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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can contact me at: ursusdave at yahoo dot com

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


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Two Legged Dear Hunting In Patten Maine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


David Robert Crews Copyright 2008

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Ballard's Citco Station On A Saturday Night

That's Arnold Ballard at the left, but I don't remember the other two guys. This was in Ballard's Full Service Citco Gas Station in Patten, Maine. Arnie's father owned it. I took this series of photos to show my family and friends back in Dundalk, Maryland--a suburb of Baltimore--what it was like hanging out in town on a Saturday night.

Now that I see this old photo in this format, it comes to front that the most important historical angle to it is the hair cuts of those two guys. They look like the carefully crafted styles that many of my contemporaries wore through the '60s.

Hey! Don't the guy all the way to the right in the back look like he's figuring on going bald, before he's out of his twenties? He's already training his forward comb over!

If that fellow is still alive and sees this: "Sorry old pal, I couldn't resist".




I just fit right in up there in Patten, Maine. It may look like those fellows in that photo are shutting me out of their inner circle, but I had a comfortable leaning spot in amongst that circle of friends and buddies just off to the left. I had shifted position to take the photograph.

Oh yeah. I definitely fit right in.

Even though I fit right in up there, I was always aware that if at least the past two, no, three generations of a person's family hadn't been born and raised within oh, say sixty miles of the town of Patten, then that person would always be "from the outside."

I respected that.

They had a tough life up there livin' in the woods.

When there were local jobs available, the work was usually fairly hard and often dangerous. If they became injured or ill, it was their family, friend or neighbor who drove them the hour or more it might take to get to the nearest hospital. Those folks up there relied on one another for their survival. Everybody looked out for each other.

The kids from Patten and the other small towns in the area would often go to each other's dances and parties. And I went to most of them too, often with my best friend, Gary McCarthy. He and I picked up some sweet babes together, at those countryfied teenage social affairs.

Early one relaxed, mid-summer's Saturday evening, just before the night's teen fun and country kid style action was about to commence ta' happening in northern Maine, Gary McCarthy and I were sitting next to each other, while sipping sodas, on swivel stools at the lunch counter in the Patten Drug Store.

Gary turned to me and said, "Dave, if you get into a fight with a guy from another town, then by jeeze, it'll be me and you against him back to back; I'll fight any of his friends who try to hit you from behind. But! If you get into a fight with a guy from the Town of Patten? It'll be him, me and the rest of the town against you."

I had no problem with that. I admired them for the way that they stuck together.


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When I Moved From Maryland To Maine, I Went From One Nearly Crime Free Area To Another

If you'll notice, this business card says that the post office for Katahdin Lodge is located in Smyrna Mills, Maine. Not Patten, as is said throughout all of my Northern Maine Adventure writings and is on the painted signs in the dead bear photos on the last page of this digital coffee table book.

Patten, Maine was the original postal address for the Lodge. And in 1969, we had to pick up our mail in town. I enjoyed doing so.

Sometime between 1970, when I was home on leave from the Army, and 1977, when I returned to the Lodge to live and work, mail delivery service to Katahdin Lodge had begun.

My Uncle Finley had changed post offices for his Katahdin Lodge in the early '70s. He claimed that too many people in Patten knew too much of his business from knowing what kind of mail the Lodge was receiving. And then gossiping about it.

I don't know about that. I think that maybe it was just a little bit of paranoia brought on by Finley's Korean War induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In all small town/little village types of populations around the whole wide world, gossip happens.

Small town gossip was one of the aspects of my northern Maine adventures that was quite interesting and entertaining to me. And that aspect of my adventures is all laid out in amongst my published short stories, which are instantly accessible through the links at the top right of this page, under: My Work That Is Published In Maine.

Patten is where we, at the Lodge, went to town for some of our supplies and most of our socialization wants and needs. That little town is 10 or 11 miles south of the Lodge. The town's commercial section is about equal to two city blocks long.

Smyrna Mills is about the same distance from the Lodge as Patten is. Both in mileage and travel time. With a trip to Smyrna taking a few minutes longer. But Smyrna only had one small, country store for a 'commercial district'.

Patten had far more personality than Smyrna. It may still today. I don't know though. I just found a new web site for the Town of Smyrna, and the area looks like it is doing better today than it was when I used to pass through there on a regular basis.

Patten has more than twice the population of Smyrna, and as far as I know, that census number for Patten has never topped 2,000 souls.

I can only speak for the limited time that I lived and worked up in Maine, but, back then, for my own personal tastes, Patten had more good living per cubic inch than anyplace else on earth.

As far as I know, of coarse.

No matter what, for me, in Northern Maine, Patten was where the action was.

In all of those little towns, during the 1968-69 era, the crime rate was nearly zilch, nada', not a problem. And whether I was either in a place of business in one of those towns, or out riding around with some Mainer kids in their vehicle, on a Saturday night, I left the key in the ignition of the vehicle that I had driven to town in. There were no vehicle thieves to be seen anywhere, in or around most of Northern Maine.

In early 1968, when I was still living in Dundalk, Md., crimes did happen, but it was not bad here: people left car windows open all night; this was before everyone had air conditioners, so homes had wooden screen doors that would never thwart just a mildly determined criminal's evil intentions; our homes had screened windows that stayed open all night long, in hot weather; some burglaries did happen and were often somewhat of a fear; but armed robberies, muggings and other violent crimes rarely ever happened in my Dundalk neighborhood.

1968 Dundalk was not a violent or dangerous area, like Baltimore's dank, rotting harbor area neighborhoods were in those days. That is where the world famous tourist destinations of the Inner Harbor and Fells Point are today.

My Uncle Finley K. Clarke, his sister--my mother Doris, my Aunt Martha (nee Thomas), my father--Bob Crews and all of their brothers and sisters grew up together in the Bethlehem Steel owned company mill town of Sparrows Point, Maryland. "The Point" was an easy eight minute drive from my parent's, two sister's and my Dundalk home. During the entire history of that small Town of Sparrows Point, there were virtually never any crimes committed at all.

I spent a lot of time "down The Point" at my grandparents' homes. The Clarke and Crews families were members of the St. Matthews Episcopal Church down there. The Thomas's may have been too. I don't remember whether they were or not, but they went to church on The Point. I was down The Point for most Sundays, on every holiday--except for on the 4th of July, Memorial Day and Labor Day when large family picnics were held in my backyard in Dundalk--and I visited my grandparent's homes on many days in between holidays.

The small Town of Sparrows Point was an American community where you could comfortably walk around feeling 99.9999% positively certain that you would never be anywhere near an occurring crime.

Thankfully, the relaxing, nearly crime free life of Patten, Maine was nothing new to Fin, Marty, me or anyone else in our my families.


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My Uncle Finley Surrounded By Family and Friends

I took this photo in the spring of 1969 to show my family and friends down here in Dundalk, Maryland what it was like up there at Katahdin Lodge of Patten, Maine on a typical Sunday afternoon.

Whewee! I luv the sculpted lines of that "Trumpet"—that'd be Triumph 650 Motorcycle to you non-motorcyclists.

That gray clad country gentleman leaning in the doorway is Morris, and the smiling woman on the back of the Triumph 650 Motorcycle is his good wife Marge. Morris and Marge were very close friends to my Uncle Finley and Aunt Martha, and the two couples often spent time together.

Morris and Marge, Fin and Marty, and I were all in the Lodge's dining room playing Cribbage and sharing great conversation, when Gary and Cathy Glidden pulled into the dooryard on their motorcycle. They were just stopping by for a quick visit. Gary and Cathy worked at the Lodge during hunting season—Gary as a hunting and fishing guide and Cathy on the housekeeping staff. They wanted to know when they should start working at the Lodge for that upcoming bear hunting season.

That is Cathy back there in the helmet, of coarse, and you can just see Marty's right shoulder there on the other side of Gary.

One of my nephews saw this photo and thought that Fin looked like he was angry at Gary, but it is just a tad bit of a serious talk going on between them there for a minute or two. They were fairly well matched as working partners and had tracked many a wounded bear or deer through the woods together, often at night, and had shown plenty of paying sportsmen good, safe, successful, memorable times in the vast Maine woods.

The TV reception at the Lodge was limited to about two and a half stations. One was always from over in Woodstock, Canada. And the weather had first say on which ones we could tune in to at any time.

No matter. Listening to Fin, Marty and our Mainer friends, like Morris and Marge, tell stories, some true some not so at all, was far better entertainment than TV any day of the week.

I was setting at the Lodge's Cribbage Board and Yahtzee Game adorned dining room table, one friend filled Sunday, when I was hit with an epiphany of life affirming solidation. This was after having to hold onto to the table and my chair at least once or twice to keep from sliding off onto the floor into a puddle of pained, side-splitting, laughter. I had managed to keep it under control though, because it was 35 to 40 miles to the nearest hospital. And not one doctor in between. Can't be bustin' a gut due to overwhelming hilarity way up there in the woods like that.

The epiphany was: Listening to tall tales told well is no more like being an audience member at the Liars Club Yearly Awards Banquet than watching comedy shows on television is.

You are not supposed to "believe anything you hear and only half of what you see" (Joe Stanboni my Dundalk neighbor taught me that back in '66), which truly applies to TV, and telling tall tales, if anything.

I realized on that Cribbage and Yahtzee game playing, tall tale telling Sunday evening in Maine, that tall tales are a direct ancestor of most movies and television shows.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Sundays spent amongst those finest kind of country folk.

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Splittin' Wood and Workin' Hard

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

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


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

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

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

That was my favorite vehicle of all times to drive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But nothing like that ever happened.

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

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

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


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

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

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

One was firewood, the other was tools.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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A Very Close Family and An Idiot Stick

L to R: My mother-Doris Mae Crews (maiden name Clarke); myself-David Robert Crews; my father-Robert Edward Crews Jr.; my younger sister-Jeanmarie Crews (married name Little); my aunt-Martha Louise Clarke (maiden name Thomas.

The two photos on this page were taken in early spring, 1969. My family had come up to visit us at Katahdin Lodge during my sister's Easter break from high school. My mother had hoped that I was going to go back home to Dundalk, Maryland with them when they left. But the woods, the young women and the good times up in and around Patten, Maine had quite a solid grip on me.

I never thought of this before, but maybe my mother was trying to take me home because she was worried about me being drafted into the Army and sent to fight and die in Vietnam. My entry into the military was inevitable. It is very possible that she had wanted to spend as much time with me as she could; until my U.S. Army draft notice or my voluntary enlistment took me to where she could not come to stay and visit with me for a week.

She had lived through World War Two, while living in Sparrows Point, Maryland, as a young adult. Then her brother Finley and other young men from her neighborhood had served in the Korean War. She knew plenty enough mothers who had lost sons in those two wars. Maybe she feared not ever being able to spend time with me again, after I either received that inevitable military draft notice or I enlisted into the armed services from up in Maine. And I eventually did enlist into the Army from Bangor Maine. Fortunately though, I got to spend a couple of weeks at my parents' home before I reported to serve my country.

When I did not go back to Dundalk with them, my mother was visibly disappointed.


L to R: Doris; Bob; Jeanmarie; Marty; and in the back that is my uncle--Finley Kenneth Clarke.

You see that wide, old style, heavy metal snow shovel hanging on the outside wall over there at the right?

That idiot stick and I were very close companions.

Finley once said that shovels--and industrial strength push brooms--are often referred to as idiot sticks, because any idiot can operate one.

Most men who ever worked for Katahdin Lodge were highly skilled idiot stick operators.

First off, there was a lot of snow to be shoveled in the wintertime.

Second, during 1969, then all through the early 1970s, Finley often had dirt digging projects going: like expanding the small cellar under the main building of the Lodge; putting in a well and water pump; and installing an underground bulk gasoline tank.

The hunting business is a very serious and dangerous profession to be involved in. Very few, if any, of the Lodge's hunting guides were ever even close to being considered being an idiot. That includes the large number of deer hunting guides who worked for Finley over the years. If any of Fin's male employees had ever done anything idiotic, it would have been their last day at Katahdin Lodge. And their sorry keysters would have been dressed down, chewed out and tore up by Mighty, Mighty Finley The K.

That idiot stick hanging on the outside wall of the Lodge and I were sometimes like brothers-in-arms, battling snow beasts of magnificent proportions.

Other times, that snow shovel and I moved a lot innocent minded snowflakes out of harm's way. It is downright dangerous for unsuspecting, gentle snowflakes to be allowed to lay around on driveway and walkway surfaces. Those individually, uniquely designed works of natural art could have gotten themselves squished, if Brother Shovel and I hadn't been there to lift them over to safety.

I shoveled off the roofs of every single building there at least one time. And as you peruse the pictures on this web sight you'll see a fair number of old buildings.

The roof over top of the Lodge's dining room leaked in several places; every time it rained, and when any snow on it was melting. So I shoveled off that section of roof after every snowfall, before any of it could melt and leak in on us.

My aunt and uncle made it my full responsibility to try to plug those leaking holes in our roof. I was issued a grease gun full of "Monkey Dung".

After receiving that gift of an unexpected, but welcomed, addition to my professional powers, every time we could figure out exactly where a leak might be coming from, I climbed up on the roof and Dunged it.

Trouble was, though, that we could usually only vector in on the source of any of those awfully aggravating water trickles while it was raining, but the Dung don't stick when the roof is wet.

Every time after it snowed: Fin, Marty and I were loathe to allow that innocent, docile, beautiful white snow on the dining room roof to eventually morph into tiny droplets of falling water that could possibly be forced to endure some extremely foul language being bombasted at them, as they fearfully fell from the dining room ceiling.

Pure and driven snow on the roof; all that its H2O molecules wanted in life was to seek out a safe and smooth, gravity guided path of least resistance.

Instead, for any snowflakes melting on the dining room's roof, it oft was an eventual, frightful fall into any of the three to five buckets, pots or pans being used to catch leaks.

To save the snow from such a falling fate, and to protect its delicate little ears from some awful cursing, I went up there on the dining room roof and shoveled it off after every single time it snowed, no matter how light the coverage may have been.

Actually, we wanted the snow shoveled off right away because those leaks were causing more structural damage to the building's framework than we were willing to allow by our own laziness or lack of respect for the natural resources that made up the timber and nails of the Lodge's buildings.

Through the years, before, during and after my times at Katahdin Lodge, I have made darn good use of my idiot stick operating abilities.

Especially during a year working on the labor gang in Bethlehem Steel's blast furnaces.

Sadly, those hard shoveling days of mine are over.

It has taken quite a few re-injuries of an original back injury that prevents me from using any shovels for more than a minute or two anymore. My back was first injured in 1973, when a man in a speeding 1966 Pontiac Bonneville ran a red light, broadsided me and knocked me off my new Yamaha 650 motorcycle. For two decades after that, it took quite a few re-injuries, which lead to one lower back operation along with 5 1/2 total months in veterans hospitals, to destroy my beloved abilities with an idiot stick.

But I'd be glad to stop on by over to your place to coach you on how to properly and safely use an idiot stick anytime ya' wanna' give me a call. The number is: 555-1-800-877-have-a-cold-glass-of-homemade-iced-tea-ready-for-me. Have that glass of iced tea, served with a tad bit of real sugar already in it, sitting next to a comfortable lawn chair and have an attractive, single, young forty-something-year-old woman there to rub my neck, shoulders and back, while I watch you work. And I'll be happy to come over anytime.


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Living In The 7600 Block Of Dunmanway

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.

This was my longtime next door neighbor, Carolyn "Sissy" O'Baker.

Sissy is sitting cross legged in the back of her brother's Blues Rock band's hearse. The band's name was The Psychedelic Propeller.

Our families had each bought brand new homes next to each other, in the 7600 block of Dunmanway, five days apart, in 1955. I have a younger sister, Jeanmarie, who is Sissy's age. Sissy has a brother my age, Austin. "Aussie" and I were best of friends, and Jeanmarie and Sissy were good friends. There were a dozen or so other kids on our block, who's families had also moved there in the mid-to-late-1950s.

The 1950s and '60s 7600 block of Dunmanway was a good place to grow up.



Left to right, kneeling down in the front are: Davy Phillips, Debbie Atkins, and Kevin Humphreys. In the back, left to right are: Austin "Aussie" O'Baker, Bobby Humphreys, Dougie Atkins, and Billy Phillips.

Dave Phillips lives in the house he grew up in, and I think that he has been in a home waterproofing business most of his adult life. Debbie Adkins was married to a buddy of mine, but they divorced, and I have lost track of her. Kevin Humphreys is still around Maryland somewhere, but I have no idea what he's up to these days. Austin O'Baker and his family moved to Chicago in 1967 or '68. One time, just after I got out of the Army in 1971, Aussie visited me when was again living at my parents home on Dunmanway, and that's the last I knew of him. Bobby Humphreys joined the Baltimore County Police force, and served as a narcotics detective for most of his career. Doug Atkins is a successful business man who used to own the Dundalk bar named The Zoo. Bill Philips has passed on to a kinder, gentler world 'on the other side'; where his loving father had been patiently waiting for him, for several decades, and his loving mother has recently joined them.


That's me, when I was about 14-years-old, standing in front of the O'Bakers' house. This is looking up the 7600 block of Dunmanway past my family's house, which is next door to the O'Bakers' former house. My younger sister now owns our old house.


And that's me, at about 14-or-15-years-old over in the Baltimore County Recreation and Park's ball fields across from my former home on Dunmanway.

There were four Baltimore County Recreation Department baseball fields right across the street from our entire block. Plus two soccer fields; one of which was also used as a football field. The competitive sounds along with the spectators' cheers of little league baseball, football or soccer games being played there was a lively and welcomed addition to the soundtrack of my life. I never got too into playing organized team sports, but I sure had fun over there watching games and hanging out with all the other spectators.

I did play in a lot neighborhood pick-up baseball and football games over there though. I preferred the casual atmosphere of pick-up games to the oft uncalled for dirty tactics of trophy-minded parent-coaches, plus the aggravating rule book pounding antics of player's parents. And, as you probably also know from national new reports, it gets a lot worse with some parents and parent-coaches at 21st Century children's competitive games.

Dunmaway was a good place to live.


This was my Grandmom Crews at the left, Grandmom Clarke on the right, and Granddad Crews at the other end of the kitchen table. I took this shot during one of our many family get togethers at my parents', two sisters, and my home on Dunmanway.

Every year, we had large birthday parties there for my two sisters, and me. And we went to my many cousins' birthday parties at their homes, or sometimes at one of our Grandparents' homes. Both pairs of my Grandparents had large enough homes for everyone on their side of the family to be comfortable in; but amongst their children--my parents, aunts, and uncles--our home on Dunmanway was the largest of all the other family homes. So any of my cousins' special, big birthday parties were held at our mutual Grandparents' home. I can't remember how often we had big birthday parties for the adults, it wasn't every year, but we did have them.

That photograph marks my entrance into the world of serious photography. Absolutely so. Before that, I, like most people, mostly took what could only be considered as snapshots.

I saw that typical Grandmothers visiting at our house scene at the kitchen table. But I did not want to do the usual stand there, point my camera, and say, "Hey Grandmom, I wanna take your picture, smile!"

I wanted to capture the scene on film just as it was in normal, unposed life.

So I went into my bedroom and came back out into the dining room with my cheap little Kodak Instamatic Camera hidden up under my shirttail. Then I got down onto the floor where a few of my younger cousins were playing with some toys. I made it look like I was goofing around with the younger kids, while watching my Grandmothers for when they looked just right. I wanted to capture, for ever, the personal, intimate interaction between the two older ladies, whom I loved so dearly; and who had known each other from way back around the time when they each first got married. When they had lived in the small town of Sparrows Point, Maryland.

As soon as the scene looked perfect to me, I whipped out my camera from underneath my shirttail, quickly stood up, off went the flash, and I had successfully banged off the shot that I wanted. I had made one wonderful, informal portrait of both my Grandmothers together in my home.

Of course, then came warm, sincere smiles from my Grandmothers.

They each said, with deep, Grandmotherly love, and also with pleasantly feigned mild aggravation, "Ohh! David!" Then they said something like: darned you "Davy Boy" for surprising us with that camera's flash. Naturally, my Grandmothers were quite delighted, and felt sincerely complimented, to have me surprise them by taking a photograph of them that way.

Behind the entire block, of the 7600 block of Dunmanway, is pair of train tracks; for freight trains only. Slow moving freight trains, which virtually eliminated any danger to us kids who grew up while often playing "up on the Tracks". Because from anywhere back there on the Tracks you will hear then see the train when it is plenty far enough away to allow you to get off the tracks before it comes any kind of close to you.

And, yup, the first letter in "Tracks" should be capitalized, because to us kids in the neighborhood, it was a specific geographical location.

We always referred to the location as, "up on the Tracks," because the Tracks are on a steep, raised embankment. The railroad tracks were there long before the houses we lived in were built. The raised embankment was built to keep the Tracks evenly level with higher ground just further up the Tracks. But it worked perfectly as a physical deterrent to smaller children who have to practically crawl up the steep, slippery embankment. It also worked as a psychological boundary between the Tracks and the backyards there, for everyone. It did not seem that that tracks were in our backyards, but more down there just past the ends of our backyards.

Those raised train tracks have always served as a nice way to present, for your viewing pleasure, the powerful, modern steel, American industrial beauty and awesomeness of huge freight trains. I have always enjoyed watching trains going up or down the Tracks. My sister lives in the house we grew up in, and if I am there visiting and hear a train a comin', I will go out back to watch it go by.

In the 1950s and '60s, when we often had plenty of extended family over for birthday parties and picnics, the other kids in our family were fascinated by the trains going by behind our home. Naturally, after hearing trains going by several times a day for years, my parents, two sisters and I would detect the faint sound of an approaching train long before our visitors could. We always called out to all the visiting children in the house that, "A train's comin! C'mon kids, go to the dining room window."

It would take a few minutes for the train to get there, because it had to go slow for the unguarded road crossing a half block up the street. That made it even better for the mysteriousness of how my parents, sisters and I knew the train was coming. The kids would always be pressing their faces up against any of the six, large, glass windowpanes of the dining room windows, while jumping up and down and saying, "Where? Where? Where is it? I don't see it. We don't see it!" Then they'd be tickled pink when it came rolling on by back there.

That was for inside parties, which usually occurred in the evenings.

All family picnics were held in our backyard, because it was the biggest and best backyard of anybodies. We had a picnic on every Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day. On the Fourth of July, Maryland's biggest and best Fourth of July Parade ended three blocks away up on Dunmanway. Later, at nightfall, Dundalk's fireworks were viewable from the slightly higher ground of the Baltimore County recreation property across the street.

When trains went by up on the Tracks, we picnickers would all be out there luvin' it, the children gleefully so. We would all wave to the train's engineers, and they'd smile and wave back. Meanwhile, a few of whomever were down at the bottom of the yard, playing Horseshoes, Badminton, or Croquette, would always give the passing engineers the old yankin' an invisible-cord-to-a-whistle arm and hand signal. The engineers 'id give 'er a few friendly toots, and the family would send back cheers of joy to the engineers.

Back during those years, three or four trains a day made round trips on the train tracks behind my former home. They came from the rail yards of Baltimore City down to the Bethlehem Steel Mill in Sparrows Point. There, they exchanged strings of rail cars full of steel making supplies for either emptied supply cars or cars loaded down with massively heavy, freshly made steel products. Then the same train came back up the Tracks again. Every time I saw one go by, I enjoyed it.

But the trains don't go by up on the Tracks very often anymore. Bethlehem Steel once employed over 30,000 men and women, including many members of my family. But there are now fewer than 3,000 total employees working there, and not a one is related to me.


Here is the only good shot of the Tracks that I can find. It must be from 1963 or '64. That is Johnny Ripple at the left, and me on the right. I didn't want to use all these old photos of myself on here, but they are the only ones I have that show what I'm writing about on this page.

The spot of light colored sand at the end of the yard is one of a pair of sand pits down there for playing Horseshoes.

If you look very closely, in any of the three, over forty-years-old black and white photos on this page with me in them, you can see that I'm wearing a pair of Jack Purcell Sneakers on my feet. They cost three times what regular sneakers did; they cost over nine bucks. And, I believe that they were the most expensive sneakers money could buy at the time--in and around Baltimore.

A half-a-block down the street from my childhood home on Dunmanway was Baltimore County's Merritt Beach.

If you scroll back up and take a quick look at that photo of me standing on the Baltimore County Recreation and Park's ball fields across from my former home on Dunmanway, and look at the baseball backstop fencing at the top, right side of the photo, you can almost see through the fencing and into the entrance for Merritt Beach.

When I turned 11-years-old, I began taking Red Cross swimming courses "down the Beach". We neighborhood folks rarely ever said, "Merritt Beach," it was "down the Beach" to us. I took Red Cross swimming lessons down the Beach every summer, from when I was 11 until I was 14--when I passed the Red Cross Junior Life Saving test. The only difference between Senior Lifesaving and Junior was that you had to be 16 to take Senior, they swam more laps than us and had to swim out three times as far to save a 'drowning life guard', to pass their test.

In 1965, Merritt Beach was closed to swimming. It was the summer before I turned 16 and was old enough to take my Senior Life Saving there. It was closed due to the terrible water pollution caused by the Bethlehem Steel Mill, in Sparrows Point, over across the back waters of the Chesapeake Bay that we swam in down the Beach.

Entrance fees for the Beach were a quarter for anyone 15 or under, and fifty cents for anyone over 15.

But then, I was a neighborhood boy, weren't I. And there was a locally well known way to sneak into the Beach without paying. It was a path through shoreline trees and bushes, way across the other side of a school field from the ticket booth. It was on the other side of Merritt Elementary School--my Alma Mater. And young Dave, that'd be me back then, was probly the best there was at utilizing that free path to fun in the sun.

If you got caught sneaking in, the lifeguards told you that you had to help them clean up the day's litter from the beach, along side them at the end of the day. I never got caught more than twice. But it was a lot of fun when two or three of us younger teen sneakins on litter patrol got to making horse playin' challenges with any of the 16 to 20 some-year-old lifeguards, who would gladly wrestle any two or three of us aggravaters into the sand. I never knew any guy who got caught sneaking in to not show up at the end of the afternoon to pick up beach litter, like the lifeguard had ordered them to. It was all part of the fun. The Beach was one of the best local teenage hangouts there ever was, anywhere, in any century. There was no way we locals would ever get ourselves barred from there for not showing up at the end of a great day at the Beach to work for the entrance fee we had tried to sneak past.

Anytime I snuck into the beach, that two-bit ticket price I saved by sneaking in bought me one ten-cent twelve-ounce soda, full sized candy bars were a nickel, so were small bags of pretzels or chips and also any one great Rock n' Roll song on the jukebox played for a nickel. But there were times I snuck in 'cause I didn't have a quarter. Even though my father had a good full time job in a steel mill, and my mother had a good part time job at Hutzler's Department Store in Eastpoint Mall. That's the way it was with all middle class Americans back then. We always had a nice, comfortable home, enough groceries and good clean clothes to wear though. And I never heard of any family around us ever loosing their home due to foreclosure or eviction.

The Beach was often packed with picnicking families, especially on weekends. Down there at the former Merritt Beach, there is still a very cool, breezy, large, nicely spread out picnic area under great shade trees at what now is called Merritt Point Park.


This photo of Merritt Point Park, formerly the Merritt Beach picnic area, was taken on a foggy, drizzling day in around the year 2002. It is the only one I could find right now to show how nice the shaded picnic groves are in that park.


Here is a 1977 photo of the section of the former Merritt Beach where we used to swim. The grassy part right in front was where the soft, clean sand for laying upon out in the sun used to be.

There were times on the sandy part of the Beach where you could not find a place to lay a beach towel. A beach house at the top of the gently sloping beach sand had a little snack bar, a wall of vending machines and one kick-ass jukebox. I can hear the long ago sounds of bare, happy, sandy feet shuffling under the young dancers there right now. It was a great place to meet chicks.

That platform out in the water once had two ladders for swimmers to climb up onto it and two diving boards for swimmers to dive off of it.

The two sets of poles out in the water used to have ropes with flotation devices on them. The two ropes ran parallel to the water line on the beach. "First Rope" was the safety line that non-swimmers should stay behind. The water at First Rope was about five-foot deep at high tide. The beach sand went out under the water to about 1/3rd of the way past First Rope out towards "Second Rope". At high tide, Second Rope was in eight-feet of water. It was illegal to go past Second Rope. One fair warning was all the lifeguards ever gave to anyone who swam out past Second Rope. Two times out past it and the swimmer was ordered out of the water.

As swimmers walked out past First Rope towards Second Rope, the sand dropped off at that 1/3 of the way out mark, and it dropped off at a very steep angle. It dropped into very soft, mucky muddy bottom.

During a very low tide, I once jumped off one of the diving boards feet first and held my body stiff like an arrow to see how far down into the muddy bottom I could sink. I went into it all the way up to my knees. But because this was after I had taken four years of Red Cross swimming lessons, taught at Merritt Beach, including Junior Life Saving, I knew that as soon as I began to try and kick myself free from that muck that I'd be sucked in tighter. I was ready for it, I was just doing an experiment as I did try to kick myself free. And by-golly it sure enough did just what we swimming students had been taught--the muck sucked onto my legs, and the harder I kicked, the tighter the mud's grip on my legs became. So I relaxed my legs and used my fairly well developed upper body to "power" myself back up to the surface. I was ready for it: I had sucked in and held my breath in preparation for it; the were not very many people at the beach that day; I had buddies on the diving platform and lifeguards on the beach who would have known right away if I was under water too long and stuck in the mud. The danger was minimal to me at that particular point in time. But I had proven to myself that any untrained swimmer who did not know what the bottom was like there would have definitely drowned if they ever became stuck in that soft, mucky stuff. There probably had been drownings there when someone got stuck in that muck, but I do not know of any of those actual incidents.

And that trailer park across Bullneck Creek there is a five star rated trailer park. I don't know who rates them, but I do know that five stars is the highest rating. I mowed lawns and delivered newspapers in that trailer park, plus I visited friends there. It is very neat and clean, and during most years the police never have to go down there for anything. It is still that way today--a nice, clean, safe place to live.

Before it was closed due to pollution, I had planned on becoming a lifeguard down the Beach.

Then I had planned on getting my driver's license at 16. So that I could meet girls at the Beach, or coming out of the Beach, and then give them a ride home.

An any hot summer Saturday or Sunday, when the Beach was still open for swimming, but was getting ready to close for the day, a steady stream of families in slow moving cars came up past my house on Dunmanway. Along side of the cars, in the street between the moving cars and the neighborhood cars parked along the curb, was a steady stream of tired, walking teenagers, along with any of their younger brothers and sisters who had gone to the Beach with them. They were all worn out from a day of fun in the sun. The girls would often ask me and/or Aussie O'Baker and/or any other possibly-16-years-old looking neighborhood guys who were relaxing out in front of our houses, while enjoying the parade, if we could give them a ride home. We young teenage guys in front of our homes on Dunmanway and the thin, steadily moving crowd passing by were joking and laughing with each other the whole time, till the last weary straggler struggled on by.

The loss of swimming down the Beach was very bad for me.

But the neighborhood was still a good place to live.


This is the former Merritt Beach in 1991. You can see a flat piece of the old beach house jutting out into the right side of the photo. That tree filled area across Bullneck Creek is Chesterwood Park. It was, and still is, a very nice place, indeed. Back around the late 1800s and into the early 1900s, during hot summer days, when there wasn't much of anyone who owned any motor vehicles yet, steam boats from the harbor in inner city Baltimore brought picnickers out of the awful, stifling, coal-burning-cookstove-smoke-saturated-air polluted, city heat to Chesterwood Park for a day's relief from that crappy, city life.

In those olden days, back around 1900, when Chesterwood Park was one of the best places where any inner city Baltimoreans ever got to go, Merritt Beach was part of a large farm.

The Beach was formerly known as Dundalk Bathing Beach, and was once affectionately known as "The Old Snake Hole." But, unfortunately for a young outdoorsy kinda' kid like I was, most of the snakes that were once seen down there, in abundance, had been long gone before I was ever old enough to go down there to see or catch any of them. Ah well, I've never really been much of a snake handler anyways.

When I was growing up on Dunmanway, there were, and there still are, a few turtles living down there in the shallow, mucky bottomed back waters of the former Merritt Beach. Catching and releasing Snapping Turtles was my specialty, amongst us neighborhood kids. But! Guldangit! I'm prett-near ashamed to have to say that I never ever got my paws on one single wild Painter Turtle in my whole life. And I have yet to photograph any Snappers. I intend to do some great portraits of Snapping Turtles some day. But here's a photo of me with a whopper of a Snapper that I caught down the there, about a dozen years ago. That's me old best buddy, Bug Doggy, at my side.




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