CCC Camp

Although I’m confident that I know at least half or more of that line of cooks, identifying them with any certainty is impossible without more of a close-up than this CCC pic gives me. Second from left looks like Charles Watson. The third from left is Jimmy Cleek. I have almost total recall of Walton’s CCC camp from the time when it was mostly a kind of tent city and then from the time all the dark green (olive drab?) buildings were erected. The “CCC Boys” had neat uniforms and looked great in them. Walton’s older teenagers and all of Walton’s younger women were quite taken by the “CCC Boys,” especially the ones who were from “way off” like Bill Bertram and Bud Kelly from Greenville, Ohio. They had graduated from Ohio’s Wittenburg College, couldn’t find a job, so joining FDR’s CCC thing seemed the thing to do. Bill Bertram came here, was a CCC officer, met and married my aunt, Shirley Jack (Mom’s sister) and became one of my favorite uncles. Shortly after they married he left the CCCs and they moved to Greenville where they lived out their lives and raised a family. After the CCC physical facility was no longer needed (era and its political decision), all the facility was torn down and the field was left as empty as if nothing had ever been on it. Subsequently, the field held Boyd Elliott et al’s stock yard, complete with a roofed building which had bleacher-like seats on each side and an middle area in which the cow, steer, whatever was brought for the bidding process. The stockyard ran its course and in 1954 along came Walton-Verona’s new school. When the CCC camp was out there, Alta Vista’s pavement ended not too far from your parents’ home [37 Alta Vista]. The road from Alta Vista’s concrete to the CCC camp was hard packed gravel. The last house on Alta Vista was the Cleo Vanlandingham (sp?) house.