by R. John Buskowiak
I had just finished my Junior year in High School, the summer of 1938. I and a friend of mine in High School decided to do something exciting for the summer. We were both just 16 years old. We vowed we would join the C.C.C.'s. The minimum age was 17 but we would tell them we were 17 years of age. We knew we had to enroll for six months at a time and school would start in 3 months and I know both of us wanted to finish High School but that was a problem we would solve when we got there.
We found out that enrollment was taking place at Rochester, Minnesota. We caught a ride with someone I remember and I don't recall who it was. Anyway we got signed up for the C.C.C.'s telling them we were 17 years of age. We had our physicals the same day and were taken to Plainview, Minnesota dear old Camp 2709 late in the afternoon. I remember they gave us supper and after we ate the new enrollees had to go to the supply depot to get our sheets, pillow case and army blanket. It was too late to supply us with the other clothes.
They took us back to the barracks and they showed us how to make our beds. The sheets had to be folded just so and the blanket had to be as tight as a ribbon. They told us this is the way the beds are to be made every morning. If they were not the inspection team would rip up the bed and stand there as long as it took until the bed was made correctly. The next day we were issued our other clothes. Two new pairs of heavy army shoes, two sun tan shirts for summer, two pair of sun tan trousers, two pair of denim work trousers and two work shirts along with a denim cap for work.
The next two days all of us had to have our shots, diphthera, smallpox and etc. I remember I was so sick for a couple of days I didn't care if I ate or died.
You see in the C.C.C.'s we were under the control of the S.C.S. (Soil Conservation Service) when we were working in the field. Our typical morning started about 5:00 A.M. We had four barracks at Plainview, about 50 boys to a barrack. There were about 200 boys more or less to each camp. On the camp grounds were also a hospital, a latrine, a laundry house, a mess hall, a recreational hall with a canteen in it (to buy cigarettes, ice cream, and toilet articales) a large garage for our trucks and cars of the government. Also there was a school house where boys who did not go to High School could take some subjects like drafting and surveying. Each morning we got up all of us 50 boys would mop out our barracks. Then we would go to the latrine and shave and dress up in our best sun tans with our skull cap on and we would all be brought to attention beneath the flag pole. There we would have calisthenics for a half hour and then salute the flag as it was being raised by the playing of the bugle. We would then have breakfast, then go back to our barracks and change into our work clothes. We then would pick up our lunch and go to the garage where we would be transported to our work in army trucks. Our work day started at about 8:00 and we would get back into camp about 4:30 P.M. Then we would take a shower and put on our best sun tans and again gather under the flag pole to stand at attention when the flag was again lowered by the sound of the bugle. After we had our evening meal we could have the time to ourselves.
This was the time when we could gather up our dirty clothes and get them ready for the laundry the next day. It was a time when we could sit down and write a letter to Mom or to our sweetheart who was waiting for us. It was a time when we could relax over at the canteen eating some ice cream and joking with the boys. I think the lights went out at 10:00 P.M. It may have been 9:00 P.M. but I'm almost sure it was 10:00 P.M. They had bed check every night to make sure we were all in our beds. Some evenings of course we could go down town and would have to get a pass to do this. Some week ends we could get a pass to go home but not too often. Every evening when the sun went down the taps were played. I don't know of anything that brings on lonesomnes more than hearing the taps at sun down. Here I was just a boy of 16 with other boys as old as 25. I just loved it. The disipline, the orderly fashion which our lives were managed and the meals were very good. We had scrambled eggs and bacon every morning or dried beef on toast (we had our own name for dried beef on toast but I can't say it here) and for lunches we had large bologna or summer sauge sandwiches with cake or cookies (we also had our own name for bologna and summer sausage but again cannot say it here).
As I remember the boys who worked in the field were divided into 5 different crews with a foreman for each crew. Some were on the surveying crew, some on the sod and rock flume crew, some were fence post cutting crew, some on the fencing crew. Well I started on the fencepost cutting crew. We went into the woods overlooking White Water River in S.E. Minnesota on the bluffs and cut fence posts by the hundreds. We peeled the bark off each one. Those bluffs above White water were loaded with rattlesnakes. It was nothing to bring in 10 or 12 snakes a day into camp. Of course we had kits we could use in case any of us were bitten but luckily none of us were. After a few weeks in cutting posts I was transferred to the fencing crew. Here we dug fence post holes 2½ ft. deep. and set posts in them. We dug all our fence post holes by hand, that is by a hand digger, no power hole digger in those days. On those rocky bluffs we would have to chisel through all rock for 2 ft. with a crow bar and hand digger. Some holes took us a half day just to dig 2½ ft.
Each noon we changed off as to who would cook the noon coffee. We would put a pound of coffee in a large cream can and build a fire side of it and let it boil. We each were furnished a canteen cup which we drank our coffee out of. When it was raining out it became a problem to try and start a fire but if you failed to have coffee ready when the boys were ready to eat you really heard about it. We built miles and miles of fence for farmers to teach them about strip farming and contour farming. One day when some of the boys were streching barb wire the barb wire broke and does it ever curl when it breaks. I was in the way and got a nice cut accross my back. I was taken immediately into camp and sewed up.
They also gave us some training in fire fighting. On Saturdays when we didn't work in the field we would take this training. They would take us out in the country, about 100 of us boys at a time. They would pick out a fairly large block of woods and station us boys around the outside of the woods with shovels and saws in hand. They would set a fire in the middle of the woods with gasoline and then give the word to us boys to put it out. It meant all of us moving in from all directions toward the flames. Some of us boys would dig trenches about 3 yards wide so that any surface burning would come to the trench it would not cross and would stop burning. Others would saw down trees and make a path so that the fire could not jump from tree to tree. Then with our shovels we would try and stamp out all surface fires. They told us we may be called up North to fight fires but we were never called. During the summer I got as brown as an Indian. None of us ever wore a shirt. We were almost black from the waist up.
Well the later part of August I went to the Lieutenant and asked him if I could get out to finish High School. He said, "You have finished High School haven't you?" I said no, I have one more year to go my Senior year and I would like to finish. He told me he would have to contact Washington, D.C. and find out if they would give me a leave of absence. He said they did not give honorable discharges in the middle of a six month enrollment period. Well they gave me the leave of absence and I returned to dear old St. Charles High School. I later received my Honorable Discharge from the Plainview C.C.C.'s.
During my senior year in High School I fell head over heels in love with a girl by the name of Adeline. She was a little farm girl and a very nice girl. She was attending High School also. During my years in High School I Played the trumpet in the Band. So in the spring of 1939, my senior year in high school I formed an Old Time Dance Band. Adeline played the piano and I played the trumpet, one of my brothers played the clarinet, another played the violin, and still another brother played the drums. We hired the accordion player and bass player.
After I graduated from High School I wanted to stay close to home and work so that I could play weekends for dances throughout S.E. Minnesota. Well in the Spring of 1940 I again signed up for the C.C.C.'s. This time I was enrolled at Winona, Minnesota and sent to Lake City, Minnesota Camp # 713 on the shores of Lake Pepin. It was a beautiful camp. Well I still was going with Adeline so the night before I was to leave I jumped on my bicycle and rode out to her farm to tell her I was leaving for the C.C.C.'s. I'll never forget the looks on her face when I told her. I remember the tears started falling. Well I left and about a week after I was in Camp I laid in bed one night and made up this song about our parting that night and how badly she felt. I have made up several songs, music and all throughout my lifetime.
The name of this song was "PARTING". I will type the words in the form of a poem as follows:
PARTING
Oh I'm thinking tonight
Of a little farm home
A place that is dearest
Wherever I do roam.
For its there my sweetheart
Is waiting for me
And its there's
Where I'm longing to be
I remember the night
That I left her there
With tears in her eyes
And her sweet golden hair.
She knew I was leaving
Her there all alone
She knew I was
Leaving my home.
With sorrow she spoke,
"Oh Johnny don't go
You'll break my heart
My body and soul.
Without you my dear
I'd rather be dead
Oh Johnny I love you,"
She said.
Well I hardly could answer
As she looked at me
With tears rolling rapidly
Down her fair cheeks
Oh dearest my sweetheart
I hate to go
But life and its
Sorrows are so.
Well here I am
Many miles away
Just hoping and praying
For her every day.
For I know with the help
Of the Lord up above
I'll someday go
Back to my love.
Copyrighted within poems made up by R. John Buskowiak 1991
Well it didn't take me very long to adjust to camp life. I knew just about what to expect being in the C's before. I got all outfitted with new clothes and had my shots again. The camp was on the shores of Lake Pepin and was a beautiful camp site.
About a week after I was in Camp I got a message from the S.C.S. (Soil Conservation Office) that the head officer wanted to see me. Well I went to see him and he told me he heard I was a pretty good typist. He said he had one good typist in the office but needed another boy. He said he wrote everything out long handed and then wanted it typed. Most all the correspondence was to the Dept. of Agriculture or Dept. of the Interior at Washington, D.C. I told him I had two years of typing in High School so I knew I could do it. He told me as an incentive that we would be excused from K.P. (Kitchen Police). You know each of us boys in the camp had to take turns on week ends washing dishes and pans in the kitchen. Our turn never came up only about every 2 months.
Well I thought this was pretty neat. I took the job. I started at 8:00 A.M. and quit at 5:00 P.M. I was dressed up every day in my sun tans with a tie. At 4:30 every day as the trucks would come in from the fields I would gas each one up, take the mileage, mark down the number of gallons on each trucks chart. I would check the oil and ask the driver if there was any problems with the mechanical part of the truck. If there was we made arrangements to have another truck available so that his truck could be repaired the next day. Well I enjoyed the work very much but after about a month after seeing all the boys coming in with nice and brown sun tans. I told the officer I wanted to go to the field and get a nice sun tan. I appreciated what he had done for me but I wanted the fresh air.
There was an opening on the caterpillar crew. Mr. Rahn was the foreman of this crew. There was a Pat O'Brien a Cat Driver and myself who was to learn the cat and another man who was the Blade man similar to a road grader but was pulled by the Cat. Well I took the Caterpillar crew and after about two weeks I was digging cow ponds for farmers and with the Cat and Tumble Bug and also building dikes around the hills in contour fashion to enable the farmers to cut down on erosion. I loved running a Cat very much but after about two months I had a chance to go on a truck.
The trucks that hauled the men out to work were big trucks with a tarpalan over the back like army style. There was always two boys to every truck. We took turns driving the boys out to work. So I left the Cat Crew and went on the truck. After we took the boys out to work we would take the tarpalan off the back and run errands for the crew. We would haul rock for some and we would haul sod for others. I loved this very much.
Well the summer went real fast and I intended to sign up for another six months. The word was that the entire camp was being dissolved here in Lake City and moving up North. I knew the winters down here were cold enough without going up North. I decided not to sign up again. I found out afterwards that the Camp was held over until the Spring of 1941
I use to play taps evenings after the sun went down. I would walk out to the flag pole right on the shores of Lake Pepin and I would slowly play the taps. The echoes which bounced off the hills on the other side of the lake were just beautiful. After I finished all the lights in the barracks were turned off and I would walk slowly back to my barracks. It was at that time that my mind drifted back to home. I wandered what Mom did today and what Adeline had done today. Yes we were boys, some far away from home the first time in love maybe with their High School sweethearts. Some of the boys were from Missouri and Kansas, Mississippi and Arkansas.
My days in the C.C.C.'s cannot be expressed in words. You have to live it in the mind of an 18 year old boy. I must say it taught me the respect of authority, of individual responsibility, how to work and get along with others. My days in the C's developed me into a man. I will always have the highest respect for the Civilian Conservation Corp. They should have the same thing today for the youths of our society.
I think I forgot to mention we were paid $30.00 per month. We received $8.00 in Camp and never seen the other $22.00. That was sent home in my case to my dear Mother with eight kids and my father died when I was a year old.
This was written by Johnny Buskowiak
Rochester, Minnesota