Dad’s Story, part 6, Back in Wyoming, Joining CCC

There’s more between the lines that led to the family’s return to Wyoming, not mentioned by Dad. Suffice to say his mother was taking steps to keep their marriage together.

The date is marked, 1930, four years earlier than the story continues here. Comer is already at 6 ft. All the boys grew to that eventually. Looking closely, I note a Boy Scout pin on Dad’s lapel.
(Click on the photo to see it too.)

After four years in Washington Dad’s job on the railroad became steady and Mother was sick of trying to farm alone, so we moved back to Wyoming.

I finished high school in Rawlins in 1934 at 17 years old.

I had a Model T Ford I got from a junkyard for very little money (probably $25) and became quite good at keeping it running . . . as often as I could get gas at ten cents a gallon. Kerosene was cheaper and sometimes I would mix it with the gas up to fifty percent. Tires and tube repairs kept me busy.

There was no work but I was able to take evening classes in typing and shorthand for free.

I ran around with two other boys my age and in 1935 we decided to join the CCC* where everything was provided and $25 per month was sent to the folks. We were also given $5.00 as spending money.

The camp I joined was a “park camp” in Saratoga, about 40 miles from Rawlins. We were transported with about 20 boys on the back of a stake truck with a canvas cover. It was windy and cold.

When we arrived in camp we were immediately lined up and given shots as if we were in the army. (It was run by the army.) My friends Wilber Hart and Ted Hyatt saw that several of the boys given shots fainted in line, so they got back on the truck and went home, leaving me alone. I had made up my mind to stay, so I took the shots.

We were put on K-P for ten days for the shots to wear off.

While in camp I heard that the assistant educational adviser was leaving so I asked what he did. I knew I could do that so I told the educational adviser that I could do that, as well as teach typing and shorthand, so he threw me the keys to the educational building. I was now the assistant educational adviser with a raise in salary to $6.00.

I never went out to work at the camp.

Somewhere during all this, Dad’s dad, who was also a builder, built this house in Rawlins. They were still in it when I attended a family reunion there once as a child. By then it was in a neighborhood, among other houses, but here it seems very much on the outskirts.

*The CCC is the Civil Conservation Corps, a national depression-era program that put men to work when there was no work. Many of our national parks were built by them.

His making up his mind (to stay), regardless, and the kind of “I can do that” confidence displayed here were what I recognized in him as life long traits. I asked him once if he’d learned to do so many things (like keeping that Model-T running and everything else) from his father, but he just said his father never taught him anything. It wasn’t a statement of disrespect, it’s just how it was.

What Dad doesn’t mention here, but it bears notice, is that it was during this time that he learned photography, including darkroom developing. He taught himself, then taught others. The results for us are many early black and whites of his friends, and especially one special friend who was about to come into his life.

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Next: Enter a pretty girl.