"Someone once said it is not good to dwell on the past. That may be so, but it is kind of nice to revisit those bygone days occasionally.
On March 4, 1933, I was in my second year in the first grade at the little red schoolhouse in Johnson Cove. My teacher was Miss Hattie Guillory (God bless her soul) and on that date Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States. Unless you were there was inheriting a nation whose economic fabric was close to shreds. More than a quarter of the work force was unemployed.
It's hard to imagine how hard the times were during those Depression years. President Roosevelt In his acceptance speech, FDR said, "Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." His "fear of fear itself" words were borrowed from Henry David Thoreau, descendent of French Protestant refugees, July 12, 1817. A revolutionary poet/writer, Thoreau built a cabin in the woods at Walden Pond in Massachusetts and moved in July 4, 1845, eight days before his 28th birthday. Probably the first American young man who left home "to find himself." He stayed in the woods 26 months and wrote some good stuff.
As soon as Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, the U.S. Congress, under his leadership, created an alphabet gumbo of government agencies: the (National Recovery Act), PWA (Public Works Administration), AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration), NLB (National Labor Board), FCC(Federal Communications Commission) and WPA, probably the best known of the many New Deal programs because it put millions of Americans to work at reasonable wages building and repairing bridges, erecting thousands of public buildings, building thousands of miles of road, and constructing post offices, parks and airfields. The WPA also provided programs that employed artists, musicians,writers and scholars. The WPA funds made it possible for John Lomax, and his young son Alan to come to Acadiana in 1933-34 with almost 500 pounds of recording equipment in the trunk of their Ford - equipment borrowed from the Library of Congress - and take the back roads of Cajun country to record the music of the Cajuns for Library. Okay, just what did W.P.A. stand for? It is interesting to note that when Congress first enacted the agency it stood for Works Progress Administration, but in 1939 it changed to stand for Works Projects Administration until it disbanded in 1943.
One of FDR's favorite agencies was the establishment of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) which he signed into law March 31, 1933. This program was to mean much to the young men of Evangeline Parish and the rest of Acadiana between the ages of 18 through 25. It immediately provided work in reforestation projects, soil erosion and flood control, road construction and developing our national parks for 250,000 young Americans.
Work camps quickly sprang up, at first under the direction of the army. Les C.C. camps, as the Cajuns called them, served two purposes - it provided healthy work for young men, and it did necessary work in protecting, improving, and increasing the country's natural resources. Wages were not staggering - $30.00 a month, of which up to $25.00 was sent home to dependents, assistant leaders were paid $36.00 and leaders were paid $45.00 monthly. But during those hard times, the young men got their food, shelter, transportation, medical needs, and education in training, and remedial courses in elementary and secondary education. The young men were all volunteers. The term was a minimum of six months and up to a maximum of two years. A typical camp had about 200 men, and up to half a million men were employed inthe C.C.'s at one time during the peak years.
As previously stated, many of Evangeline Parish's young men joined the CCC. Some of my friends five and six years older went in. To them the 30 bucks a month looked good. Although they had to send $25 to mom and dad, some parents saved the money and gave it back to their sons when they came home and in 1935 and 1936 that was a good amount of cash to marry their belles.
I know someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall seeing some C.C. Camp members working on the west side of Ville Platte circa 1936 or 1937. During the summer in those years I'd go spend a week with my Pepere Olivier Marcantel and Memere 'Git (Margaret Tate) in L'Anse Des Tates. We were living in Reddell then, and I'd get a ride with Tansy Veillon, who worked at Evangeline Bank & Trust Co. Then I'd walk on the railroad to Tate Cove. My memere would always give me a hen with a brood of chicks when I'd leave. I carried my basse-court in a cardbox and walk to the bank and wait for Mr. Tansy to knock off.
I know there are a few men left in Evangeline Parish who served in the C.C. Camps. They like the rest of their counterparts in the U.S.A. can be proud of their record and contributions. When the CCC was phased out in 1941-42, when the young men had a war to fight, over two million youths had passed through some 1500 camps. They had planted more than 100 million trees to reforest some 17 million acres. They had worked on projects that helped check soil erosion and control floods. They had built thousands of miles of roads and trails in remote areas and they had constructed cabins and campgrounds still enjoyed today, more than half a century later. They also fought many forest fires and worked to prevent others. One of the indirect results of the CCC was to bring the national parks and forests into the consciousness of million of Americans, who would continue to enjoy and appreciate their use for many decades to follow.
Naturally the CCC had its critics. Although the U.S. Army was initially charged with setting up the camps and supervising the volunteers, the pervading neutralist sentiment of the nation made sure the youths were not taught drill or weaponry. Some do-good critics preached that the CCC's basic approach seemed vaguely similar to that of Hitler's Youth in Germany. But the spirit of the C.C. Camps and the participants was very different - there was a minimum of pageantry, patriotism and propaganda. The majority of Americans believed that the young men of the CCC had improved both the country and themselves.
Today, young people think we are kind of coo-coo when we tell them of the hard times we had during those bygone days, and then we refer to that period as les bon vieux temps (the good old times). It is hard for today's young people to understand that though we had little money and luxuries, we managed to laugh and have as much, perhaps more, fun as they now have. Not only did our generation manage to survive the Depression, we are the generation that saved the world from tyranny. Not only those of us who served in the U.S. Armed Forces, but all of those who contributed on the home front helped to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Without our generation's great sacrifices and contributions we'd live in a very different world today. Hope you enjoyed this flashback in what was happening over half a century ago, and when pepere tells you he was in the C.C. camps, tell him he did a good job!(12)
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