Oral History Interview with Arnold Smith

WILLIAM BERGE: The following is a taped interview with Mr. Arnold Smith—where are you from Mr. Smith?

ARNOLD SMITH: I was born and raised in Williamsburg, but I’m from Deland, Florida now.

BERGE: Ok. From Deland, Florida, and the interview is conducted by William Berge, for the Kentucky Oral History Commission, in Cumberland Falls State Park. The interview is conducted at Cumberland Falls State Park on September 29, 2000, at 8:45 AM. Mr. Smith, again when you were born and where.

SMITH: I was born in Williamsburg, Kentucky, 1918, the eighteenth of August.

BERGE: Well, you are not very far from where you were born right now. (laughs) SMITH: No, not right now. And then I lived up here at the Falls Junction, for a couple of years. We were 1:00going lumberjack; cut timber and telephone poles and things when I was about sixteen.

BERGE: Ok. What was your father’s name?

SMITH: John Smith.

BERGE: And where was he from?

SMITH: He was from Williamsburg.

BERGE: What was your mother’s maiden name?

SMITH: Huh, Nancy Sheppard.

BERGE: Nancy Sheppard?

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: Is she from Williamsburg too?

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: Back in those days, you usually married somebody from where you were born. It is a lot different now.

SMITH: Yeah, it is.

BERGE: Really quite different. When you were a child, where did you go to school?

SMITH: I went down in Corley Bend to Nicholson School.

BERGE: Huh-huh. How many years did you go to school?

SMITH: Four years. Fourth grade is as far as I went.

BERGE: And then what did you do?

SMITH: Well I had to work. My Dad … BERGE: What kind of work did you do?

SMITH: I worked on a farm until I was about sixteen. And then we went to cutting timber, and working in the timber woods, and then at seventeen I joined the CC’s.

BERGE: Ok. What year was that?

SMITH: It was 1937, when I went in.

BERGE: Did you like working in the woods? 2:00SMITH: Yes. I loved it. We cut timber and we cut—for the telephone company—we cut telephone poles.

BERGE: Did you work high?

SMITH: Yeah, when I worked with my dad. He was good with a broad axe, we cut cross ties for mines and railroad track too.

BERGE: When you made those things, where did you haul them to?

SMITH: We hauled them to Benham and Lynch for the … BERGE: For the mines.

SMITH: For the mines, yeah.

BERGE: How long did that take you, do you know?

SMITH: Well, probably about three hours to drive up there, maybe four.

BERGE: Yeah.

SMITH: I know when I was hauling timber—I used to haul mine timbers up there after later years, and I’d load up at the dark and( ). I’d get up at four o’ clock in the morning 3:00to start; get up there and get in line you know, or you would be the tail end of the line, and the piles would be so high it would take you all day to unload.

BERGE: Do you remember why you decided to join the three C’s?

SMITH: Yeah, there wasn’t much else to do, and we lived up here on the Falls Junction. When the three C’s came down here in 1933, when this camp came in, either thirty-two, or thirty-three, and then one up here at the Cumberland Bridge. All the boys came up there and went to church you know and everything … BERGE: So you knew a lot of them.

SMITH: I knew a lot of them. yeah, and I … BERGE: Did you like them?

SMITH: Oh, yes, I liked the boys, and they had nice uniforms and everything, so I decided that as soon as I got old enough I’d … BERGE: Where did you join?

SMITH: I joined at Williamsburg and went over to Sterns, they shipped from Williamsburg over to Sterns. 4:00BERGE: Oh, so you didn’t actually work right here then?

SMITH: Oh, yeah. I built all these steps all the way down to the falls, I drove a truck and hauled these rocks; and then when I wasn’t hauling, I would help them cut the rocks and haul away down to the ( ).

BERGE: When you went to Sterns did you work in that—did you live in that Sterns camp over there?

SMITH: Oh, yeah, yeah. That was after I got back from—I started out over here at the Dry Land Bridge and stayed there eleven months. And then I went to Grayville, Illinois, and worked up there, and got transferred to Tulelake, California. And then, out there, we built canals up through the valley, and they tapped into the Crater Lake up there and got the water. And we dug these canals all the way up through there, it was like a desert when we was out there; but I was out there about eight years ago and everything was so green and pretty in through there.

BERGE: So the work you did was well done, huh?

SMITH: Oh, yes it paid off.

BERGE: Those canals still there?

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: That’s something isn’t it?

SMITH: It is. And them big rolling sprinklers out there through them farms they are so green and pretty. 5:00BERGE: Yeah. When you—when you joined did you think you would be staying here all the time?

SMITH: Well, I was hoping I would get to go away. You know most of them got to go west, and that was what I had in mind.

BERGE: Yeah.

SMITH: And I got sent up here to the Dry Land Bridge, course I liked it. And then we got transferred out to … BERGE: What did you do at Sterns?

SMITH: I drove a truck.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: Now when you worked here—let’s talk for a while about when you were at Cumberland Falls State Park.

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: What was your first memory of this place out here? Even before you got in the three C’s?

SMITH: Well, I knew a lot of the boys. We come down when we lived up here , on Friday night, when they had the boxing ,you know.

BERGE: Huh-hum.

SMITH: Come from different camps and they would meet down here and we’d come down and watch them box and everything. We just got … BERGE: Was that fun? 6:00SMITH: Oh, yeah. We got to knowing a lot of the boys. We used to walk from the ferry about eight mile down to the falls—we used to walk there.

BERGE: Now, what year would that have been, the first time you came here?

SMITH: About thirty-six.

BERGE: What was here?

SMITH: Huh, the three C’s, built the first lodge here. When the CCC camp was here, I think they built the first one, and then it burned down and then they … BERGE: But that lodge was here when you were a boy?

SMITH: Yeah. And then the CCC camp was out here too.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Did many people come to the park here?

SMITH: Yeah. There were a lot of people. This road was gravel down through here then, and I know when we lived up on the main road, there was a lot of traffic coming to the falls and the park.

BERGE: Tell us what work you actually did here on the site.

SMITH: Well, right out there toward the building down there we had a big old drum, it was as big around as this I guess, maybe … BERGE: This table?

SMITH: Yeah. It was about that long 7:00and it had cables—well, it had a cable stretched from here down to a tree down by the river, way down over the bluff here.

BERGE: By the falls?

SMITH: No, up above the falls.

BERGE: Ok.

SMITH: And then they had a carriage almost as long as this bed, and it was on pulleys—run on that cable there, and they would put this rock and stuff on that thing, and they had a big long rope, and they would get the—any place you wanted to unload your rock on through there you would just blow your whistle, and they would stop it. And then you’d pull that rope and dump the rock off, and then they would have the rock all the way down to build them steps. They’d cut them rock out, and they didn’t use cement. They just drew a hose down in there and put a piece of—( ) steel, or whatever you call it, down in that hole, and then they would drill another hole and ( ). That’s what they ( ).

BERGE: Yeah. Sure.

SMITH: I would have 8:00to do that when I wasn’t hauling rock. One day that cable broke, and we had a load of rock, and it took off down through there about ninety mile an hour, almost took the top of the trees off.

BERGE: Were you here that day?

SMITH: Yeah. I was here when the cable broke.

BERGE: Where did that cable come from?

SMITH: Just all over the county. We’d go to all these farms and … BERGE: And you drove to pick them up.

SMITH: And pick them up. And ( ) ninety-two, we’d get up there on the mountain and they’d stop the traffic for maybe twenty or twenty-five minutes, and they would get up there and roll them rock off down into the road, and then we’d pick them up in the truck.

BERGE: You were saying you were getting that rock from farmers. Would they get them out of their fields when they were plowing or something?

SMITH: Yeah. They would be cleaning up their fields or … BERGE: So they would be glad to give you the rock then.

SMITH: Then a ( ) place in my father-in-law’s—he got a quarry down there. Where they cut rock out for the steps and things, you know to widen them?

BERGE: Did the government pay him for that?

SMITH: No, they just give them to them. They didn’t charge for that.

BERGE: Now they would be selling them to them.

SMITH: Oh, yeah. Same way over at Sterns, we had a ( ) where 9:00we quarried it, and you could take chisel, and you could cut it in just about any thickness you wanted. You know you ( ).

BERGE: That’s amazing though that people didn’t try to get money for that.

SMITH: Oh, no they didn’t. They were glad to get rid of them rocks and stuff off the fields and stuff.

BERGE: Yeah. Did you have a hard time deciding to go in the three C’s? Or did you know you would soon … SMITH: Oh, no. I knowed I wanted to go as quick as—well up there where I lived there was a lot of girls—good looking girls—sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old—quick as the three C’s come in, they come up and started going to church and things. Man, they took our girls right away, you know, they had the nice uniforms.

BERGE: Yeah. So you had to go out to California and ( ) those California girls.

SMITH: Yeah. (laughter) I told them, man, how do you get into that outfit? 10:00( ).

BERGE: Did any of your friends get in too?

SMITH: Yeah. A lot of friends. Yeah. A lot of them went out to ( ) Wyoming and I had one friend—no, two friends—went to ( ) Wyoming.

BERGE: When you first went in, how much money did you draw every month?

SMITH: Thirty-six dollars. I got five dollars … BERGE: You got five.

SMITH: And my Dad got twenty-five.

BERGE: I’ll tell you, in those days, that was really important to get that twenty-five, wasn’t it?

SMITH: Oh, yeah. And he saved up enough for me to buy a little car. I paid seventy-three dollars for a little twenty-nine Ford coupe, and then I give him the rest, to live on.

BERGE: I guess the first car I had was a twenty-nine Ford Estate pick-up.

SMITH: Then I traded that for a … BERGE: For a good car.

SMITH: Yeah. I traded that for a little thirty-one Pontiac four door. I could haul the boys back and forth, they give me a quarter to take them into town and back.

BERGE: In the winter you just open the fly there, and the heat come in off the manifold … SMITH: Yeah the manifold 11:00(laughter). Yeah. We had a lot of fun.

BERGE: Yeah. Tell me, of all the places you were stationed—I guess you could call it stationed in the three C’s—what did you like the best?

SMITH: Well, I think I liked in California, digging… BERGE: Ditches.

SMITH: Canals and things, back in there. We had a lot of good memories of that.

BERGE: Were the girls out there as good looking as they were on the ridge back where you come from?

SMITH: Ah, no, I didn’t get as acquainted with so many out there. We was way out of town, and we took a recreation trip about three times a week.

BERGE: Where did you go?

SMITH: We went to Klamath Falls, Oregon most of the time, that was the biggest town. Then Tulelake, California and ( ). But Tulelake was a kind of small town, and ( ) was a small town. 12:00But Klamath Falls was a big town, and we would go in there and go to the show. We’d meet a lot of girls there.

BERGE: Huh-huh. What did you—what actually was your job on those ditches? Do you remember?

SMITH: Yeah. I drove a truck.

BERGE: So most of the time you were a truck driver?

SMITH: Yeah. Yeah, I drove a truck most of the time. I had worked in the garage mechanically.

BERGE: Yesterday when we were talking … SMITH: Fibrillator … BERGE: Yesterday when we were talking to somebody, Brent asked if they used much mechanized equipment, or was it mostly hand work?

SMITH: It was mostly hand work. They had a bull dozer and a grader and like that, but no big stuff, you know.

BERGE: When you were there, you were there at the same time as James ….

SMITH: Murphy--ah, Wilhelm, yeah.

BERGE: Wilhelm, said he was there.

SMITH: Yeah, he was there.

BERGE: You out there at the same time?

SMITH: Yeah, but he went on to Orland. I didn’t go to Orland.

BERGE: Ok.

SMITH: I stayed 13:00there at Tulelake.

BERGE: Boy, a lot of Kentuckians were there, weren’t they?

SMITH: Oh, yeah, there was a lot of them. I think they said there were about three million of us.

BERGE: You mean people all together.

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: Yeah. But then quite a few of them were from Kentucky weren’t they?

SMITH: Oh, yeah. Tennessee and Virginia and all over.

BERGE: Yeah.

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: What year did you—what was the date you got out of the three C’s?

SMITH: It was … BERGE: It was thirty-nine, SMITH: Thirty-nine, but I don’t remember the date.

BERGE: You stayed in longer than ( )?

SMITH: Oh, yeah. Usually they stayed twenty-four months, but I come up—about twenty-six moths. They let me stay a couple of extra months in order to be discharged with a bunch of others you know. 14:00BERGE: Who were coming back.

SMITH: Then they all ( )—how come you get to stay twenty-six months and I stayed twenty-four. And I said, “well, I had so much extra duty that I had to stay two months to get caught up.” (laughs) BERGE: When you went out there what was the experience like on the train?

SMITH: Oh, it was a lot of fun.

BERGE: It was?

SMITH: Yeah. It took us, I think five days—we went all around picking up other companies, you know, and distributing them all around through the west. It was five days on the train. It was a lot of fun, and we’d write our name and address on a piece of paper, and throw it out the windows. The girls you know were along the track, and they would be waving. And the train broke down in Dodge City Kansas once, and a bunch of girls came up there and they just begged us to stay till that night—they was having a big dance—but we was praying they wouldn’t get the train fixed, but they got it fixed.

BERGE: When 15:00you—in the two years you were in there, did you ever get to go home? Well, you did when you lived right here.

SMITH: Oh, yeah, yeah, I did when we was in California too. And then, when I was at Sterns up here I got to go home pretty often.

BERGE: Could you get off every week?

SMITH: Oh, yeah, if you wasn’t on duty. Sometimes you would be on fire duty or have KP.

BERGE: What was a typical day like? Tell me, what time did you get up? What time did you ( ), what time you ( )? Can you remember that?

SMITH: Yeah. They’d get us up, probably about six ‘o clock, and we went out and stood roll call, and they would raise the flag. Then we policed up the place, and then about seven ‘o clock I think, we went to breakfast. And then we had to go back and be ready to go at eight ‘o clock. Then at eight ‘o clock we got our trucks out … BERGE: Eight to twelve?

SMITH: Yeah. Then if you was close to camp, 16:00we’d go into camp to eat but if you was out a little ways, they would fix you lunch.

BERGE: And take it to … SMITH: A couple of sandwiches and fruit, some kind of fruit.

BERGE: I guess the food was pretty good, wasn’t it?

SMITH: Yeah, it was good food. I didn’t have any kick on the food.

BERGE: And then what time did you finish in the evening, at work?

SMITH: Oh, we would quit a four o’clock. We had to be in at four.

BERGE: What would be the typical night then? What kind of things would go on? Anything?

SMITH: Yeah. We would—we had a lot of stuff going on. We had ball teams and boxing teams, you know; and we’d play ball, and box and just a lot of different activities, you know.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

SMITH: And we’d play music. A lot of guys played music. I know my brother played. We had a little band and we would—we had a recreation hall we played in—we’d dance. Only one place we lived—when we was in Illinois--they 17:00had girls come into the recreation hall, but they wouldn’t let them back in the camp. Just the ( ) come into town. They’d let them come in and dance on Wednesday nights, and Saturday, and Sunday nights.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Back in the days when the camp was in the park. How far was the camp from the lodge?

SMITH: It was just right out there, right beside where the cabins is there. On that bank ( ). All along in there, and then just scattered all over down in there.

BERGE: Well, when people stayed at the lodge did they—did you ever see them?

SMITH: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did they come over by the camp?

BERGE: Did they come over by the camp?

SMITH: Yeah. They come over by the camp.

BERGE: Which—that camp at Sterns how long were you there?

SMITH: I was over there about six months, a little more I guess.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Do you ever go back that way?

SMITH: No, just ( ).

BERGE: Just those houses ( ).

SMITH: But 18:00I went back to California, when I was out there. And Grayville Illinois, I have been back there twice. They ain’t nothing left of the Grayville place but the bathrooms. They got a park there now, and ball diamonds, and things, but they still use the bathrooms.

BERGE: What did you do at Grayville?

SMITH: I drove a truck.

BERGE: What kind of work were you doing there? What kind of work was it?

SMITH: Most of it was on the farms, for the farmers. Put fencing in and telephone lines and stuff like that. I worked on a crew where they were putting up fences. Took to the woods and cut the posts and … BERGE: When you were a boy did they have electricity where you lived?

SMITH: No.

BERGE: When did they get electricity out there?

SMITH: Ah, I really don’t remember what year 19:00they got electricity. They had electricity in the barracks. ( ).

BERGE: Yeah, a Delco plant?

SMITH: Yeah, a Delco plant.

BERGE: That was very common. That was the kind we had where I lived.

SMITH: Yeah. That’s what we had when I was growing up. We just had kerosene lamps and things.

BERGE: Ok, so in 1937, you were discharged from the CCC’s, then what did you do?

SMITH: No, thirty-seven, was when I went in.

BERGE: Oh, thirty-nine, I mean.

SMITH: Yeah, thirty-nine.

BERGE: Three C’s.

SMITH: I came out and started hauling mine timbers and stuff.

BERGE: Back to the same thing you were doing when you went in.

SMITH: Hauling mine timbers and ah, I worked for my brother logging, hauling logs and lumber, and stuff, part of the time; then I went back to Michigan.

BERGE: When did you go to Michigan?

SMITH: Well, in, about 20:00forty-six. Sometime in the forties—forty-nine I—( ). About forty-four or forty-five I went to Michigan.

BERGE: Ok. What did you do up there? Work in a factory?

SMITH: Worked for ( ) Corporation.

BERGE: How long did you stay there?

SMITH: I stayed there about forty-eight years. Not, I mean in Michigan.

BERGE: You got … SMITH: Yeah, I got … BERGE: What kind of work did you do in Michigan?

SM ITH: I worked as a ( ) person, and then I worked for a winery, a champagne company. And worked for a tank part company during the war, a tool and dye maker during the war. 21:00Had quite a few different jobs, but I retired from Chryslers and my wife, she retired from General Motors.

BERGE: And then, when did you all go to Florida?

SMITH: We have been down there twenty-three years. We stayed forty-eight years in Michigan.

BERGE: Of all the places you have lived, where did you like the best?

SMITH: Well, I liked Michigan.

BERGE: You did.

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: Where did you live in Michigan?

SMITH: I lived—well, I lived in Detroit a long time, then I moved to Ferndale, got in the suburbs of Detroit. And then when we retired we went to Coldwater Michigan. Up on the lake ( ) up there forty-nine mile of water, and we went ( ) the lake fishing, and we had snowmobiles, and we went from lake to lake in the winter time, fishing. A lot of fun.

BERGE: Oh, I know.

SMITH: But then the winters got so bad, I got heart trouble, 22:00and I got gout.

BERGE: You didn’t mind the winter, though did you?

SMITH: Not then, I couldn’t take it any more.

BERGE: When you first went to Michigan, there were a lot of Kentucky people up there weren’t there?

SMITH: Yeah. Yeah. I guess half the people in ( ) Company were from Kentucky and Tennessee. They really worked—they wanted—our people from down here—a lot of people.

BERGE: And people from down here were darn glad to get jobs too.

SMITH: Oh, they were glad to get a job, and they didn’t care what they worked.

BERGE: Well, why did you pick Michigan? Did somebody talk you into that or … SMITH: Well, yeah, my buddy, he had been up there before, and I started out on the railroad. Went up there and started out—he’d worked on the railroad up there, they had extra gangs, you know and we went up there. When we first got there they didn’t have no openings on the railroad so we went to a nursery, and 23:00they was hiring at the nursery, and we ( ) job for twenty cent an hour and we worked there till they got an opening on the railroad and we went to the railroad and got forty cent an hour.

BERGE: Hmm, big difference.

SMITH: I had a furnished apartment for three fifty a week.

BERGE: That was hard to beat.

SMITH: It was hard to beat.

BERGE: Where is your wife from?

SMITH: She is from Williamsburg. Just outside of Williamsburg down what’s called Clough.

BERGE: What year did you marry?

SMITH: Ah, 1942. Or ‘41.

BERGE: So you were married when you went to Michigan, the second time.

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: Ok. Brent, do you have any questions you want to ask?

BRENT: Where was the boxing arena, do you remember where that was?

SMITH: Where was it at?

BERGE: Here. The one here you mean.

BRENT: Yeah. Here. Was it in the camp?

SMITH: Yeah. It was in the camp.

BRENT: Down in the camp?

SMITH: Yeah, I think it was up there on that hill there just 24:00before the orderly room. Up in there by the office.

BERGE: ( ) SMITH: ( ) falls, there was a little holler up there, and they had the boxing ring up there outside, where I think this one was inside up here I believe.

BERGE: Did people here at the park know ( ) much boxing ever?

SMITH: Yeah. Yeah, they actually … BERGE: The tourists got to go in and watch it?

SMITH: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Anybody could go and watch them.

BERGE: Did people come in from Corbin and watch?

SMITH: Yeah. Yeah.

BERGE: Were there any really good boxers?

SMITH: Oh, there was a good boxer in there. They boxed against different camps you know.

BERGE: There’s a couple more questions we’d like to ask you.

SMITH: Ok.

BERGE: When you first came here—as a boy and first saw the original lodge here?

SMITH: Yeah.

BERGE: What did you think of it? 25:00SMITH: I thought it was the most precious thing I had ever seen. I had never seen anything built like that.

BERGE: How was it built?

SMITH: It was built something like it is now, but it was more rugged, you know and, but it was real nice. I think they hired this last one.

BRENT: WPA built it.

SMITH: WPA?

BRENT: It was forty-two.

BERGE: Why don’t you ask him about the trail?

BRENT: How long did it take to build that trail down to the river?

SMITH: I really don’t know. We slept here fifteen months, and I don’ t know if we… BERGE: It wasn’t finished when you left?

SMITH: Yeah. We had it finished all the way down ( ).

BRENT: Did you do any of these other trails too?

SMITH: Yeah a lot of these trails we built.

BRENT: Any you can remember?

SMITH: One that goes down below the falls, down there, that trail. And … BRENT: The walkway that went under the falls? You did that one too? 26:00SMITH: Yeah. Yeah. But it has changed since then, probably rotted out and is concrete now. Yeah, we was building these cottages, down over the bank on the other side. Down in that holler there where we ( ) the poles and stuff; and then we had a ( ) thing down there that roll down in there and let ( ) go through that ( ) and come up on the other side … BERGE: And dry out.

SMITH: And dry out and then ( ).

BRENT: Did you cut the logs here?

SMITH: Yeah.

BRENT: Cut them on the park?

SMITH: On the park.

BRENT: There was a central restroom for the cabins or did they have any?

SMITH: They had bathrooms.

BRENT: They had bathrooms.

SMITH: Yeah.

BRENT: ( ) SMITH: Yeah, I’m pretty sure ( ).

BERGE: When you were all working in the park did many 27:00of your people get hurt?

SMITH: A lot of the boys got cut, when they was building that cabins with that foot edge, you know?

BERGE: Yeah.

SMITH: ( ).

BERGE: Did you have pretty good doctors?

SMITH: Yeah, we had good doctors. That was about the worst thing ( ) rolling them logs.

BERGE: Nobody ever got hurt on those stones did they?

SMITH: No.

BERGE: Well, this has been really helpful for us, for you to remember and tell us all these things and thank you for giving us the interview. Do you think when people were looking for work, they were impressed by the fact that you were in the three C’s?

SMITH: Oh yeah. They were.

BERGE: It was fun wasn’t it?

SMITH: The people out in Grayville Illinois where they messed up. They was so nice afterwards. ( ) and they let their kids come up there to the recreation office to have 28:00card games and whatever. That was ( ) BERGE: I need to turn this over for a minute.

END OF SIDE ONE TAPE ONE SMITH BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE ONE SMITH BERGE: Of all the experiences you had in the three C’s, what do you think was the best one?

SMITH: Well, they taught us a lot. We didn’t have no experience of anything like driving trucks, and machines and everything like that; before they would let you drive a truck you would have to take a six weeks mechanic work in the garage. They taught you mechanic work, 29:00and they taught you how to fix the truck, if it broke down, and everything like that. And they taught you to operate the heavy equipment, and stuff before you had. We didn’t have to much ( ) in graders and things like that, most of it hand work.

BERGE: When you—did you all—when you were in the three C’s--did you ever—were you working together—work with people in the WPA?

SMITH: Ahm … BERGE: Or did you … SMITH: Well, that was different.

BERGE: I knew that, I thought they might have used some of you to help them, or something like that.

SMITH: They might have used some of the foremen for the WPA foremen; I’m pretty sure they did.

BERGE: That—did, did you get much of a physical when you went in?

SMITH: Yeah. They give you a good physical.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

SMITH: The same 30:00as the army.

BERGE: Just like in the army. Yeah.

SMITH: The three C’s was run by the army and … BERGE: Oh, yeah, yeah.

SMITH: Camp-wise, then when we went out in the fields, it was the rangers and such.

BERGE: An awful lot of those people went from the three C’s into the army, didn’t they?

SMITH: Yeah. My brother, just as quick as he got out of the three C’s, he and ( ) Cox, a friend of mine, they went and joined the army.

BERGE: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you Mr. Smith, it was really a pleasure to have you come in here and talk with us; and I want to thank you for giving us this interview. I’m sure it is a good excuse for you to come back to Kentucky every year, to come up to this thing.

SMITH: Yeah. I enjoy it. We’ve been coming now, I think for twenty-three years. I think this year will be twenty-three years to the CC reunion.

BERGE: Great.

SMITH: When it first started we didn’t have—it’s hard for me to get two or three people to play music you know, and I guess we had fifteen 31:00pickers for Saturday night.

BERGE: Is that right. Do you have any children?

SMITH: Yeah, I have one son.

BERGE: Where does he live?

SMITH: He lives in Denver Colorado. He lives in ( ) , but his office is in Denver. He is an architect, he builds, big shopping malls, and hospitals and things like that.

BERGE: Do you ever go out there?

SMITH: Yeah. But I can’t hardly stay out there because he lives up on the mountain, and I can’t hardly breath up there. Every time I go out there I have to go to the Emergency Room, for air.

BERGE: Yeah, yeah. Well I sure do want to thank you. Do you have anything else you want to ask?

BRENT: I can’t think of anything.

BERGE: Well thank you very much.

END OF SIDE TWO TAPE ONE END OF INTERVIEW.