CCC Radioman

In January, 1939, Capt. Philips was transferred to Fort McPherson to equip all CCC camps in District “B” with radio communications. He took his staff along and six months later, we were completing 41 radio stations in camps extending from Key West, Florida to Asheville, North Carolina.

I made the last installation in a Forestry Service Camp in Aquone, NC, and stayed as its operator six weeks until a graduate from the school was available. Aquone did not show on my road map, but a student at the Fort told me, “It’s my home place, in the Great Smoky Mountains, where nigh onto 60 folks live. If you’ns go west from Franklin, its 21 miles, but if you’ns go east from Andrews, it is only 13 miles of dirt road, both ways.”

The camp’s mountainside location was scenic. A large spring higher on the mountain supplied the camp with enough over flow to send a rippling brook coursing by the barracks. Faucets were never turned off. The radio room and operator’s quarters occupied a 16x24-foot barracks, near one of the four fifty-foot antenna poles. We had to build a hut for the Onan Generator Captain Philips promised to send from the Fort, as there was no commercial electricity available, and the camp’s generators were only run a short time in evening and pre-dawn hours.

The mountains were wonderful and I liked staying as the camp’s radio operator, even though I knew Captain Philips was going to send the first operator available, so I could return to his staff. The desire to stay put was partly due to the 16-year-old Indian-looking barefoot lass I met the first weekend, when I walked down to Aquone, which had a blacksmith shop, a newly-built board-and-battened Post Office and a General Store with a gas pump out front. She was sitting on the old cabless Ford truck stopped in front of the General Store, but she hopped down and walked over to the blacksmith shop with me. When her Pa called, I went with her. We rode on the flatbed as Pa drove past the Post Office as if to cross the Nantahala River on the plank bridge, but he turned left on the river bank and drove nearly a half-mile along wagon tracks over the weeded field to a creek that flowed into the river.

I thought we would ford the creek, but Pa shifted into low gear, drove into the stream, then turned sharply to the left and drove up the creek bed for about a furlong, then drove out onto the bank where there was an opening in the forest.

There stood an old log cabin and by then I knew that the lass had lived winters with her Aunt in Andrews until she graduated from the 11-grade high school. Now, she was home with Ma, Pa, and a younger sister. She was lonely and the Baptist Church was the only place where she met other folks, so I agreed to go there with her the next day.

I remember the Preacher well. Said he’d come from Georgia, where he was milking a cow when the Lord called him to preach. His sermon dwelt on the awfulness of Hell and how The Bible predicted things at the end of time that had already come to pass, so that any morning now, Gabriel would blow his horn. The lass just smiled sweetly and later told me that she’d already been saved when she was baptized in the cold waters of the Nantahala.

When we went to church that first day, we were joined by Chuck Fish, a Junior Forester from Camp. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the lass, and I was pleased when she told him I’d walk her home. Her mother invited me to Sunday dinner. Pa said Grace: “Oh Lord, bless this food and us’uns what eat it, ‘specially the young’uns, and daughter’s friend Wo who’s come ‘mongst us’uns. We’uns be thankful. Amen.”

Ma asked about my “growing-up days” in Alabama. She wanted to know about my parents, and was especially interested in my mother, who’d been blind since I was 12. She marveled that “a-body blind” could do all the things I said my mother did. I told them how it happened that I was born in a log cabin, the second of three children, all born by the time my mother was 20 years old. When I said that my father was 20 and my mother was 15 when they married, the lass exclaimed: “I’m 16. Already an old maid!”

“I can fix that!” I said, trying to be funny and not intending to voice my first marriage proposal.

Monday, Captain Philips agreed by radio that I should call in at 9 AM to handle any traffic on hand, and again at 3:30 PM. At other times, if the Camp CO had a message to send sooner, he’d have to get the Camps’ motor-generator running and I could break-in on the HQ station, WUGA, to send the message. The Camp CO was pleased.

Five days a week, I carried a blanket roll, got the Camp cook to pack a picnic lunch for two in a basket and by 11 o’clock, joined with the lass to go fish trout streams, climb mountains, go canoeing, or on weekends, hike up to Wayah Bauld. Ma’s parting words were, “Yo’unses be good.”

I heard her say that many times, and the lass always obeyed. One Sunday, I invited her to take dinner at the Camp. When the CO came into the mess hall and saw the lass, he walked over and said, “Please come and bring this lovely young lady to eat at my table with my wife and LT Wilson and his wife!” As always the lass was at ease and carried her end of the talking well, admiring others who talked of travel in far places, and readily admitting that she had never been out of North Carolina, or farther from home than when her high school class went to Asheville.

The next morning the CO came to the Radio Room and said suddenly, “Sparks, you have a beautiful young lady. It’s easy to see that you are in love and she adores you. What are your plans?”

His question took me by surprise. Marriage would result in my discharge from the CCC. I admitted to a strong desire to marry the lass and take her away, but said it would be impossible because I had no way of earning a living. He said he suspected as much and offered me the job of Company Clerk, which he’d try to get made a Civilian Employee Associate position, then I’d be free to marry. I said if he could do that, I’d do both jobs, Clerk and Radio Operator, but I felt obliged to ask Captain Philips for his approval and the CO said that was the right thing to do.

The CO showed a fatherly interest in me, maybe because he was childless. He owned a large farm in Louisiana and would have lost it in the Depression had he not been called to duty as a CO of CCC camps. He’d saved money, and soon was going to please his wife by going back to live amid their Cajun relatives.

After that, I had trouble sleeping. No doubt I loved the mountains, the mountain folks and the lass, but could I forget my ambitions and my parent’s wishes for me and be happy living out my life as a mountain man? Only 18 years old, but I knew that I had to make some important, long-lasting decisions. I stayed in camp all day Friday, waiting for Captain Philip’s response to my letter in which I had requested he approve my transfer to Aquone. It came in the evening mail call.

I was buoyant when I saw the lass Saturday morning, and in Ma’s presence, I told her that I had plans to discuss. She said she wanted to take me to a place I had never been and led the way through the woods, up to a land bench that jutted out from the mountainside. She walked out on the flat ground that ended in a steep drop.

“Spread your blanket here and tell me about your plan,” she said.

I unfolded an official letter, marked “Personal & Confidential” and signed by Capt. D. W. Philips. I read aloud, “I read your personal letter dated July 14th with great interest, and forthwith went to my quarters, broke out my portable typewriter and am responding as your friend and your Commanding Officer:

“1) No, I cannot let you stay in Aquone as Radio Operator. I know that the CO thinks you are a smart fellow and shows a great interest in you. I know too that you can leave the CCC anytime you want to, and then do as you like, if you can afford it. Be honest with yourself, you can’t!

“2) I need you here as Chief Radio Operator. Moreover, I expect to be successful in getting a Civil Service rating for the Chief’s position.

“3) Of great interest to you, I’m sure, I have arranged so that you can take up to 4 hours a day to study Radio Engineering at Georgia Tech., if you will do the Chief’s paperwork in your off-hours.”

“It is signed by Captain Philips. This is a great opportunity!”

The lass looked at me and asked, “Is that your plan for us?”

I felt the hurt in her voice. “I didn’t explain and I’m sorry! The promotion makes it possible for me to ask you to marry me. As Chief, I will make twice my present pay and can marry. In two weeks, we can be married and living in Atlanta.”

“By now you ought to know that I will marry you—but I won’t live in Atlanta. Look around!” She led me to the very edge of the precipice.

“Look,” she said, “in this forest about 200 feet above us is a great spring with the best water in Aquone. Down there, about 900 feet below, is the Nantahala River. To the right and to the left, as far as you can see, is the Nantahala Valley. God made no other place on earth like this one, and it is mine. When I was only 10 years old, Pa gave this land to me and promised that someday he’d build a cabin here on this land bench for me and my husband to live in and raise our family. Pa owns all the private land this side of the river, up to the ridge topping this mountain. Everybody else sold out to the Nantahala National Forest, but Pa would not sell. His land was handed down, from his great-great-grandpa’s Cherokee wife. Pa will never sell it. Every winter he cuts down a few large trees and snakes them out of the forest with a yoke of oxen. The trees are over one hundred years old. The timber is used to make furniture. He only sells enough for our spending money during the year, usually about three or four hundred dollars. It’s our cash crop and the standing forest is our only bank account. There’s a whole forest of black walnut trees in the valley, and a grove of black cherry that my grandpa planted. The tall dead trees on the mountainside are chestnut. All the chestnut got a disease and died. There won’t be any more, and the dead trees can stand 50 or 100 years before they’ll rot down. Pa is going to wait 10 years before he logs out the first chestnut tree. By then, the lumber will sell for a high price. Ever since I first laid eyes on you, I thought that you were the man who would live here with me. I thought you loved me, the mountains, the mountain folk!”

I insisted that I loved her more than anything else, but she said she was beginning to understand her Ma’s caution, that I was too ambitious to ever settle down in Aquone. “I thought she was wrong. You saw the beauty of the mountains, went to our church, ate our homegrown food, learned our ways, and lived our simple life many hours every day. I thought you’d never let our happiness end.”

“True, I did all those things because I love you. I didn’t know about your forestland, and I never dreamed you could have all the money you need just by cutting down a few trees. You know I grew up on a farm. I love my parents, my home, the land we farmed and my friends, but when I was 17, I left it all, because I thought I could do better somewhere else. Now, that I’m offered a better position in Atlanta, I want you to share the good life with me.”

She was quiet and said nothing as we stood looking at the green forest and blue river below, and I pondered the great chasm between us. I now understood her strength—if we were to be together, I was the one who must change.

Finally she spoke. “I never brought you to this land bench before today. It’s a sacred place for my forebears and now me, where no evil can occur. I bring you here today, to make sure you know my love, My spirit is yours and you can have me today and every day that you come to this sacred place. Let’s lie on the blanket.” She pressed against me, as she had never done before.

The lass was often in my dreams and flashes across my mind, even now. But the next Christmas Eve, she married Chuck Fish, by which time I had been Chief Radio Operator at WUGA. All of Captain Philips’ promises came true, but I was restless and when what appeared to be an opportunity arose, I took advantage of it.

I made the last installation in a Forestry Service Camp in Aquone, NC, and stayed as its operator six weeks until a graduate from the school was available. Aquone did not show on my road map, but a student at the Fort told me, “It’s my home place, in the Great Smoky Mountains, where nigh onto 60 folks live. If you’ns go west from Franklin, its 21 miles, but if you’ns go east from Andrews, it is only 13 miles of dirt road, both ways.”