we had graduated from high school. As I look at this photo, I can see where you may be thinking that she is not a very cool and hip looking 18-year-old girl at all. Today, she doesn't look too hip to me either. But Carmello most definitely was a very hip young woman.

Carmello had the same type of music in her record album collection as I did. And, when I was the lunchtime record committee for the Dundalk High School cafeteria's stereo system, I was the person who turned DHS onto The Cream, Frank Zappa, and Jimi Hendrix Experience. I think that it was Carmello who had turned me onto Tim Buckley. She was seriously aware of, and deeply concerned about, the horrible effects that the Vietnam War was having on our generation. We also read some of the same books, and saw the world around us from many similar points of view.

She was a whole lot of fun to spend time with. A very upbeat kind of a gal.

After my 1968-69 year in Maine, I entered the Army in November 1969. And when I was home on Christmas leave, on Christmas Day 1969, I visited Carmello and her family. There was a nice, heavy snow falling, and my Northern Maine acquired driving skills served me well that day. I had a great and safe time driving my father's big, white Ford station wagon all over the southeastern Baltimore County area, while wearing my Army, full dress, uniform to visit relatives and friends.

That day was the only time I ever wore my Army uniform at home in Maryland, and I only did so for my family and close friends. During those Vietnam War years, American military personnel in uniform were often treated very rudely and crudely by American civilians--whose freedoms we G.I.s were protecting.

The last time that I saw Carmello, just after my discharge from the Army in the early 1970s, she told me that I had done something kinda' odd at her house, on Christmas Day 1969.

Carmello lived with her older sister, and their mother--two other lovely ladies whom I was well acquainted with. I'm fairly sure that I had been drinking some beer that day, as I could have purchased it at Ft. Holabird, though I was only 19-years-old at the time. But I can't quite seem to fully recall doing what Carmello told me I had done. I do have a slight, hazy memory of maybe doing it though.

Carmello's family had set out a very nice Christmas buffet. Evidently, I had made a potato salad sandwich from their buffet table. Carmello said that she, her sister, and mother just couldn't get over me making that potato salad sandwich; they got some great laughs from me doing that, and had reminisced and laughed about it for years after.

I love homemade potato salad, and am a self declared connoisseur of the dish. And now I do hazily, definitely recall doing that. I had picked up the idea from some Maine or Army buddy of mine, somewhere along the line, and I remember him saying that his family had always made potato salad sandwiches. I thought that it was pretty funny, so I made one too. So I do believe that I had also made one that Christmas Day at Carmello's--just for effect. Ya' know what I mean?

I had some beers in me, I was extremely happy to be home, and I had probably done it to give the Krocheski gals, all three of whom I liked a lot, and whom I was liked by a lot, I'm pretty darn sure that I had done it just so they would get some good laughs out of seeing me eat a potato salad sandwich.

In fact, now that I have written it out, and see it more clearly now, I know I had done it for comic effect. Because I have never had a potato salad sandwich since then.



This is Nancy Becker, who was also one of my best friends from high school, and a member, in fully fledged good standing, of the after school walking home together crew with Pat, Carmello, and I.

How fully fledged was I at the time? Well let's just say that I was very fortunate to have such intelligent, world wise, sensibly humorous, and down-to-earth female friends as the three young women on this page. Or I'd have gone too wild, too soon. And I seriously doubt that I'd still be alive today.

In the photo of Nancy, she is standing in her sister and brother in law's--Linda and Tommy Beaver's front yard, on the Fourth of July, in the early 1980s, I think. I hadn't seen her in over ten years, when I walked up to her on that bright, summer day. That's why I took the photo as she extended her hand to greet me. I wanted to capture that moment forever.

Nancy was always quite the delightful young woman to be around. Like I said before, on this page, the only serious disagreement Nancy and I ever had was when I refused to go with her and Pat MacNeil to listen to Bob Dylan's first three albums, because I was not into the acoustic Dylan yet.

After my 1968-69 year in Maine, on a November day, about a week before I entered the U.S. Army, I was home in Maryland to spend time with family and friends. Nancy, Pat, and I decided to go hitchhike down to Georgetown in Washington D.C.. I think one of them had an apartment in downtown Baltimore. Because for some reason, we had rendezvoused, to begin our hitchhiking adventure, in downtown Baltimore, at an old time lunch counter, in a drugstore up in the Howard Street corridor. It was already dark out at the time. We each drank a cup of hot coffee or hot tea, at the lunch counter, to get us warmed and revved up for the adventure.

As we sat there calmly, happily talking amongst ourselves, and sipping our hot drinks, we each were taking slight, furtive glances at this very weird, and outa' whack, fellow on the other side of the lunch counter, because he kept pouring and pouring spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his cup of hot coffee, from an old time glass sugar container. The glass sugar container ran empty, and he begins to call for the waitress.

The waitress was one of those older, worn down kind of women, who had never had a fair break in life; she had already lived a long lifetime of rarely ever really looking good; and she possessed a charmless personality, that matched her dismal, low budget lifestyle. The poor old gal was sort of hiding behind a lit cigarette back there just inside of the stainless steel, swinging kitchen door. She was very slow in responding to the weird guy's steadily repeated requests for her to attend to his present needs and desires.

Now, Nancy, Pat, and I are not saying anything at all about what the weird guy and waitress are doing, nor are we acting like we were paying any attention to them. But we three were each thinking to ourselves, "He's dumped about eight teaspoons of sugar into his cup of coffee, so he can't be gonna ask the waitress for more sugar. But I just know he's gonna do it."

Finally, the waitress comes out. And, in a drably tired, and defeated-by-life tone of voice, the old gal asked the weird guy what he wanted.

Very droll like, just like the two of them were doing a well rehearsed and perfectly timed comedy skit for a TV show, he said he wanted more sugar.

That was it for us! We had to drop some money onto the lunch counter and get going really fast. We were cracking up and didn't want to offend those two unfortunate souls at the drugstore lunch counter, by laughing right at them. We stumbled over each other's feet as we practically rolled up into a giant ball of hilarious laughter and on out the door and onto the sidewalk--while whispering to each other in unison, "Did you see that? Did you see that?"

The rest of the night was just like that, all the way to D.C. and back again. It was great.

I had my Maine Guide's Buck Knife on my belt, and I was in about the best physical condition I ever have been in. So though there is always a dangerous side to hitchhiking, we were three sharp minded 18-19-year-olds, and I was as ready to rumble with any potential trouble as I ever was.

We got a few good rides out of Baltimore, then a guy who was already in the Army, who was driving an old Corvair, picked us up. He was heading to Georgetown himself. He was a good driver, and a pleasant conversationalist.

As we drove through D.C. and got closer in towards Georgetown, the G.I. driving us hinted around that he'd like to walk around with us for a while. I may have gotten a little too protective of my female friends, when I smoothly nixed that idea. He probly was an OK guy, but I wasn't too certain, and I think maybe I should have asked him along with us. I told the girls about it as soon he dropped us off, and they said that, yeah, I should have asked him along. I still feel a little bad about that.

Nancy, Pat, and I all three knew our way around Georgetown, and we had a fantastic time there. We knocked off the fun an hour before the bars were going to close. That was our well thought out, strategic plan for having our thumbs in the air while the traffic leaving the internationally known and populated party district of Georgetown would be the heaviest.

We hadn't had our thumbs up for more than a full minute, when the third car passing by pulled over, and stopped. It was a little yellow VW Bug. The driver's door popped wide open, then the passenger door popped wide open; and one really drunk and tired looking, good looking, young woman jumps up out of the driver's door, then one really drunk and tired looking, good looking, young woman jumps up out of the passenger's door.

The driver hollers and slurs out, "Who's gotta driver's license? We can't drive no more! One of you has ta drive."

With that, I got into the driver's seat; Nancy, Pat, and the female passenger got into the back seat; the drunk girl driver got into the passenger seat, and I drove us all the way to where Pat, Nancy, and I had previously met up in Baltimore. It was a great trip back home.

The VW belonged to the driver's brother. The two girls were from Delaware, and they had picked up two, very lucky, hitchhiking sailors. GO SWABBIES! Then they all four had had some good times in Georgetown.

But they had one big problem, besides sobering and resting up while I drove them safely as far as Baltimore--I wasn't too much under the influence of alcohol at all. Their problem was that the brother had told his sister not to drive his VW Bug out beyond the town limits of where they lived. So the girls had disconnected the car's speedometer, in order to hide the high mileage put on his car that night.

The Delaware girls were very grateful to us for safely, and with lots of good conversation and joking around all the way, for safely helping them get as far as Baltimore. And we three hitchhikers were extremely grateful for our super-superb luck in catching a ride all the way to Baltimore in less than a full minute's thumbing time.

It sure is a shame we can't very well safely hitchhike anymore. Oh well. I Still have some great memories of those bygone days to enjoy though.

After my 1968-69 year as a Maine bear Hunting Guide, I came home to Maryland to visit family and friends, just before I entered U.S. Army basic training. During that short time to still be a civilian, I went to a party at Carmello's new, single working gal's apartment; well it was new to her, but in a very old and architecturally interesting and sound building. I can't recall whether Pat or Nancy were there, but at least one of them probably had been. Carmello's apartment was her hip pad, ya' might say, but she'd have just called it an apartment. It was a cool and hip little home for a young woman, that's for sure. It was in Baltimore City--not quite downtown, not quite uptown--on East Biddle Street, near Charles Street. A decidedly, fairly hip young neighborhood in that day and age. The area was populated by art students from the Maryland Institute, plus struggling, young and older professional artists, musicians, poets, writers, some brand new and some older Hippies, some cranky and crusty really old folks-long time residents, etceteras.

It was a nice, small, pleasant, hip, gregarious group of conversing young people there at Carmello's party. They were a very mellow lot--but no pot or hash was smoked, though I never knew of Carmallo ever smoking any, there were definitely some part time pot/hash smokers there. Not me at the time, but I had puffed it some in high school and really got into it a year later, while overseas on Okinawa.

There were no alcoholic beverages there either. Me being the several times a month social beer drinker that I had been for that previous year in Maine, I asked if anyone wanted to pitch in on a case of beer.

Well shoot man, the way they reacted, you'd a thought I'd suggested we all go out to mug a bunch of the old folks in the neighborhood. Everybody there dropped their chins to their chests, or looked away from each other, and especially away from me, with very soured, disapproving looks all over their faces, as the whole place became nearly numbed by surprise looking. The molecules of the quietly, forever slowly moving air in the apartment just sort of stopped bouncing around against each other, stopped dead still and hung there, in the middle of the room. I was feeling completely off balance and out of place, while the stale air waited for the sounds of someone's vocal chord vibrations to stir its stunned, little molecules up a little, when one long-stringy-haired and fuzzily bearded guy, who was sitting cross legged on the floor, said, "A case of beer? A bottle of wine maybe. But a case of beer? (he snorts a short, sneering snicker) No way."

You may have already read some of my writings on this site about me wanting to grow my hair long, but having to cut it to be able to live up in Maine. Well the one thing was at Carmello's party was that I was the only shorthaired guy there. Believe me, those guys there were not the first in the Greater Baltimore Metropolitan Area to want to grow their hair long, but once it had become the popular style of more and more Baltimore area young people, the young men in the social circles of Carmello and her party attendees all had longer hair. BUT! The attendees were as prejudiced against my short hair as my Aunt Martha, Uncle Finley, and the Native Mainers up there around Katahdin Lodge had been against my long hair--a year earlier.

I stayed a little longer, while Carmello and I enjoyed each other's company a little more, but then excused myself, and headed on back into my old home neighborhood. There, I found some drinkin' buddies to pal around with for the rest of the evening. That stuffy group of Carmello's newer friends there were not quite up to my somewhat wilder and more fun ways of socializing. And those wine-ee party goers weren't so damned, avant-garde-er, and hipper than me as they thought they were.

After I was discharged from the Army in November 1971, I was invited to a dinner party with Pat, Carmello, Nancy, and some other people whom I had known in high school, and new acquaintance or two. It was a nice time. There was some wine and little bit of cold beer there. A little bit of pot was piped. We all shared some considerably lively and stimulating conversation. Though I left that party feeling nice and contented to have been there, I knew it was the last time I'd be with any of them like that. They invited me around again, several more times, but then gave up on that idea.

I had become way too wild and crazy while serving in the U.S Army on Okinawa, to be around my down to earth old friends. I had developed an unsettling, nearly unquenchable thirst for cold beer and other forms of booze, and a nearly unsatisfiable desire to smoke another bowl or joint of weed. That was not compatible with some of old my high school friends' lifestyles. Not with Pat, Carmello, and Nancy's. But there were plenty of other lifelong friends around my old home neighborhood who drank and smoked just like I was doing.

That heavy drinking and smoking and other drugging lifestyle maimed a few of my old friends--physically and/or mentally maimed them, killed a few, and the peripheral damages of our self destructive lifestyles destroyed, or made miserable, too many of our families', friends', and/or lovers' lives, our professional working abilities and relationships, and the well being and futures of too many of our younger relatives.

Take it from a survivor, drink alcohol and/or use other drugs as little as possible. If you haven't tried any certain such mind altering, oft terribly personality and life altering, pyschoactive substance yet, don't move onto it. You may be moving to someplace where there is only destruction, pain, and misery. Keep your consumption of what you do use to as minimal of an amount as you possibly can. You'll live a healthier, happier, and a much more positive, successful life if you do.

Though it has been close to 15 years since I drank any booze, but not as long since I last misused any drugs. Every single day of my life, I pay a little bit of a life and soul draining price for my mistakes in the former use and abuse of alcohol and other mind altering drugs.

There are no free rides in this world. Ya' gotta' pay to play.


This is Ray-Ray Griggs. He and I were good friends from the seventh grade, about when this photo was taken, on up through high school. He had been going to Catholic school somewhere, until he got himself kicked out of there. Then he came to my public school, when we had been good pals for over a year already. He was in a lot of my classes, and we created some funny times in those classes.

Ray Griggs and I each pulled off a good number of lighthearted classroom antics on our own, and also sometimes together. We could team up very effectively with one of us acting the straight man, and the other being the funny one. We'd switch it up from one time to the next, so as to keep everyone else off balance on what to expect when one of us two would set one of our little comedians' plans into action. It was often done with a few words whispered, along with some hand signals sent, across the classroom to the other guy, when the teacher had their back turned and was writing on the chalkboard. Or one of us two would give a serious answer to a teacher's classwork question, and the other'd add a funny quip to the end of it. The whole class would roar with laughter, and the teacher also often got a kick out of what we had done in jest. We made a few of our teachers smile quite a lot.

We never put anyone down or poked fun at some other kid who couldn't get us back with their own wit and childhood wisdom. Getting hit back with some good comedy was half the fun. Ray's and my jokes, pranks, comical stunts, and funny punch lines thrown into the day's class lessons were all done for everyone's enjoyment. Naturaly, the teachers didn't always appreciate the adolescent comedy we had used our thick, steaming, young skulls to create. But we never-ever really ticked a teacher off, or ruined their day. Because we never did anything out of malice towards authority or towards our fellow students.

If I were to really get into to telling you all about Ray-Ray Griggs, I'd have to start another web site just for him. Only then could I tell you all I remember, and cherish, about him. Plus, to be fair to all of the many, many people with their own personal, cherished memories of wild and funny times with Ray-Ray, I'd have to solicit and publish Ray-Ray stories for several years. I was intimately familiar with Ray-Ray's well known, and well loved, wild and crazy, rib splitting hilarious at times, one of a kind personality. He was that kind of widely popular and much beloved person.

I'm going to tell you two more things about Ray-Ray.

The first is something that I was sworn to secrecy about, during the first week that I knew him. Ray-Ray took tap dancing lessons in an after school tap dance class held in Dundalk Elementary School. But he didn't take them for too long.

The second thing is something that everyone who knew Ray-Ray knows full well. Ray-Ray was one of the very most highly skilled--over the public road--motorcycle riders who has ever twisted a big bike's throttle grip. Ever. Anywhere. Anytime. Anyplace.

Please don't mind me for qualifying myself here by saying that, in my younger years, I could really ride hard and right in the groove myself. I was much more highly skilled at it than the average motorcycle-two wheeled motor vehicle operator. But I could have never kept up with Ray-Ray, if we had ever gotten to ride together, and he had decided to leave me way back there behind him in his jet stream.

Unfortunately, he and I never managed to be going in the same direction on our bikes at the same time. Ray-Ray owned and rode a big bike, a Harley 1200, for most of his young adult life. I only owned and rode a big bike, a Yamaha 650, for two years. And I got hit on it twice, by cars whose driver's were at fought for the accidents. So that cost me too much riding time, while the bike was in the repair shop.

I knew Ray-Ray's well earned reputation for the way he rode. I had seen him ride a few times. I knew the way that some of the guys who had been blessed to ride with Ray-Ray could ride hard, but safe, themselves. Guys who greatly admired Ray-Ray's superb motorcycle handling skills, and who all agree with me in all I say here about our long departed friend, Ray-Ray Griggs.

Ray-Ray may no longer be gravity bound to ride the tar topped streets, highways, and backroads of this earth any longer, but he certainly must be riding hard, fast, and in the groove somewhere. That's the way his soul was on this side, and it may very well be the way that his soul is spending eternity on the other side. He and I did get into some minor hooliganisms together, and also on our own, or with others. But I reasonably believe that he never did anything so wrong that he was not accepted and fully welcomed into a good place on the other side.



This is Joe Stamboni, a somewhat pudgy looking fellow, and truly one of a kind.

You see that curly, down over the forehead, waterfall styled, Rockabilly lookin' hairstyle of his? He was about the last guy in our school who had held onto that 1950s/early 1960s look. By 1965, most of us East Coast USA teen males were into the "Joe College" look. Our hair and clothing styles reflected what the college kids looked like at the time. Like what you'd see on Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys on the cover of an early Beach Boys surf music record album. But Joe looked positively normal and in style with his hair like that.

Somewhere around midsummer of 1965, Joe and his parents had moved in two houses up the street from mine, on Dunmanway. That was during the summer before my first year of high school, which was tenth grade at the time. Joe was going into twelfth grade. That school year, my next door neighbor and ten-year-long friend, Austin "Aussie" O'Baker was going into the tenth grade too.

By the time that the beginning of the school year rolled around, Joe was on good, friendly terms with all of his neighbors. So everyday of the 1965-66 school year, Aussie's mother drove her son Aussie, Joe, and I to school. It was great fun having Joe ride with us, because he could really brighten up the start of your day. He possessed a keen, sharp, and ever ready wit, all about him, all of the time. He was just about the most popular guy in school. And between classes, when you walked down through the crowded school hallways with Joe, it was non-stop, "Hey Joe, how ya doin," "Hey Joe what's up," all the way. And Joe was steadily joking and laughing with people all up and down the hallway, at a steady pace of up to about 10 or 20 kids away in either direction. Ain’t no doubt about it, Joe was surely the most popular guy in Dundalk High. He got along great with kids in every clothing/hair style type of click and group and with all of the teachers too. Most everybody knew and liked him.

Joe was probly the last male to wear black leather, pointy-toed, Hollywood movie hoodlum style shoes, which had big Cuban Heels on them, on the boardwalk “down the ocean” (Ocean City, Maryland). All of us other teens were wearing penny loafers, tennis shoes/sneakers--particularly Jack Purcells, or sandals. But Joe believed that there wasn’t anything better than the solid, thunk-thunk-thunking sound of his hard, Cuban Heels hitting them boards while he strolled on down the boardwalk, checking out the girls, and the girls were all looking around to see where the solid sounds were coming from, and then they watched him stroll on by.

Joe Stamboni was the first guy in Dundalk to dare wearing a polka dot Mod shirt. I do believe I remember it having large red polka dots on a yellow background. About that time, he also decided that the only pants he would wear were white jeans. He bought three pair of them, and he put on a clean pair everyday. He said it trully simplified things for him by only having three pair and always knowing he had to wash two pairs of them every other day.

I don’t know how the heck Joe ever passed any courses in high school. He never took a book home. He never studied or did any homework at home. Somehow, he got it done during the school day.

Joe often talked about a Corvette he was going to buy, as soon after he graduated from high school, and he got himself a full time job, as he could. Consequently, Joe had a Corvette spinner hubcap screwed onto the front cover of his blue, school notebook, which he proudly carried as he walked down the halls. He eventually owned several different Corvettes.

Joe was a very good drummer, and was heavy into 'slinging fatback' on the drums. Fatback is a nickname for the heavy backbeat of Rhythm n' Blues/Soul music.

Joe kept his drum kit set up in the family room at the side of his house. When Joe was practicing on his drums, anybody walking down the sidewalk out front or driving down the street out there could hear it. Us neighborhood kids would sometimes sit out in front of Joe's house while listening to him pounding out a heavy, rockin', beat to some Rhythm n' Blues songs, with a whole lotta' soul.

When he was practicing, Joe liked listening to Baltimore's WSID AM radio station, while playing along to the songs spun by the greatest of all Soul/R n' B disc jockeys, Fat Daddy.

When Fat Daddy was introducing songs and doing other on-the-air radio disc jockey announcements and all, he jive-talked in a very fast Baltimore City style African American accent. Fat Daddy often made it very difficult to understand exactly what he was saying, but in a most entertaining way. The majority of his listeners were inner city African Americans in Baltimore, and even they could not understand much of what he said on-the-air. Joe loved telling how Fat Daddy had gotten into trouble for saying, "Every time I hear the Supremes, I cream in my jeans!" Which Fat Daddy had said numerous times before some prudish woman in his listening audience finally figured out what he was saying every time he played a record by Diana Ross and the Supremes; and then that woman filed a formal complaint about it.

A teenage Joe once gave me some of the best advice I ever heard: “Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see.”

I found that statement to be quite profound.

It was absolutely amazing to see a somewhat pudgy Joe wearing an out of style hair cut, out of style shoes, the latest style pants, and also shirts that were soon going to be in style, and he was the most popular guy around.


Last week, I was quite fortunate to have enjoyed a nice conversation with an old friend of mine--Dave Collins. I had seen Dave and talked to him last fall, after his Rock n’ Roll band had played a concert in Dundalk Maryland’s Veterans Park. Which was the first time we'd seen each other since shortly after we had graduated from high school together. Previous to that conversation in Veterans Park, the last contact we had was by letter, when Dave was in Vietnam, and I was a student in the U.S. Army's Photographic Laboratory Technician School at Fort Monmouth New Jersey. In fact, I still have the last letter that I was going to send to Dave. It is in a Photo Lab Tech School notebook that I have kept through all these past decades.

Dave moved into my neighborhood in 1963 or '64, when we were both 13-or-14-years- old. He ended up being in a lot of my classes at school, till we graduated together.

We were very good friends when Dave and our mutual, close friend Larry "Sid" Cramer formed a Rock N' Roll band with some other guys. Dave was the lead singer, Sid played bass guitar, and, another old friend of mine, Frank Catanzariti played lead guitar. I knew the organ player, and the three guys who had served in succession as their drummer, but I can only remember Larry Lundy as one of the guys who had played drums. The band's name was.

The Suns were a great Rolling Stones type of Rock n' Roll, Rhythm and Blues, and Blues music based band. Dave's Rocked-out-Bluesy singing actually sounded a little like Mick Jagger's--till Dave's voice fully matured, after high school. And that opinion of Dave’s singing abilities is coming from a lifelong collector of recorded music who is, first and foremost, a Rolling Stones fan. The Beatles were better, but the Stone's earliest music sounded just like I felt inside. I went to many of the Rysing Suns' live performances. The Suns were the best 1967 era high school aged Rock n' Roll band who were all Dundalk kids.

I traveled around Dundalk and the Baltimore area having all kinds of teenage fun with Dave and Sid.

At Dundalk High School, in our senior year, we cut out for lunch period one afternoon together. This was a time when all school kids were expected by all adults to be in school during school days. Sid drove us in his car to the Wise Avenue Gino's Hamburgers joint for lunch.

As we approached the very busy intersection where Holabird Avenue turns into Wise Avenue at Merritt Boulevard, we all three look to our left, because the driver of a furniture delivery van had lost control of his too-fast traveling truck, and was heading in our direction. The truck was about to wreck either into us or something or someone right in front of or beside us.

The truck had been barreling down Merritt Boulevard and had tried to make a right in the curved, right turn lane, onto Holabird. But instead, it went flying straight across the cement lane divider, and was bouncing all up and down. The driver and two furniture delivery helpers inside the truck's cab were bouncing all up and down like basketballs being dribbled by Meadowlark Lemmon at a Harlem Globetrotter's game--and the inside of the roof of the truck's cab was like his huge hand dribbling all three balls at once. Those three men were looking very frightened.

We had a red light up ahead and were slowing down at the time for that stoplight.

The truck stays on a straight course all the way across the two lanes of Holabird Ave. that go in the opposite direction we were going, but, very fortunately, no vehicles were moving in those two lanes.

Then the truck comes a bouncing up over the Holabird Ave. center cement divider, and the darned lucky truck driver accidentally squeezes through in between two cars that were stopping for the red light just up ahead and to the left of us, over across one lane in the left turn lane. We were in the curbside lane heading straight.

The driver frantically whips his steering wheel to his left, which just barely keeps them from plowing into our left, front side. There was one car up ahead of us in our lane, and it was already stopped at the red light. The truck driver whipped it to the left, just missed smashing into the left side tail end of the car in front of us, as the truck pulls up to a complete stop, in the center lane, right at the red light, right as we pulled up beside it.

It was eggzactely like a scene in a comedy movie--like in Cannonball Run.

It was an absolutely amazing, and rather hilarious, set of fortunate circumstances for all. Everybody who was traveling through that intersection at that moment was lucky. Because if the truck had hit any vehicles, there's no telling what the chain reaction would have been. The vehicles who had the green light were all flying real fast as usual up and down Merritt Boulevard.

But we three high school guys were doubly lucky, because if we'd have been any part of an accident, we would have been suspended or possibly expelled from school.

I never cut out for lunch period again. I felt that my luck at not getting caught cutting lunch was all used up on that one.

Sid's car was his mother's older, used Chevy Nova station wagon. Not a cool car, but it carried plenty of band equipment, or Sid's friends. I was in that car when I learned of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. I was in the back seat, and I think it was Stevie Eitel in the front passenger seat--I know it wasn’t Dave.

It happened on a Friday night. Sid, Stevie, and I were going out somewhere, I can’t remember where, but we had just begun our evening of teenage socializing. Dundalk Shopping center was a very busy, lively small town Maine Street kind of a place back then. Local teenagers were hanging out there a lot on Friday and Saturday evenings. I have forgotten whom we had stopped to talk to, but we had been driving up Dunmanway into the shopping center, when Sid had spotted someone we knew and had pulled into the alley across from St. Rita’s Church, to talk to them.

It was two of our friends, I think that one was Jerry Swan, and they said, “Hey man! We all have to be off the streets and in our houses by eleven o'clock tonight.”

Naturally, Sid, Stevie, and I thought that those other two guys were trying to play a practical joke on us. Then when we told them we didn’t believe what they were telling us and asked why we had to be off the streets, they told us about Dr. King’s death and riots happening in Baltimore City. But of course, we didn’t understand why we had to be off the streets because of that, even though Dundalk borders Baltimore City.

Just then, two uniformed Auxiliary Cops came walking up to our car. Auxiliary Cops don’t carry guns, but do help out the regular police in various ways. We teenage guys there all knew what the two cops were. They didn’t carry guns, but they had big wooden nightsticks, flashlights, handcuffs, and some powers of detention or arrest. The two guys standing outside Sid’s car asked the two cops to verify their claim that we all had to be off the streets by eleven, and the cops verified it. The two cops continued to steadily walk towards us until they came right up close to the car, brushed our two buddies away from the side of the car with their nightsticks and shined their flashlights inside and checked out everything inside the car’s interior. There was something in a large, brown paper bag sitting under Sid’s jacket and right next to me in the backseat.

One cop points his nightstick at the jacket and bag and brusquely says, “Hey, what’s under there?”

We teens all knew right away that the cop thought it was a bag full of cold beers under the jacket. Because we had drank some cold beers together before and knew that it definitely did look like it was two six-packs in a bag hidden under the jacket. Sid reached around, lifted up his jacket, and opened the bag for the cops to see what was inside of it. I forget what was in the bag, but having the two Auxiliary Cops come down so quick and heavy on us like that let us know it was no night to be screwing around with the 11PM curfew.

The next day, Saturday, there was a 6PM curfew. I was up in Dundalk Shopping Center all that afternoon, and it was very weird.

Usually, cars that were parked in the shopping center stayed parked for at least a half-hour, and usually for longer. There were a lot of good retail stores and eateries there in 1968, and people could shop for a lot of different things there. But on that Saturday, people were coming in, getting only what they needed that day and were getting out and going back home as quickly as they could. The adults all looked very solemn and worried. We teens were thinking that it was all very entertaining, but after a couple of hours of watching all this strange movement of shoppers and their cars, it seemed like it was the end of the world coming and everybody was preparing for the worst.

The liquor stores and bars were all closed all that weekend. I saw an old wino go into DTs and fall down shaking like crazy on the sidewalk in front of the old Arundel Ice Cream restaurant, because he could not buy any booze anywhere. The ambulance had to come and take him away.

I can remember that by the time my friends who were also up there that day, and I started to head to our homes for the 6PM curfew, we were had become pretty well spooked by it all.

My father had a 22 Cal. rifle, a single barrel 12 gage shotgun, and a 7 MM hunting rifle. He told me that he had the shotgun and 22 already loaded, just in case a roving carload of rioters might come through our neighborhood. He had a shy, sorta' silly grin on his face, and said he knew it was probably not going to happen, but if I had to I had to defend the family and house.

Sunday it was a 3PM curfew. That was as close to a science fiction end of the world movie or an episode of The Twilight Zone that I ever wanna' get anywhere near. About an hour after the curfew set in, I simply had to go spend a few minutes standing out in our front yard. It was something I never want to see again, with no life anywhere to be seen or heard till a lone car would go flying by up on Merritt Boulevard and fun right through the red light.

As the lead singer in a 1968 era Rock n' Roll band, Dave Collins was bound and determined to grow his hair long, and to graduate from high school. But, as I say in other pages on this web site, in those days, longhaired boys were expelled from school, or had already quit school. Dave did manage to get away with having his hair grown just a little ways down over his ears.

I had to be satisfied with having the longest sideburns in our high school. I cut them shorter for my yearbook picture, but mine are the longest sideburns in the DHS Class of '68 Yearbook.

One afternoon between classes in school, I moseys on into to the school's smallest boy's lavatory and am unpleasantly surprised see two guys I didn't know beating up on Dave Collins. It was one taller, bigger guy and Dave duke-ing it out hot and heavy, with the big guy's medium sized buddy trying to throw some cheap shots in over and around his big buddy's large chest and shoulders, at Dave's face and head.

Dave had been trapped by them two chumps towards the back of the lavatory, between the sinks and the toilet stalls, so he had those solid fixtures on both sides of him to his advantage, because it kept the medium sized chump from getting around his big buddy, and then really doubling up on my best of friends, Dave.

As soon as I saw it all, I jumped onto the medium guy's back, did a little Judo move (taught to me by Dave Rix) on him, took his legs out from under him, and crammed his lousy little backside right into a urinal, stuck my index finger damn near up his snotty little nose, and said, in no uncertain terms, "One on one #*&*&%#@##! One on one."

That sumbee in the urinal had the nerve to look up at me like I was the one not fighting fair. But he sat there in the urinal until I allowed him to get up.

I quickly turns around to see how ol' Dave is doing; and I swear to you that he is fighting in such perfect boxing form, with his head tucked down, real nice and defensively, and his mighty young fists upper cutting furiously fast and pppooouuunnndddiiinnnggg that big dude so fast and hard into his large section that Dave's punches were lifting the big chump's heels right up in the air--about three inches off the friggin floor. That big sumbee's face was looking totally pained and frustrated, because he could not land anymore of his punches anywhere onto Dave where it counted.

So the big chump throws up his hands in defeat, steps back, looking all miffed and uppity like he was being cheated out of his clean cut American male's right to beat up all longhaired males. Then he has the nerve to say, "Alright. Alright. But I'm gonna see you later sometime."

Dave was a peace loving fellow, so he didn't say anything at all in reply to that great big, sore looser.

I had never even seen those guys anywhere in school before or never saw them after that, at all. I had no idea who they were. But the fight did happen right at the end of our senior year, so them two chumps only had a few weeks in which to see either of us two Daves later.

Man! That ticked me off to see a big guy who looked like he should have been able to take Dave on his own but had his smaller buddy helping him out. If Dave would have started a one on one fight and it was me jumping in and throwing in cheap shots at his opponent, Dave would neither have liked nor allowed that at all. He was a fair fighting kinda' guy, and so was I.

I am no longer a proponent of stand up and duke it out fair rules anymore. It's do what you have to win these days, so I have adjusted my personal defense standards to fit the modern lack of gentlemanly fisticuffs rules for a fair fight.

The way that the fight had begun was: Dave was in there alone. The two chumps had walked in and saw Dave's "long hair", which was only a half inch or so down over top of Dave's ears, at the most. Dave was combing his hair back behind his ears at the time, but them two clean cut American boys took offence to it. So the big one--he was a full head taller than Dave and a bit wider at the shoulders--calls Dave, "Hey Sally."

Because Dave was cornered back there in that small space between the toilet stalls and the sinks, he had no choice but to fight his way out of there. I don't recall what Dave said back to the big chump, or whom Dave had said had swung first. But Dave, as anyone would have, knew that he was trapped and about to be swung upon, so he may have indeed gotten the first punches in. Dave did have a false tooth cap knocked out, so he may have been sucker punched by the big chump.

Dave sure enough did get the last, mighty effective, punches in there, though. I will never forget turning my attention from the medium sized chump, whom I had handily stuffed into the urinal, to look back at Dave and the big chump battling it out and seeing my old peace loving friend Dave Collins fist fighting hard in a fine example of a boxer's defensive tuck and lifting that big chump's heels right dee-frigg up off the floor--by the solid delivery of perfectly placed, thumpitythumpitythumpity, punches to the big boy's, large, chicken hearted, mid section.

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