These are printed as they were sent to me, except that I have fixed a few spellings, and I
typed in the ones that came by mail. If you have a story of Cedar Hollow, long or short, please
send it to [email protected] or ask me for my
address. — C.F.
The Quiet
by Cornelius Friedlander, 1936-38
I had never slept a night outside the city of St. Louis. We came down on the train to the
railhead and then rode three hours in the back of an Army truck on gravel roads, and when they
let us down it was nearly dark. I was put in barracks four. A boy from the hills named Johnny
Stamey showed me how to make up my cot, and then the lights went out, and I lay there and could
not sleep. It was too quiet. At home there were streetcars and the people upstairs and somebody's
radio all night long. At Cedar Hollow there was nothing, and then there was a whip-poor-will
outside the window that did not stop until two in the morning. I thought it was the loneliest
sound I ever heard. Now I cannot hear one without wishing I was eighteen and back on that cot.
Powder Man
by Glen Blackstone, 1934-36
They picked me for powder because I had helped my uncle blow stumps on his farm and I was the
only one that did not look scared of it. The rule from Captain Conroy was nobody touched dynamite
but the foreman and the two powder men, and the whole crew went back of the big oak and I blew a
whistle three times before we touched it off. We were quarrying stone out of the hillside for the
dam. Every boom shook the whole hollow and you could hear the rocks come down in the creek. I
never had a man hurt in two years and I am prouder of that than of anything. When I tell my great
grandchildren I set off dynamite for the government at eighteen they do not believe a word of it.
Forty-One Letters
by Madeline Boggs, widow of Melvin Boggs (1938-40)
Melvin and I were sweethearts in high school, and when he went to the CCC he wrote to me every
week for two years. I kept every one of his letters in a candy box, forty-one of them, and I read
them all again this spring after he passed. He wrote about the stone bridge mostly, how many
stones they set that week and how the arch went up over the wooden form and how scared they were
when they knocked the form out. It held. He wrote that when we were married he would drive me
over his bridge, and in 1946 he did, and every few years after that, and he always slowed down in
the middle. I went to the reunion this year in his place and Mr. Friedlander and the others were
so kind to me. The bridge looks just the same.
Friday Night Smokers
by Judy Williams, daughter of Fred Dewitt (1934-36)
My father died in 1991, and of all his stories the one he told the most was about the boxing
smokers in the rec hall on Friday nights. They pushed the ping-pong tables back and roped off a
ring and the whole camp came, and the officers too. Daddy was a skinny kid from the north side of
St. Louis who had been in a few fights already, and he won the camp championship in the summer of
1935 against a farm boy who was a head taller. The prize was a carton of cigarettes and a whole
pie from the mess hall, and he said he gave away the cigarettes and ate the pie by himself. He
was a St. Louis policeman for twenty-eight years after the war. He always said the CCC was where
he learned to keep his temper, which my mother said was only partly true.
The Skunk in the Mess Hall
by Eugene Kieffer, 1936-37, typed by his granddaughter Tammy Beesley
I was second cook under Sergeant Ora Johnson, who made the best biscuits anybody ever ate. We
were up at four to start breakfast. One morning in the fall I opened the back door of the kitchen
to take out the slop and a skunk walked right in past my feet like he had a reservation, and went
under the serving line. Two hundred men due in for breakfast at six thirty. Sergeant Johnson said
nobody was to touch it, nobody was to yell, and nobody was to drop a pan. We left the back door
open and put a biscuit on the step and stood still as statues for twenty minutes, and the skunk
finally walked out and ate the biscuit and went on his way. Breakfast was five minutes late. The
Captain asked why, and Sergeant Johnson told him, "We had a guest." That was all he ever said
about it.
The Hidden Side
by Edward Wessel, 1936-37, sent by mail from Arizona
Corny Friedlander and I were bunkmates and we worked together under Mr. Burroughs on the first
shelter on the ridge. Mr. Burroughs would not let anybody scratch his name on the work. He said a
good wall does not need a signature. But when we were near done he called the two of us over and
handed us each a stone and a nail, and told us to put our initials on the back side, the side that
goes in against the fill, where nobody would ever see it. Then he set them himself. So somewhere in
the back wall of that shelter there are two stones that say E.W. and C.F. and they will be there
long after we are gone. I have never told anybody that but my wife. Corny can put it on his
computer if he wants.
(I want. — C.F.)
Does Anyone Remember My Uncle?
by Terrence Driskell, nephew of George Tapley (1935-37)
My uncle George passed away in 1989. Cleaning out my mother's attic this summer I found his CCC
discharge paper from Cedar Hollow and a small photograph of about twenty young men in front of a
log building, with "Log crew, 1936" written on the back. He is second from the left in the back
row. He never married and he did not talk much about those years, so I know very little. If any of
the men on this page remember George Tapley, I would be grateful for anything at all. I am glad to
make a copy of the photograph for anyone who would like one.
(Mr. Walter Hasson thinks he knew George on the Dining Lodge, but he came in
1937, about the time George left, and is not sure. If anybody else remembers, please write. — C.F.)
The Last Flag
by Ben Parada, 1940-41
By the time I came in 1940 the camp was not what it was in the early days. Jobs were coming back
with the defense plants, and boys were leaving for work or the service as fast as they came in. We
were maybe a hundred and twenty men in barracks built for two hundred. We finished the overlook
wall that summer of 1941 and they told us the camp would close in the fall. On the last day there
were about thirty of us left. We stood retreat one more time and the bugle was a phonograph record
by then, because our bugler had gone to the Army. The flag came down and the lieutenant folded it,
and that was the end of Camp Cedar Hollow. Two months later it was Pearl Harbor, and nearly every
one of us was in uniform inside a year.
Thank you to everyone who has sent a story. There are more coming;
Mr. Moye has promised me his, and his granddaughter Janine Story taped him telling it for a
history class at her college, so I am told it is a good one.
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