AR: Let's begin with where and when you were born.
GC: I was born in north Minnesota on March 6, 1912.
AR: You grew up in the Duluth area?
GC: I did. I went to grade school in Woodland and went to Central High School.
AR: Your father was a plumber, correct?
GC: Yes. My mother came from Austria. She was only 14 years old when she came to this country and worked for people as a house maid. My dad was born in this country, in Chelsea, Wisconsin, and then his folks later moved to Ashland, Wisconsin. They were building the ore back then, and his father fell off the dock somehow and got killed and left his wife with two boys. She never remarried and the boys went to school and that sort of thing. My dad moved from Ashland, Wisconsin to Duluth and that's where he evidently met my mother and they were married.
AR: What was your father's name?
GC: Frank Benjamin Cressel.
AR: And your mother's name?
GC: Margaret.
AR: What was her maiden name?
GC: Sansa. Don't ask me how to spell that, SANSA, I guess.
AR: Let's talk a general overview of your life and the life of your family as the Great Depression hit.
GC: We lived in Duluth, Minnesota at 832 West 4th Street, which was up on the hill overlooking Duluth. It wasn't far from the Boulevard Drive. You could see the whole town of Duluth if you drove over that. I went to the Emerson School there. And from the Emerson School my dad bought a place in Woodland and (unclear) studio at the very end of the road. You'd turn around and go back into town. It wasn't too far from the Ridgeview golf course, where I spent most of my time as a youth, caddying and learning to play the game of golf. I went to the Emerson grade school, and when I graduated I went to Central High School. Before that, my life in Woodland was...I was nine years old when we moved there and spent my early childhood life there. My life in Woodland was mostly... in wintertime, I played hockey a lot. We had a local hockey team and we played teams all over Duluth, Hibbing, Virginia, Two Harbors. Skating rinks, we called them the Wheeler (??) rinks, we had hockey games scheduled against different teams from the town of Duluth. Business people sponsored teams like Marshall House (??) and furnished us with jerseys and sweatshirts and jackets with their logos on, of course.
From there, times got tough in the thirties and my grandmother and my uncle were staying with us at our house and my dad...my uncle Phil lost his job first, and it slowed down to a point that they didn't need him, so he was laid off. Then after that my dad was a plumber for a shop that had six plumbers and seven steamfitters. It was a big shop. Business wasn't progressing so he laid them off one at a time and my dad was the last one to let go. He said that he only had work enough for himself and had to let him off. Then when times got better he'd like to have him back. That stuff never happened because in the meantime my dad got another job. But before that, in order to sustain the home, I joined the three Cs and the money was sent home to my folks so they could buy groceries and pay rent and that sort of thing.
AR: When did you first hear of the CCC?
GC: When I was sure of (unclear) it. Before that I worked on the WPA for a while. That was doing work around Duluth that had to be done like street work and helping to do the work that was needed. I got laid off of that job, I think the work ran out is what happened. At any rate, my dad still hadn't had any work and it was getting to the point where it was pretty tough on him and he'd pick up and odd job here and there but not enough to sustain the home. So I heard about the three Cs and I told my dad I was going to go in the CCC to help him, so that's what I done. The first place I was sent to was Breckenridge and Walker. We worked on the river there, cleaning it up and doing highway work, cleaning up on the highways. Cutting up dead trees and that sort. When I first got to Breckenridge we stayed in an old schoolhouse. They'd built a new high school so the old one was empty, so they allowed the CCCs to billet there. Things were worked out so that (unclear). Our camp was sent to the Smoky Hills section of Hubbard County, and part of it was in Becker. Anyway, we were billeted there in army tents at first because they didn't have the camp built yet and they weren't going to until they'd located enough water to sustain the camp. So they had the water drills in there and my recollection is that they were at that a couple or three weeks and never hit enough water to sustain the camp. So then we were disbanded and a lot of us went to Lake Itasca Park where we started a new camp.
AR: Before we get into the new camp at Itasca, I'd like to go back for a couple of quick things. When you first enlisted in the CCC, was there an enlistment center right in Duluth?
GC: Yes. I don't know if they had an office there, but you could apply, and if you qualified you would be sent to, I think if I remember right we were sent to Fort Snelling first for induction into that kind of a life. Then we were sent to Wahpeton and Breckenridge and other places that I've told you about so far.
AR: How long between the time that you signed up and going down to Fort Snelling and then back up to Breckenridge and Wahpeton, how long was that?
GC: Not very long. I tell you it's almost a week or a week and a half or two weeks. Not over two weeks.
AR: Were you hauled down by truck or by train?
GC: By truck.
AR: Did you know anyone else that was signing up?
GC: No, I didn't know any of them. They were all new to me, everyone. And the same way when we went to Wahpeton and Breckenridge. Evidently they sent a whole group there at a time and they were all strangers to one another.
AR: How long were you at the Breckenridge/Wahpeton camp?
GC: Not very long. About three, four months maybe. We were assigned to do everything (unclear), and then they decided to ship us up to the Smoky Hills area to build a new camp, start a new camp. All of the ones that went up there were (unclear) the Breckenridge camp. We were mostly acquainted there. They did send up new ones. I finally wound up in 1722, I think was the number, in Itasca Park.
AR: This was 1934.
GC: Yes, 1934.
AR: Approximately how long were you at Smoky Hills?
GC: We were there for quite a while, not at that camp but in the park area, we were there for quite a while in the Smoky Hills camp when they discovered it didn't have enough water to maintain a camp, they sent us up to Itasca.
AR: By truck again?
GC: Yes. That wasn't much of a shot up there.
AR: You said where they sent you was a new camp. Were there any buildings at all there?
GC: Yes, they had some in the meantime we built more. We started out with a small unit and progressed until we had a full camp there.
AR: Can you describe your first impressions...that was an awful long time ago, I know!
GC: It was a long time ago, that's true. Of course, we were pretty well acquainted with one another and we integrated pretty readily, although I wasn't too excited about it. But we had work to do while we were getting the camp ready and there was enough work around the camp, like cleaning up and getting camp ready for our units. I remember we had an old army captain that was in charge of everything, Captain Dietz, and he didn't put up with any shenanigans. You had to work. You weren't just laying around in the sack or anything like that. It got so he was pretty well liked.
AR: About how many people were there at first?
GC: I don't really know, but there were four or five barracks and they must have housed 30, 35 people each barracks, whatever you want to call it, a unit. So I would say about 100, 150 all together. Then the cook house was separate and the cook, his name was Pete Check, I don't know how to spell his last name, but Check was his last name, he wasn't a foreigner or anything but you could tell he had traits of his native land. I don't know if he came over here early in life or if he came with his (unclear) - I don't know anything about his background. But he was an excellent cook. He could handle that many men. Of course, he had helpers and there was always somebody from the camp that was on KP so that they had plenty of help. And the meals were good. It was a healthy life.
AR: What types of things did you have to eat?
GC: Pancakes and cereal like oatmeal and Cream of Wheat, eggs - different style. Most of the time they were scrambled but we did have them served cooked and you'd take what you wanted from the serving plate. The cereal was always just out and if you wanted more you could ask for it and you'd get it. Food was sparse. Everybody had all they could eat and we had fresh milk if you wanted it, tea or coffee, usually coffee, and water of course.
AR: When you first got there they sent you right away to start working in the woods and you also had to get the camp in shape.
GC: They hired a lot of that done. Carpenters and that sort of thing, we didn't have anything to do with the actual building of the buildings. But we had to maintain them after they were built and we were all responsible for cleaning up the area. We started in right away working on clean up on highways and secondary roads and stuff like that. Cleaning the brush and dead and down timber and burning everything so there wasn't any debris laying around.
AR: Was it fall when you got there in 1934?
GC: That's kind of hazy, but it seems to me it was mid-summer.
AR: When you first arrived at camp, did you have all your supplies? Your uniforms and things, or did they...
GC: Clothing was issued of course and that kind of supplies that we needed. Boots and overshoes and socks, good heavy socks for winter and lighter socks for summer; good warm clothing. You didn't have to worry about going out on a job and not being warm. That's getting a little bit ahead of it. We started in building a telephone line, that was one of the first projects, between the park headquarters and the forestry department. I climbed many a telephone pole. I'd put climbers on and a strap around your waist and you'd pull up as you went you'd get another hold on the strap and so forth and string the wire and put the tension on the wire. Of course, we had a man that was in charge of that who knew how to do that sort of thing. Knew how to splice the wire. We learned how to do it, too, it was part of our training when we were in camp to learn how to do these different things. Some of the guys got to learn how to run bulldozers when we were making new fire trails and roads. Graters and that sort of thing. So it was a good thing for a lot of them.
AR: Do you remember the name of the foreman of the telephone line?
GC: Belmont was the fellow that helped with that. I can't remember his name. It seems to me it was Clarence, but I'm not sure about that.
AR: Approximately how many guys were on that (telephone) crew?
GC: It wasn't a big crew. There were two of us that climbed the pole and wire stretchers and people to run the wire, probably a dozen at the most. Most of the time it was only Belmont and if we had any clearing to do, he took some extra people from the camp. If you had to move brush out for the lines and so forth. As a rule, there were about half a dozen to a dozen, I would say.
AR: Who was in charge of that project? Was it forestry or the park or...
GC: I think it was a joint effort between the forestry and the park. Forestry headquarters at the park.
AR: Approximately how long did it take you to construct this?
GC: It took quite a while because you had to cut lines once in a while. If there was a tree or something in the way that had to be taken out, but most of it wasn't that hard. You more or less followed the lines. Of course, you couldn't go (unclear) the Bell telephone lines. That took probably the rest of that summer and into late that fall.
AR: Were the telephone poles already constructed for you or did have to also...?
GC: They were all peeled and ready to go. They brought them in by truck and spread them along where they were needed and we had some on the truck from time to time. I can't think of anything else in regards to the telephone line.
AR: That was a very important project that you worked on there!
GC: All of the CCC work was good and constructive. We built those roads up there. Made them wider and graded them, the ones up there at the Coon Lake Road, if you know where that is. That one goes from (highway) 71 here clear over there to the old Lake George Road, that used to be called number four, I don't know what the number is anymore.
AR: How were you picked to be on the telephone crew?
GC: I think they just picked a crew, just by accident. You go and you go and so forth. Belmont was the one that decided if he was going to keep us or add somebody or take somebody off or whatever. But I think we all stayed with him in that line, if I remember right. I did most of the climbing, and one other fella, and of course we all helped with stringing the wire and splicing it whenever it needed. I think we learned quite a bit.
AR: Did you ever fall off?
GC: No, no. They had this strap that went around and as you climbed up you'd pull the strap and it'd hold you. You'd lean back into the strap and strap held you and you had cleats into the telephone pole and I never fell off or even slipped down one, but I made sure that I had the cleats on good and leaned back into the strap. They were big wide straps; there wasn't any danger of them breaking. I can't think of anything else to tell about that, except that it went into usage right away. We were talking back and forth as soon as we hooked up with the headquarters there at the forestry department in Park Rapids.
AR: And it worked the first try?
GC: Oh yeah.
AR: As long as you're talking about some of the projects that you worked on, what were some of the other ones after the telephone line was completed?
GC: At Breckenridge or...?
AR: At Itasca specifically.
GC: I told you about the bridge on Coon Lake Road. That took quite a while because we had to blast stumps. Me and another guy - I can't think of his last name, we called him Schrantz - anyway, he and I did all the blasting. You had to know what you were doing. He knew how to do it and I learned under him. We worked together real well. You had to make sure you didn't have no dynamite around when you were drilling the holes so you could put a charge under the stump. There were a lot of them. We must have used up three, four boxes of dynamite on that whole road. Of course, the camp then came in and regraded it and push out on each side so that you had a wide enough road. They made it a good, passable road. Prior to that there was an old trail from where we went in - they called it the Y - it went east and west to the Old George Road, there was an old trail in there. You could probably run through there with a Model A Ford because it had a lot of clearance, but it wasn't much of a road. You couldn't get any trucks in there. I suppose they wanted a fire trail for one thing, so if there was a fire they'd have to get their fire equipment in there.
AR: Did you ever have to help fight fires?
GC: Oh yes, we did some of that. That was when we moved over to Walker, we fought a lot of peat fires over there. None around here that I can remember.
AR: That must have been quite an experience!
GC: You can fight peat fires all the time, you know, and they'd spring up again. They went underneath the bog and probably would come up somewhere else. It was a tough, tough job. You did all of that by hand. We finally got all of the peat fires out. To come back to here, we did a lot of work on pushing out roads, I guess I told you that. Clean up around some of the lakes that were in the park.
AR: So a lot of work in the woods?
GC: Mostly all woods work, yes. Cleaning up, and we planted a lot of trees. They were all done by hand, now they've got machine climbers.
AR: That must have been a lot of work to plant the trees.
GC: It took quite a while to plant trees. We planted more over there around Walker than we did here. All along to Walker, the highway east of Walker to Brainerd. We did nearly all that work there. We did a lot of road work around Brainerd and we didn't get quite to Hackensack, but we did some close to there, too. We planted acres and acres of trees. Especially in the cut, wooded areas. When I go that way now to Duluth I can see the results of all that. All those trees - how big they are. I know exactly where they did all this work. Millions of them I would say, planted by the CCC. Our camp wasn't the only one. They had a camp at Bena, and I'm not to sure they didn't have a side camp at Walker, because when we did that work out of Walker at Leech Lake it took three or four CCC camps to chart that whole lake because there's 640 miles of shoreline on that lake.
That was a worthwhile project because they knew exactly what was in this area and what kind of vegetation or whatever it was on the lake bottom around the whole lake and they got maps of all that. I think you can get them from the forestry department, but I'm not sure.
AR: That was quite a project. Where in the park did you plant the trees? You said you didn't plant many, but...
GC: We planted them in different areas. Like up in the goss (??) country we planted trees in there and roadside going to - (talks to wife to recall the name of the town) - Bagley. We did a lot of work around that highway on all the sides and different areas that needed planting. That was all charted out for us. We didn't know where we were going until we got there.
AR: They just loaded you up in the trucks in the morning and...
END TAPE 1, SIDE 1
AR: ... Itasca. 1723, the camp that you were at there, with the other camps that you were at, before and after?
GC: Well, I thought that the camp at Lake Itasca was the best, of course, but the camp at Walker was a nice camp. I didn't like it there at Breckenridge and Wahpeton because we got there during the time of the year when the fields were getting ready for planting, and every time the wind blows, there was dust on your blankets. When you'd go to bed at night you had to take them off your bed and shake them off and get the dust off of them. I was glad to leave that.
AR: I've been at Grand Forks the last two years, so I know about that North Dakota wind! What made Itasca the best in your eyes?
GC: It was the kind of area that I like. I like that area around there where all the big trees were and wooded areas were surrounding it and lakes and everything. Down in Breckenridge if there were any lakes, I didn't know about them. The only water I know about was the Boise de Sioux river there. Breckenridge was on one side, and Wahpeton was on the other side. It was a dirty river, full of great big mud turtles. (Asks wife what mud turtles are called - she says they're also known as snapping turtles). Lot of people eat them, they say they're as good as chicken.
AR: In terms of facilities, buildings and the rec hall, was the Itasca camp again the best or ....?
GC: They had the same type of buildings at Walker. They had a recreation hall there the same they had at Itasca. I think I liked it better because it was easier access to Park Rapids and I never knew much about Walker, never really liked to go there. It's a nice town now, it's very progressive, but I still like Park Rapids the best. Must be because that's where I met my wife.
AR: That was a nice thing to say! As the camp at Itasca progressed ... you were there six months?
GC: I would say that. I was trying to remember when we moved over there to Leech Lake, but I don't remember sure. (Asks wife when they moved to Walker... she says the fall). Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was. They were cutting wood for the camp, and the first wood they got was too green and it wouldn't burn so they had so have some shipped in.
AR: Would that have been in the fall of '34 or the fall of '35?
GC: That's the fall of '34, because in '35 I left there in the fall of the year and left the CCC.
AR: Just to describe the camp layout at Itasca a little bit. You said you had four to five barracks to begin with. What other buildings were there besides ... I'm assuming a rec hall and...
GC: The shower rooms and the bathrooms, toilets were in a separate area. You wanted to take a shower you had to run over to the shower where they had the unit. Actually, that was about it. The barracks, the rec hall, the utilities. And a place where the water supply
came from, that was a separate little building.
AR: Did they have a little hospital facility?
GC: Not for anything serious. They had a few beds, but for anything serious they sent you to the hospital at Fort Snelling. If they couldn't take of you there, they took care of you at a regular hospital. Mostly they shipped you to Snelling.
AR: How about a canteen where you could buy...?
GC: Oh yes, they had a little place there in the rec hall where the canteen was located. They had pool tables in there and ping pong table, that sort of thing, and every once in a while they'd show a movie in there.
AR: Did you spend a lot of time at the rec hall, or were you mostly in your barracks?
GC: No. A lot of evenings I spent there. I don't think TVs were in existence then. We'd listen to the radio or something like that. That was interesting, but it was nothing like TV, you know, where you see and hear everything. I think most of the fellas spent a little time in the rec hall every evening. We'd socialize and play cards and that sort of things. If people were in the barracks they were usually writing letters home or to their girlfriends or whatever.
AR: Did you, in the barracks, personalize your space at all? You had a bunk and trunk...
GC: We had our lockers.
AR: Did you put pictures up at all or anything of that nature?
GC: You could, but they frowned on that. They didn't want any pictures of nude women or that sort of thing up there. But if you had your family picture there, they didn't frown on that. Other than that, they didn't want anything on the walls.
AR: How would you describe a typical day at Itasca? What time were you up in the morning...
GC: We were up plenty early. If Check had the meals on time, I think we went to breakfast about 7:00. I'm sure it was 7:00. And that usually took half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, and by 8:00 or 9:00 you were on the trucks and ready to go wherever your work was.
AR: Did you usually have lunch out in the forest?
GC: Yes, when we were out at Leech Lake especially they always brought out hot lunches to us. Once in a while you'd get a hot lunch at Lake Itasca, but usually it was sandwiches and hot coffee and you had a container where you could get a cup of soup. So if you had coffee, you could get soup, but not very often. It was usually sandwiches. Once in a while they'd bring out a hot lunch, depending on where you were. If you were quite a ways away, they might bring out a hot lunch, but otherwise if you were close by and would be in camp early they'd just have sandwiches and stuff like that. It was always good, good healthy food.
AR: What time was your work usually finished?
GC: Depending on where you were, of course, they'd usually give you plenty of time to get back to camp before 5:00. Sometimes you get back by about 4:00 or 4:15. You spent a good day out wherever you were.
AR: Then did you have a little chance to clean up before dinner?
GC: Oh, yes. Always had that chance.
AR: Approximately what time was that at? 6:00 would you say?
GC: No, because we usually ate at 5:00 or 5:30.
AR: Was the rest of your evening free?
GC: Yes, unless Captain Dietz had some detail he wanted done, he picked on some of the... or he'd find out from the barracks leader which were some of the guys who were shirking a little bit and he'd put them on that duty.
AR: What kind of things would he have them do?
GC: Picking up scraps around the area, cigarette butts. Cleaning the toilets out, where the showers were, make sure everything was spic and span. He had plenty of things for you to do. He was an old army captain and was used to that stuff. One of the first things he had us do when they were first starting the…this camp up here... they hadn't had all the construction work exactly finished. They had plenty of work for you to do. Cleaning up and shoveling and raking. He had everything you could think of. He had work crews lined up plenty.
AR: Was Captain Dietz well-liked, or just well-respected?
GC: He wasn't at first because he had us working on our off-time to get the camp ready. When you really found out that he was a pretty good Joe was the time they were going to send us out in some cold weather. It was too cold he thought, anyway, for men to be out. And he came prancing down there and he got a hold of that (unclear) that was in charge of the work crew and he said, "Unload those trucks." And the fellow said to him, "I'm not going to. They've got work to do." He says, "I'm in charge, these men are in my care. And you unload them right now or I will." So he didn't want to tangle with old Captain Dietz, and he gave the order to unload the trucks and we went back and didn't work that day and I don't think we worked for three or four days because it was a cold spell on. That's when we realized that he was pretty good.
AR: Can you describe some of the other supervisors or foreman or barracks leaders?
GC: I didn't know too many of them. Belmont was usually in charge of our barracks, but once in a while you'd get out and there'd be more than one unit doing a job. Then you'd get acquainted with some of the others foreman, as they were called. Usually we had Belmont all the time.
AR: I believe one of the forestry supervisors was Morris Godfrey. Did you have any contact with him or does that name ring a bell?
GC: Morris Godfrey used to give a talk once in a while. He wasn't much of a speaker at that time. He may have developed into something of a speaker, but he usually had orders to give and if you wanted to talk about something, he might lose his train of thought. A good speaker would never do that.
AR: Where would he give his speeches? Would you all have to file out into the courtyard?
GC: No, they'd have them in the rec hall, because that's where they showed movies and they ought to have had enough chairs and benches to seat the people.
AR: Does Dr. Wild Lalagora (??), does that name ring a bell?
GC: Yes, he was in charge of a work detail. No, not a work detail. If anybody was sick he'd examine them and if he thought they should have bunk time he'd give it to them and if he thought they should have hospital time right there in camp, he'd have them do it. They had the orderlies there that would take care of you and he supervised any medications or whatever it was that he was going to give. Usually if it was anything serious...I told about that fella with poison ivy. He got so bad they had to ship him off to Fort Snelling and I guess he spent quite a time down there. He never came back to our unit, I know.
AR: As long as were talking about people, why don't we talk a little bit about some of the other guys that were in the camp, some of the camp characters. Do you remember anybody in particular?
GC: We had one we called "Butts". He was short and he always smoked cigarette butts. He was a comedian. We had a couple other fellows that are now in business in Wadena, their name was the Miracle Brothers. One's name was Jack and I can't remember the other one. One of them was in our unit, and they were twins and looked so much alike that they'd trade off. One time his brother spent a week in camp with us.
AR: No one ever caught on?
GC: He dressed just like he did and he looked quite a bit like him, in fact I couldn't hardly tell the difference. I imagine now that they're older...I haven't seen them for years. I should go down and see them some time, and see if they still look like they used to. Then there was another guy that we called "Chance." He was a character. He was the guy that worked with me on blowing stumps and that. He was always trying to get out of work. But he liked blowing stumps and he worked hard at it.
AR: Liked to work with the dynamite, huh.
GC: Yeah. He'd shirk his duties if he could.
AR: Did he have to do a lot of work for Captain Dietz, then?
GC: He probably got some extra duty. Then we had another guy by the name of Russell Omgren that was an oddball. He was always trying to pull something without working. He was on cleaning detail one time and he turned up missing so Captain Dietz went out looking for him and found him. He was laying in his bunk. Got him out there in a hurry and he says, "I'll have jobs for you for a week." Russell didn't pull them anymore, but he was kind of like that. If he could get by with it, he'd do it. I can't think of any other people. We were just average Joes from a large city. We never had any of the people from Kansas or places like that. They did have some CCC units that came from Kansas that always came from the prison camp.
AR: In Itasca?
GC: That was true; that's what they told me, anyway. They were always trying to do something that they shouldn't be. I don't know if you've ever heard of Fred Filton. He had a dance hall in Park Rapids and one time the boys from Kansas let it be known and it got around to Fred that they were going to close him down the next Saturday night. They come in three truckloads of fellows, and Fred was waiting for them in the doorway, and every time they'd come he'd give them one of those, just backhanded. He'd never close his fist, and he'd knock them out just colder then a light (?), just by doing that. He had mattresses over there in the corner where he'd lay those fellows out until they'd come to and he'd say, "Now you're gonna behave or are you're gonna go home or whatever you're going to do, but don't come in here." They didn't mess anymore with Fred Filton.
AR: When I was talking to Ed Schubert, he had a couple of funny names. I don't know if you'll remember any of these. "Fresh Beef' Dobisch.
GC: Yes, I remember that fella but not much about him. I don't remember him. I remember Pop Kuhns, I think he was the leader of the whole camp, the CC boys. I can't remember the other guy who was the orderly, but he was pretty good. He was the orderly at the hospital. Lalagora was the physician, but this guy worked under him. Did Eddie Schubert say anything about him?
AR: No, I don't recall him saying anything about an orderly.
GC: Did he tell you about Pop Kuhns, everybody called him Pop.
AR: No, he didn't tell me about him. How come they called him Pop?
GC: Because he's kind of the guy that was good to everybody and everybody liked. He was a pretty nice guy, I thought.
AR: Another one was "Birchbark" Stickney, who was making whistles all the time, evidently.
GC: What was the last name? Stickney. Yes, I remember that name. My recollection is that he was another one of those oddballs is all I can think of about him.
AR: Then he had just a couple other names. He mentioned John Tonina, who liked to sing.
GC: I remember that name, but I don't even have a picture of him. I do of these other fellows.
AR: Another one was Hob du Setter (??).
GC: I remember him, too. I don't know what he done around camp.
AR: What did you guys do for fun, when you had leisure time in the evenings..?
GC: Softball games and the pool hall had a pool table naturally and people wait around to play pool and we also played ping pong. We actually had ping pong tournaments quite a few times. Other than that, we listened to the radio and told stories and talked about the wish I had to get back home to see my girlfriend.
AR: Was there any chance to get into any of the towns, whether it was Bemidji or Park Rapids?
GC: Yes, there was but you had to be back by 11:00, so you better go early and be sure you had a ride. There were a few fellows that had a car in camp, but not too many. They weren't supposed to have any, but they had them stashed away some place else. I can't even remember who it was that had the cars. There were about four or five of them, so there was always somebody to get a ride with and a ride back because they had to be back, too.
AR: What did you do when you went into town?
GC: Just fooling around and seeing whatever there was to see. I never went that often but those guys that did, they were looking for some girl or had a girlfriend in town. A lot of fellows married girls from the local area.
AR: Was it usually coming down to Park Rapids that they went, or to Bagley?
GC: They usually went to Park Rapids or Bemidji. There isn't much doing at Bagley. Just a short, one street town. Of course, at that time Park Rapids wasn't that big, either, but there was always some activity there. This didn't happen during the CC camp, but one time when I was first married and went to town, there was a fight that started in the liquor store and ended up in the main street, and the two fellows fought there for over an hour. Not a policeman in sight No policeman no place. Finally this one guy let a hairmaker go and caught the other guy on the jaw and knocked him out and that was the end of the fight. They fought there for over an hour.
AR: How about on weekends? Did a lot of guys go places on the weekends, or did you stay in camp?
GC: We all went to town or some place on weekends. One of the trucks would take a load in. You'd have to be there for the truck and whatever time the truck driver said he was leaving. If you weren't, then you were in trouble.
AR: Did they usually go to dances or...?
GC: Oh yes, they went to dances. As I said, Fred Filton had dances. They had another place east of town, I forget what they call it, but a fellow ran a dance hall there. Between the two of them, they had good crowds.
AR: Did you have much chance or did you take advantage of a chance to explore the park?
GC: Yes, we worked in there. As far as exploring it, we didn't do anything. We knew where we were going and what it was called and this sort of thing. I never saw those two big trees that they've got up there until Pearl and I and my son went up there. (consults wife as to when this was). About two years ago, that was the first time I'd seen them. Never knew they were in existence. Gosh, they were so big, they were bigger around then this table. Two fellows couldn't reach around them (unclear). But they've got them fenced off so you can't get in there to do that. You have to climb over. We climbed over one to see how big it was. One is a Red Pine, and I think the other is a White Pine. They were enormous. According, to the plaque, all the trees in the park were that big at one time. In fact, that whole area was probably bigger then what the park area is now. I forget what they call the woods south of the park on 13. You can tell there were some awfully big trees in there at one time.
AR: It's amazing to think what it must have looked like before the loggers came in.
GC: My wife's dad logged in those times. He came over from Germany and worked for a farmer at one time and he liked the woods so he worked for a logging company. And finally he owned this land that we're on here. 280 acres that he homesteaded. It was all big trees, then. Bigger than these that we've got out here. Big ones. I got some that you can't reach around...But anyway, be broke all that land, my wife got in on a lot of that, helping to pull stumps with a stump-puller. Cutting the roots out and filling holes and breaking land (unclear) not very long, and a great big colter in front that cut the (unclear). It took a lot of power, but that's what they pulled it with. That and horses. They had four horses on that. Now Pearl and I planted on all that open land in with trees.
AR: So basically you didn't wander around the park a lot except for when you were doing your job.
GC: That's about it.
AR: Did you ever go up to visit the headwaters?
GC: Oh yes, we knew about that. It's so fun to see. We go up there once in a while if we've got guests that have never been up there. Lance wanted to go because he wanted to see it again. He'd been there before.
AR: Do you remember going to Wegmann's store?
GC: Oh yeah.
AR: Can you describe that experience at all?
GC: Just a country store was all it was. They had a lunch bar there where you could get lunch and ice cream and all that sort of thing.
AR: Did you meet Mr. Wegmann?
GC: I don't know if I ever saw him or not. I'm not sure about that. My recollection of that store is when the other people had bought it had it. This man and his wife ran it, they were sure a nice couple. They kept a nice clean place. You could get anything you needed there. They had gas pumps out in front, if you needed kerosene, they had that. They had everything there campers needed. But that's about what Wegmann had, too. I don't recall him. If he was friendly, I don't know, he wasn't as friendly as these last people were.
AR: Well, from the people I've talked to he was a little bit of a gruff guy apparently.
GC: I didn't want to say that, but he wasn't exactly friendly.
END TAPE 1, SIDE 2
[Unclear conversation ... ]
AR: Did you become a foreman or..
GC: They've got a term for that, being in charge of the crew and so forth. There were two grades there, I got to be (unclear) and got $11 a month. It was a little bit easier - I could take Pearl out for a hamburger once in a while (an aside to his wife).
AR: Where did you meet? Did you know each other before you entered the CCC?
GC: No, I was still in the CCs when I met Pearl.
AR: In Walker, or in Itasca?
GC: It was at Lake Itasca yet. I met her at a dance at Lake George. Her sister and her sister's husband were running the dance and Pearl was helping them. So I danced with Pearl a few times and found out that she was a schoolteacher and come to find out she was teaching school at the school where we were cleaning up the roadsides right by there. So I got to see her again.
AR: And the rest is history.
GC: We became acquainted and the first thing you know I'm dating her and just before Christmas in 1935 we got married. I was over at Walker at that time.
AR: I was going to ask you a little bit about the educational opportunities that there were at the camp. That was a big catch phrase for the CCC upper bureaucracy, that they were providing boys with educational opportunities. Was there a lot of that at your camp, at Itasca in particular?
GC: They had some, but not too much. Education qualifications would usually run towards… like some of them learned how to run bulldozers, some of them graters, and dynamiting. I learned how to do that and all the precautions that you have to take. It isn't easy.
AR: Sort of on-the-job-training then.
GC: Yes, that I would say was the main thing. It was good for those kids from town. I came from Duluth and what would I have been doing? Probably running around the woodland and getting into trouble. Who knows?
AR: But you don't remember if they had classes in the evenings - typing or business or anything of that nature.
GC: I don't recall having that at our camp.
AR: How about religious services?
GC: We always had a chance to go to church. They had a truck run to town so you'd get there in time for church. They didn't shirk that.
AR: How much contact was there between the CCC boys and the local residents, or the park visitors?
GC: No connection with the park visitors at all. And the only time we got a chance to visit with park employees was if they were helping you on the job or something like that or giving the foreman help. Other than that, there wasn't much fraternizing there. A lot of local girls went with CC boys, but that was about it.
AR: How much contact was there between different camps? Your camp and another camp.
GC: They had baseball games between them and that was about all.
AR: Do you remember having any contact or hearing about the transient relief camps that were at Itasca?
GC: Not until I got out and belonged to the National Guard here. When they activated the guard to go into federal service, there was a fellow that came in from one of the places you're talking about. He was an older guy. Gosh, he needed a haircut and a shave and he really looked tough. His shoes were worn out. Anyway, he looked like he was in dire need of something. He wanted to join the outfit because, the way he told Johnny Vagamis (?) who was the captain at that time, he was in the federal service, army service, prior to that. And after he got out he was sorry that he wasn't in. This was his chance to get back in. We were activated back into federal service. So they took him on. He got cleaned up and had a haircut and he was real nice. Then we had another guy by the name of Toliver while I was... just shortly after I got out. When he got into our unit in the guards, he just about knew everything you'd want. Anything you talked about, organization or federal troops or federal soldiers, he knew it. He could tell you where to find it in a book and he was a great help to Gordon Plummer, who was the first sergeant of our unit at that time. If you want to know anything about organization or find something in the book, Toliver could tell them where to find it.
Doug (?) and I got out of the service at the same time and I came back to Park Rapids. He was down in Florida. Just before he got out he met Toliver, he was a lieutenant colonel in the army already. And the war hadn't even started. He was sure surprised. But he knew organization so well that he didn't last long in our outfit. He went to the headquarters company at Camp Hahn (?). They had found out about him knowing all these things about organization and where you can find it in the army manual, and they got him and from then on he really progressed.
AR: While you were at Itasca in particular, but any of the CCC camps, did you witness any politics between the members of the army or the forestry or the different people that were sort of controlling the CCC boys?
GC: I don't remember anything about that. We got along pretty good with one another. I think the different camps got along good and it was almost like you were unitized.
AR: Were there any disciplinary problems that you remember?
GC: No, everybody knew what they had to do and if you didn't you were on Captain Dietz's list. Nobody liked KP, you know. Peeling potatoes for a whole camp. Washing dishes, it seemed like that dishwashing never ended.
AR: Did you ever have to go on KP?
GC: No, I did in the army but I never did in the CCs because I got some part of the crew, I forget what they call that next step up, while anyway the last one was barracks three. I didn't reach that, but I got $11 instead of $5. So that was a help.
AR: Yes, that's a good step up.
GC: I had some spending money.
AR: Can you describe any changes in Itasca itself while you were there, from arrival to departure? You weren't there that long, a year.
GC: They built new buildings. In fact, one guy that I knew real well after I got out, he did some work here on the house, his name is Ted Resch, he did a lot of building up there. A lot of stonework. He was a stonecutter and could look at a rock and he could tell where the grain was and hit it with a hammer and the rock would break open. He built the Brower Inn.
AR: Could he have helped at all with Forest Inn? That has a lot of stone work.
GC: He could have, there's a lot of stonework there. But I know for sure that Brower Inn was one of them because they wanted that finished by spring. They put a tent around it, and big circus tent around the whole building, so they could have heat in there and Ted could work during the winter. Barleycorn was his biggest enemy.
AR: Barleycorn?
GC: Haven't you ever heard of Colonel Barleycorn? That's whiskey. They made whiskey out of barley.
AR: Oh! I understand now.
GC: Poor Teddy. He couldn't leave the barleycorn alone and he died really early.
AR: Reflecting on your time in the CCC, do you have any comments about that time? Was it a good time for you or...
GC: I felt that it was needed and I enjoyed it because it helped my dad and my grandmother and my uncle, and it was good for marriage. I think it was good for all the types of people that got in there. Boys off the street, boys like myself who were out of high school and their folks needed help and they were glad to go in and help them. I don't know what my family would have done if it hadn't been for me going in. My dad didn't find any real work until about the time I got out. He was working part-time for a company and did all the bid work because he knew the plumbing business inside and out, but it wasn't steady. He didn't have a steady job.
AR: It did then help you and your family. That's one good thing, anyway.
GC: I didn't begrudge it because my dad was good to me. I'd ride bicycles and that money I made at the golf course was mine and he never (unclear) when he was working or making good money. So I gave some of it for board and room, and I was old enough that I should have been paying because I was out of high school and we got $1.15 a round [of golf] for carrying and sometimes I'd go three or four rounds a day. A lot of families were living on that kind of money. So I was happy to help him out.
AR: A couple of quick things on the CCC before we move on to your experiences as a mail carrier for the star route. First of all, the clothes that you wore. I've heard from several people that the thing to do back then was to cut a triangle in your pants and then put in another piece of material, and make them like bell-bottoms.
GC: I never did that, but I've seen some of them that did.
AR: But not everyone did that?
GC: No, no they didn't. The clothes were warm enough and that's all that they were for. Hardly anybody went to town with their CC clothes on. Maybe some of them with their shirt or something, but most of the people had dress shoes and dress shirt and especially pants. We had dress pants to where and so forth. If we went to a dance or something we wore civilian clothes.
AR: How did you become a leader, or whatever you became to get $11?
GC: I didn't shirk my duty or anything. I knew what I had to do and I'd do it. Bernhoff liked me and Captain Dietz never had anything against me and I suppose that through the process they'd thought that I'd be a perfect man(?). I paid attention to what I was doing. When I was out in the woods doing work I worked right along. I didn't turn around and horse around like some of them did. I did what I was supposed to do, which was good exercise for me.
AR: Keep you in shape there, I bet! Was there much drinking in camp?
GC: No. You couldn't sell any beer there, in fact beer wasn't even in existence then, I think. It was afterwards when we could buy beer. I didn't know of anybody if there was...there might have been somebody that (unclear) because it was during that time when you couldn't buy whiskey and there were always though moonshiners. Anyway you could get it pretty (unclear) because all those guys peddled whiskey, it was usually homemade stuff. Everybody that didn't drink to any extent knew who they were and (unclear) be careful who they sold to. The CCs could always find somebody that would be willing to go somewhere to get a bottle for them and give them fifty cents extra for getting it. They had whiskey, no question about it. Far as I know, I didn't know anybody that drank around camp. They might take a shot before they went to bed at night, maybe one before they went to work, but I don't think anybody took a bottle with them and did any drinking to any extent, or drank to a great extent in camp.
AR: Well you were in the CCC at Itasca, did you have any chance to see the pageants that they had? The historical pageants in the park?
GC: No, I didn't. I didn't go to those. I thought that was a fake.
AR: Why do you say that?
GC: I don't know. I just thought that it was. Something like the Indians doing their drum dance or whatever they call it. That to me is always a fake but it isn't to them. They believe in it. The kids growing up today believe in it.
AR: I was just curious if you had, because those were evidently very popular back then.
GC: Not as far as I knew. It might have been in some camps, but I've never seen it.
AR: Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about in terms of the CCC? We've covered quite a bit, I think.
GC: Only that the winter between '35 and '36 was the toughest winter I ever saw. For six weeks it never got warmer than ten below zero. Temperatures ranged from anywhere from there to 52 below.
AR: Were you in the CCC at that time?
GC: Yes. In '35 and '36. I left (unclear) in '35.
AR: That would be very, very cold having to go out into the woods.
GC: Like I told you, the captain wouldn't let us go out in it. When it was that cold he just told them flatly, "I don't want to see you (unclear) going outside in this type of weather." He was a good custodian of our health.
AR: Overall would you say the CCC was a valuable experience?
GC: Yes. It was a hard time (unclear) and for many years they didn't have that to do. To have that money coming in...some of them, their families saved their money for them. Most of them helped their family, and that in itself was valuable. Not only that, you learned how to get along with other people, it was a learning experience. I think it was. It was very worthwhile. Also the fact that they kept the boys out of streets of big cities like New York and Minneapolis/St. Paul and Duluth, any big area, I think was a valuable experience. The project was good.