October 27

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coffee time:

 

 

Other stimulants:

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Just because:

 

Artist unknown.

 

 

Re-post

Chuck Yeager, Robert Mitchum, Raymond Burr & Walter Matthau 

Your blogger was in Luray, VA, this week, about 70 miles distant. He was reminded of this post from many years ago. Worth another look.  

"Iron Mike" (Civilian Conservation Corps):

As part of Roosevelt's NEW DEAL during the height of the 1930s economic depression, young unmarried, unemployed males aged 18-25 from relief families were able to participate in a public works program that improved government owned land, most of it acreage that formed the core of our national parks system. When the Civilian Conservations Corps was established in April, 1933, 25% of the U.S. population was unemployed and hungry. The first such work camp was located in Luray, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountain area west of Washington, DC. The youths were happy to be given a manual labor job that included medical care and "three hots and a cot." An emphasis was placed on job training and literacy. Pay was $30 a month, $25 of which had to be sent back to their homes. The workers built roads, bridges, planted trees, improved foot trails, managed erosion control, flood control, built fire lookout towers, etc. Three million young men participated in the CCC effort from 1933-1942. At its peak in 1935, there were 500,000 workers in 2,900 camps.  New enrollees were called "peavies". Among them were test pilot Chuck Yeager and future actors Robert Mitchum, Raymond Burr and Walter Matthau.

With the onset of WW II and the subsequent draft, congress voted to discontinue the program in 1942, since the war effort reduced acute unemployment. To modern minds, it seems unfathomable that there was a time in which our government took action by caring so much for its poor and needy citizens. Instead of mailing unemployment checks, Uncle Sam provided jobs, education and job training in exchange for improvements in infrastructure and government lands.

Since 1995, sixty-two identical statues of "Iron Mike" (above), which honor the young men's labor, have been scattered throughout our national parks and recreation network. Each 6-foot tall bronze, shirtless (!) statue costs $22,600, weighs 460 pounds and ships from Michigan. The original 1935 art-deco concrete statue (quite different from the one shown above) that was called "Iron Mike" somehow disappeared from its location in Griffith Park (Los Angeles); although the proper name of the current statue first produced in 1995 (shown above) is the "CCC Worker Statue", its popular nickname is still "Iron Mike", much to the consternation of the CCC Legacy foundation. The statue's homo-erotic appearance is prescient. Alert blog reader Ken R. sent me a link to a 2007 study paper (pub. 2007) titled "Camp Life: The Queer History in the CCC 1933-1937" by Colin R. Johnson. Details include reports of all-male beauty pageants, drag shows and talent nights in which much homo-eroticism was evident. 

https://journals.ku.edu/amsj/article/view/3138/3906

While clothing was provided for the young corpsmen, it appears there was an acute shortage of shirts:

“The CCC made me a man, made me respect discipline and how to work and how to get along with people.” 

Number of Trees Planted: Between 2 and 3 billion
State Parks Developed: 800
Public Campground Development: 52,000 acres
Miles of Roads Built: 125,000
Miles of Telephone Lines Strung: 89,000
Miles of Foot Trails Built: 13,100
Farmlands Benefited from Erosion Control Projects: 40 million acres
Stream and Lake Bank Protection: 154 million square yards
Range Re-vegetation: 814,000 acres
Fire fighting Days: More than 8 million