During the Depression of the 1930s, there were not enough full time jobs to go around for head's of household, and a family that included 4 to 6 children was very common. There were a few low paying, part-time jobs available for teen-age boys, but not nearly enough.

Most families could not afford to provide spending money for the young boys, and if they were lucky enough to find a job, they were expected to contribute to the family's financial needs. More girls continued school than boys in those days and hardly any woman or young girl worked outside the home. So there were lots of teen-age boys on the streets with nothing productive to do.

At this same time, the farmers were not doing well and were having problems keeping up their farms. So, President Franklin Roosevelt initiated a program to provide some relief from those circumstances. The program was called the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC.

Young men between the ages of 17 and 23 were eligible to join, with parents' consent. The tour of duty (hitch) was six months minimum and one could re-enlist every six months up to the age of 21. However, if a person got a job, he could leave the CCC, without regard to the 6-month rule, and with an honorable discharge.

The pay was $1.00 per day with $22.00 automatically going to the family back home each month. The other $8.00 was spent in camp. All food, clothing and other necessities were furnished. The young men lived in camps similar to Army camps, and they were located in rural areas throughout the United States. The boys were assigned to camps as close to their home town as possible.

For dress, they were provided green trousers with matching shirt and sweater, no cap or tie and also they were also provided with work clothes. In camp the workers were regimented in terms of lights out and getting up at a certain time, standing formation for roll call, and doing exercises before breakfast.

All this sounds similar to the Army and it was to some extent. However, the young men had no firearms and no combat or other military training whatsoever, even though they had an Army officer in charge of each camp. Instead of Army training during the day, they worked...and worked hard. However, they could get passes to go into town some evenings, and almost always got weekend passes to go home.

Our job during the day was various farm improvement work such fence duty, which meant chopping down trees, sawing them into 8 foot lengths, and splitting them into quarters to be used for fence posts.They were carried them through the fields and over the hills to either repair existing fences or construct new ones. Sometimes, where the trucks could get in, they would haul them to locations along the way. Otherwise, it was shoulder work.

Other jobs included building small dams in creeks to re-route the water for better irrigation, digging small trenches on the sides of hills 12 to 15 feet apart to curtail soil erosion, repairing and painting barns and other farm buildings, and various other tasks to strengthen and preserve American farmland.

In Pennsylvania, many of the CCC programs were involved with building some of our state parks which are still in existence. Many of the young men on these projects got training in carpentry work, block and brick laying, equipment operating and electrical work which led many to enter these fields when the employment opportunities picked up around 1940.

Most of these young men later either volunteered or were drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces with the start of the WW II after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and they were in excellent physical shape for the rigors of army training because of their CCC experiences.