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Note: HI1
Note: (Research):[These were a series of emails to my uncle Bob and my cousin Kat. They concerned the CCC and some Army stories]
From: decal5@juno.com [mailto:decal5@juno.com] Sent: Sunday, August 08, 1999 11:10 PM To: robtcallahan@stic.net Subject: My life in the CCC
Et Al,
On July 24th of this year at 6:32 PM Bob posted to me an email suggesting that I write about what led me to enter the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), known by us enrollees as The Tree Army.
It was the winter of 1936--1937, I had turned seventeen that September. Our father was dead five years, things were still quite bad on the rundown farm we were renting, and Mother decided to pack it in, move into Comanche and seek some sort of work there. I had two younger brothers, Bob who was about eleven and Vernie about eight. The government had established the CCC as a make-work program putting young men to work at various sites in the nation, building and/or maintaining facilities in state and national parks, forests, farms etc. to conserve national assets, making them more useful to people to vacation in, as well as improving the productivity of the land, and water for irrigation. We had a young farmer neighbor, Jack Duncan, to whom I talked about going into the CCC. Jack firmly approved, as did mother. Jack was a good neighbor, about twelve years my senior, and had been particularly helpful to me, much like a father figure. So I signed up to go.
The normal tour of duty in the C's was six months. However, there were times when they would take in young men at the halfway point, so in January 1937 I enrolled at a CCC camp in Duncan, Oklahoma for three months. Going in, no enrollee ever was told where he would be assigned. These camps were run by a very small Army staff supplemented by locally employed civilians. A typical camp would have about 140 men, two or three reserve army officers in command and an army first sergeant as ramrod. A typical work unit would consist of twenty to thirty men, with two assistant leaders, one leader, and a civilian foreman, and one or two trucks for transportation to and from the work site. Most trucks were stake body types, in which we rode to work, supplemented by dump trucks for hauling dirt, gravel, wood, etc.
From Duncan we were shipped to Sulfur, Oklahoma by bus to another CCC camp where we were outfitted with an issue to clothing from Army surplus stocks, given shots, and briefed on life in the CCC. I recall the Captain giving this briefing warning us against any thought of going AWOL. One sentence from his presentation still stands out in my memory: He promised us that any man going AWOL would be given a DD blacker than a coal mine at midnight. Actually, this is a paraphrase of what he did say which was much more graphic. After a couple of days we were loaded onto trains and set out for our unknown new homes. I had no idea where our group was headed until we got to Amarillo and on into the New Mexican landscape. At that point I realized we were being assigned somewhere in the west. It was in early January and I recall standing on the observation deck watching snow covered countryside flow past, and wondering just where we would eventually light. The following morning was a brightly lit day and as the train stopped about 8:00 A.M. I could see a sign reading Williams, Arizona. Snow was everywhere, about two feet deep on the level.
We detrained and were put on buses, which headed out northbound on a highway where the road signs read Grand Canyon. Our driver was a big burly individual wearing a red and black plaid jacket. His shoulders looked four feet wide. About five miles out of Williams our bus skidded off the road and into a snow bank. He managed to back it out and get going again without assistance. It is about 60 miles from Williams to Grand Canyon and we pulled up in front of a CCC Company about eleven AM. The buildings were all of low cantonment style architecture. There were two camps at Grand Canyon: 819, and 847. But our bus went to 847, about one mile distant from 819. Snow was about three feet deep on the level. At this point I had begun to wonder what in the world I had gotten myself into: snowbound out here in the wilds of Arizona for three months, where I would never know a living soul.
Imagine my surprise as I stepped off the bus and came face to face with Irving Folsom, a high school classmate from Comanche. Things brightened up considerably after that. The first thing they did for us was march us to the mess hall where a hearty noon meal, washed down with gallons of hot tea, awaited. We were then assigned to barracks, tarpaper covered shacks housing about twenty men each, and assigned an unmade steel cot. After that to the supply room where sheets, blankets, a pillow, towels, and a toilet article kit were issued. Thus our life in 847 began on a Saturday morning. A sea change for a seventeen year old fresh off the farm with cow manure still sticking to his footgear.
More later.
Dewey
-----Original Message----- From: decal5@juno.com [mailto:decal5@juno.com] Sent: Thursday, August 12, 1999 8:27 PM To: kat-zilla@email.msn.com Subject: Various
Kat,
Dad graduated from high school in Callahan County, between Weatherford and Abilene, about 1909 or 1910. He was born in 1892, and Texas had only eleven grades through HS, so I assume he graduated at 17 or 18 years of age; he always told us kids that he did graduate.
Some time after that--not long-- they moved back to Gilmer where he met and married Mom in 1913. He became a young preacher before they married, which places that event at about 20 or 21 years of age. Mom always said the first awareness she had o f him was through a visit to a home where he had been living--must have been his parents--because his grandfather R. P.Callahan died in 1870 and is buried in Lewisville. Mom said that awareness came through glimpsing of a pair of his size twelve shoes in that house. biggest shoes she had ever seen.
Lloyd was born in January 1916. They moved to Childress in January 1919, where I was born in September 1919. Grandpa R. P. and Mag were living there then. R. S. may have worked in the old Fort Worth and Denver Railroad division point maintenance shop because Dad got a job there. I seem to remember Dad saying all three of R. S., he, and Britton, worked in that shop. Dad and Mom moved to Hastings, Oklahoma area (west and north of Waurika) in the fall of 1922, apparently to get away from Mag because she was trying to run their lives. Mag was half Cherokee Indian, and her facial features certainly bore that out: snapping black eyes and high cheek bones. I remember being the apple of her eye. Mom and Dad went to Hastings because a Childress neighbor had earlier migrated there--the John Slaughter family. Dad rented an 80 acre farm and made a good cotton crop that 1923 year because he bought and paid cash for a 1924 Ford touring car.
As far as family horse thieves go, we had only Britton as a bootlegger, and family black sheep. I had met him but never knew much of him until 1967 when we moved to Dallas. That November I drove over to Gladewater and spent two nights and days with him. I liked him, and as far as I know he had quit bootlegging long before. He had five daughters and two sons, and I recall when I met him he told me that he was 70 years old, had not an ache or pain, and had five fine sons-in-law. I thought that spoke very well of him. His eldest child, Mable, is widowed and lives in Gilmer, in a retirement home. She has a son and daughter-in-law living in Garland, and each time she is up to visit them she calls me.
Dewey
-----Original Message----- From: decal5@juno.com [mailto:decal5@juno.com] Sent: Monday, August 16, 1999 2:54 PM To: robtcallahan@stic.net Subject: CCCs - Grand Canyon
On joining camp 847 at Grand Canyon I was assigned to a work crew that hunted out, felled, and stripped the bark from Ponderosa pine trees that had been killed by bark borers. We burned the stripped bark, cut the trunks into four foot lengths, split them with wedges and mauls and hauled them into the park public offices for burning in their huge fireplaces. Our crews of nine men including our leader were equipped with ten foot cross cut saws (two men per saw), axes, wedges and sledge hammers. All equipment was turned in at a central tool shed upon arriving from work in the evening, and redrawn, sharpened, the next morning on the way to work.
Our leader was a young, experienced CCC forester. He had the ability to size up a four foot thick ponderosa, tell which way it should be felled to avoid damage to surrounding trees, and direct the saw cut to achieve that objective. I have seen him take a wooden stake drive it partially into the ground thirty or forty feet from the tree's roots, and say "We will drive that stake into the ground with the tree when it falls." Not once but many times did I see him do this. It was his way of demonstrating his skill.
We did this work through April 1937, at which time for some unknown reason I and a boy from Elgin, Oklahoma, Arnold Lee, were chosen for training to man a remote fire tower 27 miles to the west of Grand Canyon village in a terrain feature named Pasture Wash. We were given two weeks training at Hopi Tower, on the rim two miles from GC village, and then dispatched to Pasture Wash and Signal Hill Tower, our new home for the summer. We had a 1927 model A Ford pickup for transportation, and the usual run of axes, shovels. sledges, etc. for fighting any fires encountered. We were allowed to come into the village each Friday for food supplies, motor fuel in cans, mail, and a meeting with our Ranger Mr. Art Brown. Arnold would come in one week and me the next. Our quarters were a two bedroom Ranger cabin with a covered concrete cistern to hold potable water. a barn and corral. That cistern held 500 gallons of water and was supplied on demand by a water truck from GC Village. I don't recall but one, maybe two, refills being necessary from May until the end of September. We had no electricity and hence no refrigeration at the cabin, so all our food had to be staple products, canned or dried.
The cabin had a telephone and an extension to the tower. Those towers were sixty feet tall with the business department reached only by climbing a stairway and entering through a trap door in the floor. Can you imagine two seventeen year old boys, today, being entrusted with such responsibilities? But, the CCC, the foremen, leaders and Park Rangers treated us like adults, and we responded in kind. We never met a man or worked for a supervisor who was not just first rate in all respects. One of our foremen was Ed Law, a thin rangy man of some fifty-five years, who could outtalk any of us on the canyon trails. Mr. Law had been a friend of Zane Grey when Grey was writing his western novels in Arizona. Mr. Law taught us that when on trails in the canyon and we heard a noise of rocks breaking loose up above and falling, never to panic and begin running to supposed safety. Instead, stand still and watch it to see where it is going, then make your move when you are certain. of its path. This was especially important in early spring as winter receded and boulders slipped away from thawed soil.
Notable events that summer:
1 We had one forest fire to put out. It happened one fine morning on my shift in the tower. Out there you have these summer storms that brew up with an awesome display of thunder and lightning, but not a drop of rain. In August and September these are almost a daily occurrence. That morning a lightning bolt struck a pinion pine tree about a hundred yards from the tower and set it on fire. I called into Ranger HQ in GC Village to report it and told them I was checking out to fight a fire near the tower. Within half an hour I was back and checking in to report the fire extinguished, picked up my book and resumed reading where I had left off.
These towers were equipped with a two foot diameter Alidade, mounted on a center post. It was rotatable within a brass circle marked off in 360 degrees with the zero point oriented toward true north; it had a sighting device much like the sights on a rifle. Our job was to visually scan the surrounding countryside about every fifteen minutes. If we saw anything suspicious we would zero in on that with field glasses to determine if we had a fire identified. If a fire was spotted or suspected, we would take an azimuth reading on it, report that by phone to Ranger HQ in GC Village who would then try to get at least one other tower (there were six of these within the system) to spot it and give their reading. If two towers could see the same fire, then the crossing point of the two azimuths (triangulation) gave us the location of that fire. Other than that the summer was pretty much uneventful, but never boring to me, and I do not recall Arnold Lee complaining. It was very good duty.
2. Another event occurred about midsummer when Mr. Brown, our Ranger, came out for monthly inspection trip. Our road to the tower was a crude trail about two miles from the cabin. As the road approached the tower the terrain sloped upward because the tower was built on its highest point near the rim. When the road--such as it was-- was built a pinion pine tree about eight inches in diameter had to be removed with the road straddling the stump; originally cut off near ground level for vehicular clearance. Brown noticed that rains over time had rutted the tire tracks to such an extent that the stump had begun to threaten damage to a vehicle's transmission and differential. He asked us to remove that stump, and left.
Lee and I didn't exactly know how we were to do it, but we remembered that in the barn was half a case of 40 percent dynamite and some electric blasting caps. We scrounged around and found about a hundred yards of two strand insulated wire. All we needed now was an igniter, which proved to be the battery on our truck. On those model As the battery was under the floor boards on the driver's side, accessed through a trap door cover. With this combo we did a little experimenting and found it worked. Cut a half circle in the side of one stick of dynamite, emplace the cap in that cutout, wrap some wire around it to hold it in place and connect, your hundred yard lead wire, touch its outer ends to the battery posts, and "whammo" you had a king sized firecracker.
After closing the tower one evening Lee and I drove up to the stump area. We didn't know how much dynamite it would take to blow that stump out, but we did know those trees grow in very poor soil and have a strong root system. So, we dug around the tree and found that a foot below the ground surface it forked into two five or six inch roots. Eureka! If we hollowed out that area we would have a good place to locate our charge. Not wanting to botch the job we settled on six sticks of 40 percent, wrapped her up with its cap, placed it under the fork and packed mud around it to help direct the charge, which we had seen a powder monkey on a job. We attached our hundred yard line, backed our truck off behind a real thick pinion pine as far away as our line would permit, and were ready. We were both pretty nervous but unwilling to spend a day or more digging that stump out with shovels and axes. Arnold insisted that I blow it and stuck his fingers in his ears. I removed the battery cover and stuck one wire to one battery post: NOTHING! Gingerly, I stuck the other line end to the other post, and all hell broke loose. Godawfulest blast you ever heard! Dirt, rock and black smoke filled the air around the stump area, and a woo--woo--woo-sound filled the air. After the smoke cleared we went to see what had happened. The stump was gone leaving a three foot deep hole which we had to shovel dirt and rock into for fill. We searched the area for that stump but never found it. We calculated the woo-woo sound we had heard was that stump, rocketing end-over- end through the air.
Mr. Brown came out the next month on his inspection trip saw the stump was gone and complimented us on a job well done, concluding with the comment �I'll bet that was a heck of a job getting that thing out, wasn't it?" To which we jointly replied with straight faces, "Yes, sir, Mr. Brown, that was quite a job!"
3. One other event of that summer which does not reflect too well on me and my partner occurred in late September of 1937. The original road out to Pasture Wash was little better than a crude trail for the 27 miles, but the Park Service had gotten funding to build a better, though still dirt, road. At September's end a crew under foreman Denny O'Brien, a short balding Irishman who forever smoked a pipe, but had the patience of Job with his crew of some 20 boys, had worked their way to within a couple of miles of the cabin.. Their equipment consisted of a road grader, dirt scoops, one medium sized and one small caterpillar, timber cutting equipment etc. Since September 30th was the end of a six month enlistment period, the boys who were not reenlisting had to be taken into 847 and processed for discharge and travel home. Most of the road crew were going home, including my partner Arnold Lee.
Because I was reenlisting, me and a boy from the road crew were selected to remain behind and take care of the camp and its equipment. This boy was from eastern Oklahoma and named D. B. Watson. When D. B. enlisted he used only his initials instead of first names, that being the way his parents had registered his birth. However, that was not good enough for the CCC, which insisted on two whole names. So, with a sense of humor D. B. rose to the occasion and told them "Okay, my two given names are Dee and Bee, and so these two names went into his records as Dee Bee Watson.
The road crew departed but their mistake was in leaving behind a 55 gallon drum of gasoline. They were hardly out of sight when D. B. and me fired up the two caterpillars and begin having fun. There were many dead pinion pines in Pasture Wash and we enjoyed knocking them down with the two tractors. We staged tractor races at maybe five miles per hour, drove them cross country exploring, etc., in short living it up. At one time we drove them right up to the canyon's lip. When Denny came back with a new crew of enlistees neither tractor was running. The bigger one had a blown head gasket, and I don't remember what the smaller one's problem was but it would not start.
D. B. and I were scared out of our wits at what Denny might do to us. But, credit to him, all he did after surveying the carnage was to pull on his pipe, blow a cloud of smoke and quietly say, "Damn boys!"
Talk about relief??
Next episode deals with transfer of 847 to Yuma, which occurred shortly afterward.
Dewey
-----Original Message----- From: decal5@juno.com [mailto:decal5@juno.com] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 1999 8:46 PM To: robtcallahan@stic.net Subject: Various
Bob,
I have not commented on your new Malibu. Sounds like a nice automobile, just what the female doctor ordered. That power is awesome--60 at 1800 rpm. My friend Al Borth and his wife Therese, in Philadelphia, have one, and love it. Al was our Battalion Sergeant Major during WW II. I have been trying to get them to drive out this way and see the west, something they have never seen. I believe they have hardly been out of Philly. I have urged them to come out and see the mountains, the tall trees, the canyons, especially Grand Canyon and that Canyonland county of northeastern Utah around Moab, etc. But nothing works.
Got the two packets of materials on R. P. and Mary's land deals. She must have had some money from her side of the family. I note that on one document he had borrowed two hundred and eighty dollars from her on a 120 day promissory note, and apparently they used that and her like amount to buy a quarter section in Upshur country. I noticed also that they bought from a previous land allotment of a League and a Labor that had been granted someone named Moody. I remember those words from Michener's novel, "Texas,� According to my old book titled "A History of Texas," a labor of land equaled 177 acres; a league equaled 4,251 acres, so a league and a labor equaled 4,428 acres. This amount was usually granted to an immigrant married man and his wife who wanted to farm 177 acres and raise cattle on 4,251 acres.
That league of land was granted if he proposed to raise cattle on it. in other words become a rancher, but it had to be pasture land. Terms of the grant were for the 4,251 acres (league) he had to pay the state $30.00 within six years. And for a labor he had to pay $3.50 if irrigable and $2.50 if not irrigable. The government required no part of the payment due until the end of four years, at which time one third was due, with the other thirds due at the fifth and sixth year's end. Needless to say there was a great clamor for land in Texas under such favorable conditions. From March 24, 1827 to March 14, 1832, 5,291 families were settled in Texas, at which time the Mexican government stopped immigration, having become suspicious of the settlers political leanings.
Thought this might be interesting to all.
Dewey
-----Original Message----- From: decal5@juno.com [mailto:decal5@juno.com] Sent: Monday, December 20, 1999 1:28 AM Subject: New Project
OPENING STATEMENT
I have a collection of some eight or ten essays labeled Korean Klarions, written from Korea to a limited addressee group in the states during 1956. I do not believe that any of my current addressees have seen these essays. They were sent to my mother, my older brother and wife, and a pair of Army couples in the states to whom Irene and I had a very close attachment based on military service. These last two were Mike and Pat Darnell and Logan and Ginger Gibson, then assigned to Fort Sill and living in Lawton, Oklahoma. I arrived at the 24th Infantry Division Headquarters in Korea on January 5th 1956 at about five in the evening. It was so cold that diesel fuel would congeal and refuse to run through lines from an outside 55 gallon drum to the small pot-bellied stoves that heated our tents. To beat this problem we had to cut the barrels of diesel fuel with 10 percent gasoline. The division headquarters was located near a small village named Munsani (Mun sahn nee). My first letter home was written on February 3rd, 1956, addressed only to my mother. It follows:
Korea February 3rd Dear Mom,
Received a letter from you last night. At the writing you s eemed awfully down in the dumps. Mama, you simply must attempt to adopt a more cheerful outlook on matters. Each little reverse that comes along should not be viewed as equivalent to a Greek tragedy. Whether you are worried about me, or about Oda, or about your job, I don't know. But, in recent years I have rarely seen you when you weren't borrowing something to worry about.
I was amused by that part of your letter which reads:"Yes, I am sure that must be an awful place, from all the conditions existing. So sorry for each one there. We cannot understand a lot of things in this old world, but such is the result of sin. Had Eve not eaten the fruit God forbid her to eat of, we'd not suffer as we have down through the ages."
Now let's examine that paragraph above. Can you tell me why you should? feel sorry for the Koreans? By our standards they do have it pretty bad. But why should we judge their conditions by our standards? By their standards most of them probably are better off than you are by American standards. They don't have much, to be sure, but they give evidence of being better content with what they have than most Americans do with what we have. Can the human race really expect much more than to be happy and content? For myself I have come to believe in the past few years than nothing is of more value than contentment and peace of mind. If the Koreans have that they are better off than most Americans.
Now to the next portion of your paragraph: "We can't always understand a lot of things in this old world, but such is the result of sin." I assume you mean that the conditions that I described in Korea are the result of sin. I believe nothing could be farther from the truth. The conditions here are, I believe, largely due to the existence of two factors: 1. Korea has practically no natural resources. Without coal, oil, natural gas, timber, iron ore, copper, etc. no nation can expect to be anything but a "have not" nation, unless they are industrious enough, like the Swiss, to import other people's natural resources, manufacture them into finished products and resell those finished goods on world markets at a profit. It is a pretty neat trick, and few nations have been able to turn it to their advantage. When you can buy raw materials from another guy, make them into the kinds of goods that he makes the same materials into himself and then sell these back to him cheaper than he can make and sell these himself--brother you are a manager.
The Koreans have not yet acquired that skill. The second factor contributing to their conditions is, I believe, their form of religion. Like most oriental races, their religion teaches reverence toward a happy home and family life, and to be content with their lot therein. If one lives in this sort of environment and really believes in his religion, how can he or she help but be pretty well off? If he is content should anyone for anything more for him?
Now to the third portion of your paragraph (and this probably will precipitate a family hassle of no small dimensions): "If Eve had not eaten the fruit God forbid her to eat of we'd not suffer as we have down through the ages." Now, that contention is, I believe, one of the weakest shorings under the Christian religion. To me, most Christians appear to approach this theory by the peculiar method of backing up into it. In the subconscious mind they believe, as they've been obliquely taught, that it refers to sexual intercourse. Yet they inwardly recoil violently from any attempted association of this nasty, unmentionable act, with any religious theme or setting. Such are the religious prudes. They are the people who decline to face the facts of human procreation directly, because they have had instilled in them from childhood by their narrow, egotistical, bigoted elders, that there is something unspeakably dirty connected with the act. The more fanatic among these usually wind up in a mental institution. Why? Because their minds are eternally trying to sort out and pigeonhole separately an idea that has only one part, and consequently cannot be compartmentalized. These are the bigots who, if our present laws did not prevent, would not hesitate to take human life in order to enforce their beliefs on those who disagree. These are the types who ran the pilgrims out of England and Holland. But, the pilgrims, themselves, were so narrow that they deserved to be run out. The major difference was that there were fewer pilgrims, so they had to leave in order to remain alive. and practice their beliefs.
As for me, I cannot bring myself to believe in the idea of original sin. If there is a God, and if he did make an Adam and an Eve in the form of a man and a woman as we know them today, then why in the name of Heaven forbid them to perform the one and only act which is totally natural with them, and which by its very performance brings them closer and closer together, spiritually, in an expression of mutual undying love for one another? And, if God didn't intend for them to perform this ultimate act of love and produce children, then why in the name of logic create them in the first place? Did he want just a pair of puppets to dangle on a string and make perform gymnastics when it pleased him to do so? If that was the desire to limit the world's population to only two people--then matters certainly grew out of hand, did they not? A better idea--one that would have prevented this whole business in the beginning--would have been to omit the sex organs and combine the urination function with bowel structure. This would have had served two purposes so much better: 1. No sinning. 2. Everyone would have a built in enema mechanism.
No, I cannot believe in the myth of original sin. My God has better control of his situation. He thought further ahead and was not contradictory. My God would not have created water, hills, and gravity, then forbade water to run downhill on pain of forever thereafter having to run uphill.
And, I will never believe that any creature as beautiful as a child ever can be born in sin.
Any creature, so happy, so carefree, so lovable, and as much enjoyment as a child--simply could not be born in sin. IT JUST IS NOT THERE! How can anyone believe that a man and a woman in love, who mate and produce as lovely a creature as a child, could by definition be damming that entity to eternal torment just through the process of having brought it into the world, that is unless it agrees to swallow a belief to be crammed down its throat by its elders. What about the so-called heathen? Are they going to Hell because they failed to get the word in time? And, that the only people who will enjoy a pleasant hereafter are those who are on the party line--and in good graces with the telephone company?
Who made the elders so wise as to have unlocked all the secrets for their very own use, consequently leaving nothing for the child except to toe the mark? He must not think for himself; he must not reason for himself. He must not arrive at any conclusion by differing with his parents, balancing one item of information against another, setting his facts up in rows, and then trying to determine if one fact offsets another. He must not inquire into the established order of things, and try to determine for himself whether the picture puzzle is properly fitted together. Because if he does find out that it is not properly fitted together, there are apt to be some red faces--very red faces--on the block.
I believe that parents can do no greater wrong to a child than failing to teach it to think and reason for itself as it grows up, all within the context of a loving, law-abiding, family relationship. Those parent who fail to do so do, I believe, because at any given age in life the children usually are smarter than their parents were at that given age. I know that our children are smarter than I was at their respective ages. And yet, in spite of this realization I have found myself attempting to stifle their reason and creativity because the ideas they were coming up with did not fit my preconceived standards.
No one human being, nor any one group has full and complete possession of the facts of how life should be lived. And yet, the very refusal of religion to concede this point, has cost it more churches and lives lost than ever can be atoned for by those responsible for breaking up said churches. There are people so narrow in their beliefs, so bigoted, so prejudiced against any admission that possibly--just possibly--the other fellow might be right this time, that they would sooner see a church sacrificed than have their own ego deflated.
With that sermon I believe I will end this. Mama. Always know that I love you dearly. You gave me life; you stood by us when Dad died, and you would not allow relatives to parcel out four boys as a burden too big for you to bear. Somehow you pulled us through it, and I believe we all are now a credit to your rearing, and no greater testimony to good parenting can be offered.
Dewey
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