Another tale of life in the CCC camps

Published: Friday, October 11, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, October 10, 2013 at 2:34 p.m.

This is a follow-up on my column last month about the Civilian Conservation Corps and how well it functioned in comparison to the huge mess Congress is making in failing to set up programs to help citizens who need assistance from the federal government.

The program started in 1933, and I was in my first CCC camp when my father was given the command of the camp in Edgefield, S.C., that first year. This was an all-black camp, having only black CCC men over 18 years of age. This was the only camp I ever saw that had tents being used. This may have been done because it was one of the very first camps.

The first summer was not very interesting because everyone spent all his time setting up the camp and finding out how a CCC camp was supposed to operate. The next two camps were about like the Edgefield camp except that they were all young white men. The second camp was near Ocoee, Tenn., and the third one was near Rainbow Springs here in North Carolina.

All the highways in those days were unpaved and only had dirt for a base. This made for some exciting races between law enforcement and bootleggers on these narrow and very curvy roads. This was probably the start of the NASCAR racing tradition.

It was easy to tell the bootleggers’ cars when they were empty because they all had large springs over their rear tires and the cars were raised very high in the rear. They were level when loaded with booze. I saw one sheriff’s truck that had hugh dual rear wheels that were supposed to provide better traction on the winding roads. I don’t know if it worked, but the truck sure looked cool.

My favorite CCC camp was on Suches Creek, Ga., just down the road from the post office in a general store in Margaret, Ga. The men in this camp were all veterans of World War I and were much older than in all the other camps. Most of them had kids my age back home, and since I was the only kid in the camp, I got a lot of attention, which I ate up.

This was the only camp that my father allowed to have a party off the camp limits every Sunday. There was a strict rule in all the other camps about no alcohol at any time. The veterans camp was different.

Every Sunday around 3 p.m., the veterans would start drifting toward the forest at the southern edge of the camp lights. I drifted along with some of my veteran buddies and found that the veterans were meeting with a local bootlegger and his mule at a clearing in the woods. The mule was loaded with sacks of pint mason jars filled with moonshine. I think the cost was 25 to 50 cents a jar.

I was about 16 years old, and I had been in a drum and bugle corps since I was 8, so I was pretty good at bugle calls. When the booze began to kick, the veterans always wanted me to play calls for them. They all sang the words for the calls when I played. I learned that their calls had some pretty obscene words to go with the music. They had me start with first call, then reveille, assembly and so on through the day’s calls.

The last call was always taps, and that’s when the songs and the booz caused the tears to flow. That put an end to the music. I always got invited back, so it was worth it.


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