Oral History Interview with Houston W. Fuller

BERGE: The following is an unrehearsed, taped interview, with Mr. Houston W. Fuller, of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The interview is conducted at Cumberland Falls State Park, on February 16, 1990, at nine-fifteen AM. Ok. Mr. Fuller, I want to thank you for coming down here today to give us this interview. And before we get started with it I would like to have you tell me, your name, and where you were born and when you were born.

FULLER: Barbourville Kentucky, May 19, 1907. I’ll be eighty-two—I’ll be eighty-three next May.

BERGE: What is your full name?

FULLER: Houston 1:00W. Fuller.

BERGE: What was your father’s name?

FULLER: Thomas Smith Fuller.

BERGE: And where was he from?

FULLER: He was from Knox County, there at Barbourville, as well as I can remember.

BERGE: What was your mother’s name?

FULLER: Effie Slade Haun Fuller. She… BERGE: What was her maiden name?

FULLER: Effie Slade Haun, was her maiden name.

BERGE: How do you spell Haun?

FULLER: H A U N.

BERGE: Where were they from? Were they Knox County too?

FULLER: As well as Dad told me they moved into the county just prior to the Civil War.

BERGE: What did your Dad do for a living?

FULLER: He was a nitro-glycerin maker and a well shooter. The county had to ( ) and he made nitro-glycerin and shot the wells for a long, long time. 2:00BERGE: What part of Knox County did you live in? Did you live in Barbourville?

FULLER: Right in—well we had a farm down—the post office was called Probidence, it was about three miles down the Cumberland River, across Shark Gap, there is a little mountain on the opposite side of Richland Creek.

BERGE: How do you spell that now, where the post office was?

FULLER: P R O B I D E N C E, I think.

BERGE: Like Providence but not Province, ok. Now when you were a boy where did you go to school?

FULLER: Barbourville graded and Barbourville High.

BERGE: Did you graduate from Barbourville High School?

FULLER: Yes.

BERGE: What year? Approximately how old were you? Maybe 3:00twenty-four, nineteen twenty-four?

FULLER: Oh, no, no, I was… BERGE: Was it nineteen-twenty-four when you graduated from high school? You would have been seventeen or eighteen then.

FULLER: Actually, I don’t remember.

BERGE: What did you do when you finished high school?

FULLER: Do what?

BERGE: What did you do after you finished high school?

FULLER: I think part of that summer, I helped some engineers in town. This is the nickname ( ) Ray Ballards. Ray Ballards is one of the Governor ( ) right hand boys in politics, let me see there was another one. Claude Miller.

BERGE: Were you always interested in things like engineering? Was that a—were always interested in that type of work?

FULLER: Yes.

BERGE: And then what did you do for the next four or five years? What… FULLER: Well, my wife and I went to Union College. I didn’t graduate from Union, she did.

BERGE: So you went right to Union College 4:00from High School?

FULLER: Yes.

BERGE: That wasn’t very common then, to go to college, was it?

FULLER: Apparently yes. They came to me—you see they tried—I was a High School football player. And, I guess, a fair one. They asked Dad, or me, or Mother or somebody could I come to the college, and they said yes.

BERGE: To play football.

FULLER: To play football.

BERGE: Were your parents interested in education?

FULLER: Mother was.

BERGE: That is a common thing isn’t it?

FULLER: Dad could take it or leave it, didn’t make any difference to him. Now, he wound up, after that fall ( ) was over, he wound up in carpentry work and he was a floor man. He laid all the floors for everybody in town. 5:00He worked a crew and he did stairway work and… BERGE: Hardwood floors?

FULLER: Hardwood floors mostly. He scraped and cleaned and… BERGE: You know one of these men here, this week with you, did that kind of work in Louisville, Jack Hardin.

FULLER: I don’t know.

BERGE: I think so, that is what he told me when I interviewed him. Let me ask you some other questions. So you went to college; how long did you stay there at the college?

FULLER: About two and one-half years.

BERGE; Huh-hum. Is that where you met your wife?

FULLER: Hum-hum.

BERGE: What was here maiden name?

FULLER: Elizabeth Drew Chandler.

BERGE: And where was she from?

FULLER: She was from Middlesboro.

BERGE: And when did you marry? 6:00FULLER: After I came down here. Now we had talked about it and I was asking her, and sometime in 1934.

BERGE: Ok. What did you do form the time you left college and when you came here?

FULLER; Well, most of the time—again, we had to—we had gas ( ) in the county, and I am trying to think of this outfit in Lexington—I’ll have to ask Elizabeth. They were in there and I did his transit work, we were ( ) pipe lines to tie it all together. We got that done and I went on to ditch lines and helped that crew lay ( ). Cleaned them and tied them together—we built one, no I think we built two ( ) stations.

BERGE: Is that were you really 7:00learned to be an engineer?

FULLER: What little I know about it.

BERGE: That is where you learned it though.

FULLER: Yes.

BERGE: Do you remember how you first learned about the CCC?

FULLER: I believe that—now her father ran the paper in Barbourville, it was either in that paper or in Courier-Journal. Dad always took the Courier-Journal when we could get it.

BERGE: And that is where you read about it?

FULLER: That is where I read about it.

BERGE: What did you think about it when you first heard of it?

FULLER: Well, off hand it sounded good.

BERGE: Do you… FULLER: I was more ( ), I was more than well pleased with it. Because it taught me—now that was my first association with people; and people of my 8:00 age.

BERGE: Well how did you come—do you remember how you came to joining up or anything like that? Do you remember that?

FULLER: To do what?

BERGE: Do you remember how you came about to joining it, actually?

FULLER: Well, I just made up my mind, and I told mother and dad, I said, “I think I will give this a whirl.” BERGE: Did any of your friends do it with you?

FULLER: (pause) Hal Wiggens.

BERGE: Where did he end up going?

FULLER: Oh, he is in the grave yard.

BERGE: No, but I mean did he come up here to the CCC?

FULLER: Yes.

BERGE: He came right here to Cumberland Falls?

FULLER: He came here—no he died in the Corbin Hospital while he was down here.

BERGE: Oh, really? He was a young man then.

FULLER: Yeah, he was a young man.

BERGE: How did that happen?

FULLER: I think it was pneumonia as well as I remember; because I had to go home when he passed away. See all the time 9:00I belonged to the Kentucky National Guard; and I had to go home with the funeral crew to put him away.

BERGE: Let me ask you some other questions. When you enlisted, or whatever you call it, in the CCC, did you know you were going to come here?

FULLER: Didn’t have the slightest idea. Now we were—it was discussed when we were pulling out. We had to go to Louisville… BERGE: Do you remember how you went to Louisville?

FULLER: On the train.

BERGE: From Barbourville?

FULLER: From Barbourville.

BERGE: How long did that trip take then?

FULLER: I don’t know, but the best thing about that trip was that it was 10:00( ) between Louisville and Fort Knox. I remember that.

BERGE: That is amazing, you talking about stuff that happened sixty years ago. Now when you did this, you and this friend of yours, the boy you went with you, went to Fort Knox. What did you do there? How long were you there?

FULLER: Doesn’t seem to me like, too many days. They gave us an idea, now we want you people at this place, that place and the other. And most of it was west.

BERGE: Like Wyoming and California and those places.

FULLER: I got all that late. But, be that as it may, Herald and I got to talking about it and I said, “Harold, let’s go back to Cumberland Falls”, and that is where we went.

BERGE: You knew you were going to be homesick.

FULLER: No, I wasn’t homesick… BERGE: Did you get your choice?

FULLER: Huh?

BERGE: Did you have your choice of where you could go?

FULLER: I had a choice. They had three or four stations out there around Wyoming, Montana, and California—no, I don’t think they 11:00had California. Could have been, it could have been Arizona or New Mexico, for all I know.

BERGE: This is 1933, is that right?

FULLER: Thirty-three and thirty-four.

BERGE: Oh, thirty-four.

FULLER: Now I married in thirty-four.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Is that when you go in the CCC too?

FULLER: Where?

BERGE: When did you join the CCC? Thirty-three?

FULLER: Thirty-three I imagine?

BERGE: Yeah, that is what I thought. Now, do you remember when you joined the CCC, up at Knox, when you were at Fort Knox, what they did to you up there? What kind of training did you have? Do you remember? Did you have any training?

FULLER: Not too much. Now wait a minute, turn that damn thing off.

BERGE: Ok. (click\off) Mr. Fuller you told us to turn that off and you were telling us about one of the things that bothered you about the CCC. I think that it would be good for people to know that. What was it you didn’t like?

FULLER: They 12:00didn’t teach us a thing in the world about fighting forest fires and we are in the timber country, wood country; and mountain country and how to take care of yourself, what a top fire is , what a ground fire is, the location and how to fight it’s downwind side, upwind side, come in behind it.

BERGE: Why do you think they didn’t teach that?

FULLER: I haven’t the slightest idea. Frankly, if you want my opinion they didn’t know a damn thing about it.

BERGE: Yeah, that is what I think. I think what happened is, that they started this thing and didn’t know what they were about.

FULLER: Exactly.

BERGE: Yeah. Yeah. But you think that would have been something that would have been a great thing for you young people to have known.

FULLER: We had boys that were off the streets, getting into somthin’ that they had never looked at in all their lives.

BERGE: Never been in the woods, maybe.

FULLER: In the woods. And I don’t think, now 13:00in my work for Mr. Wentworth, I think I found one copperhead, ( ) and we wandered around this country here, there, and yonder doing little things. The first thing that he did when we got in and got an assignment, I think, he ( ) somebody was looking at a piece of paper in one of the buildings, and he says something about I had some experience in survey work. Mr. Wentworth looked over and says I want a fat one.

BERGE: (laughs) You.

FULLER: Me.

BERGE: Tell us about that big fire you were talking about a minute ago. You said you weren’t down here too long.

FULLER: I don’t know, we went in there sometime in the middle of the night and it was way up in the middle of the day in the afternoon, no water, no food, no nothing. 14:00What tools they had in there the farmer and the ( ) brought it to us.

BERGE: Where was that?

FULLER: Down around ( ) someplace, I don’t know. It was dark.

BERGE: And they took all of you down there.

FULLER: As many as they could take. There was a whole truck load ( ).

BERGE: When did you meet—did you meet ah—Gabe Blunk when you were up around Fort Knox, or did you meet him after you came down here?

FULLER: No, I got acquainted with him after I came down here.

BERGE: Huh-huh. So tell me about it now; you were up there and they didn’t give you much training, and you were not here many days; did they give you clothing or anything like that?

FULLER: Oh, yes we had clothing.

BERGE: And you went there and you didn’t take anything with you, did you?

FULLER: Underwear about all I had.

BERGE: So they gave you clothing. What did they tell you about the money they were going to pay you and that sort of thing. Did you know how much money when you went in?

FULLER: A hundred dollars, I think.

BERGE: Yeah, and they sent most of that home, didn’t they.

FULLER: No we didn’t see it. (laughter) BERGE: But you came down here. Tell me about your trip from Fort Knox down here. How did you come? 15:00Do you remember?

FULLER: Well, we rode the train back, ( ) then they either had a truck or something, brought us farther.

BERGE: What did you think of the site when you got here?

FULLER: Well, I as far as what we could find out and what they told us, it looked very well to me. I didn’t have any objection to it.

BERGE: When you got here was the camp already built?

FULLER: ( ) BERGE: It already had… FULLER: Had the buildings up. And I think they had some bedding and cots and so forth.

BERGE: And so when you got here it wasn’t the first day at the camp, huh?

FULLER: No, no work going on.

BERGE: But there wasn’t any work going on. Do you remember the date? 16:00FULLER: ( must have just shook his head no) BERGE: You don’t remember that huh? When you came here how quickly did it take them to organize you and the gangs to do the work?

FULLER: Well, now the gangs, I don’t know.

BERGE: Well, tell me—tell me about your work.

FULLER: Mr. Everett ( )… BERGE: After he found out you could do survey work.

FULLER: After the first work… BERGE: How did you let them know you could do this kind of work?

FULLER: Apparently somebody knew it; because whoever was top kick or bossing the place had a piece of paper talking about people this, that and the other. I guess maybe ( ) assignments from Mr. Wentworth ( ).

BERGE: So tell me about the next day, then, when you went to work.

FULLER: Well, we got in the car and he told me, he says, “now Mr. Fuller, pick 17:00out a couple of boys, I’ve got a job, starting tomorrow in that ( ). The tools are down there and they ( ), I won’t ( ) till I am clean and let the damn rocks alone. If they obstruct the drainage in the ditch now, why you might move them, but put them back flat with your elevation coming down the hill. Don’t throw the damn stuff down the banks, pile it out there on the edge, out of the way next to your…” BERGE: Mr. Wentworth said this?

FULLER: … “next to your drainage ditch and says we will load it in the trucks ( ). And keep your damn hands out of these ( ) culverts.” He says, “animals hide in there.” I said, “Mr. Wentworth any self respecting snake would never go in that damn place.” He said, “well 18:00don’t try it.” (laughter) BERGE: He was afraid of them was he?

FULLER: He says, “If I tell you to clean the mud and trash out I’ll find you a two by four or something and bring it up here and push it all out on the down hill side.” BERGE: So what did you do, did you work on ditch lines most of the time?

FULLER: No, I think it took us about a week to go from the top of the hill clean on down to where the park is now.

BERGE: Oh, down by the falls.

FULLER: He said, “by that time I will have something else for you to do”. And he would take me once in a while and go on top of some of these places and look for trails and then he decided to instead of ( ) this down here ( ) won’t come up in this damn place to walk, they will stay around themselves, which they did,.

BERGE: So what did you do most 19:00of the—how long were you here—how long did you stay here at Cumberland Falls?

FULLER: Elizabeth can tell you, I don’t know.

BERGE: Huh-hum. Did you stay more than six months?

FULLER: Oh, yeah, I was here at least a year, if not longer.

BERGE: Ok. Ok.

FULLER: Long enough to ( ) to get a marriage certificate to marry her.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Then after you married where did you go?

FULLER: Blue Diamond Coal company, hauling ( ).

BERGE: So you went… FULLER: I went… BERGE: You left the CCC and… FULLER: I ( ) BERGE: Lets go back and talk about your CCC free time. When you were here did they have—did you work by yourself most of the time, or did you work with Mr. Wentworth?

FULLER: No, I had to have a couple boys with me.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

FULLER: I had to shoot, I had to take out the parking lot 20:00( ). They told me now I want you to shoot this ditch down there. I played with dynamite about all the time I was down here. We had nothin’ to work with and I had to take materials and I would drill down about that far—and he said, “now how hard are you going to shoot this thing?” I said, “I’m-–you tell me to shoot it ( ) I said, I will cut my dynamite, just enough to cover the cap. And I says, I says, “I will use a fuse about that’—I took gunny sacks and covered the shots, in lieu of tarpaulin, they didn’t do too bad. And then we would have to shovel it out. And I ( ) I’m going to take him after a while and go to the far end of this parking lot and see if I can find a corps of engineers bench mark in there. Now I shot a gob of dynamite down there ( ) of some kind and I want to see what it looks like now.

BERGE: Well, 21:00a, we have, Mr. Fuller and me, in here and Steve Kickert, a naturalist at Cumberland Falls. I say Steve, when you take Mr. Fuller down there it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to take Mr. Blunk and Hardin with you so… FULLER: I want Blunk and nobody else.

BERGE: Ok. Just take Blunk then. And you all can talk about that and the other men and I can talk about that and then that way you might get some ideas of things we can ask the ( ) this afternoon.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (Steve?) Yeah.

BERGE: Let me ask you this. Did Mr. Wentworth, did they pay you any extra money because of all this?

FULLER: No. No.

BERGE: They should have (laughs).

FULLER: He had an office in Corbin. A lot of times there wasn’t anything to do there and those two boys, 22:00I gave them back to the First Sergeant. And he’d use them and I would pay them out of hand to get the work out of them. They weren’t lazy, they were Ok.

BERGE: Do you remember who they were?

FULLER; No.

BERGE: You don’t remember their names or anything.

FULLER: I would go to town with them and ( ) there on the main drag in Corbin and I would call ( ) and ( ) but I never did any of the work out there. Now one time he took all three of us and it was extremely bad weather, or hot weather, and they would go down ( ) the main drag in Corbin and heave. Stand eight and ten inches high in the middle of the street ( ). (laughs) I don’t know they had to take that stuff out of there and keep traffic going because that was the main drag out of there.

BERGE: The main highway wasn’t it? Yeah, it was highway twenty-five. 23:00Do you remember—did they have any kind of a educational program when you were down here?

FULLER: Well they had… BERGE: You don’t remember.

FULLER: I don’t remember.

BERGE: You know there was a… FULLER: See when we came in, when we did a days work and come in, we ate and went to bed.

BERGE: Huh-huh. How many times did you fight forest fires?

FULLER: That is the only time that I was… BERGE: The one down in Pacton?

FULLER: Yeah.

BERGE: That is the only one you remember. You know there was… FULLER: I get it—turn 24:00that thing off—(click) BERGE: When you were a young fellow up there did you—before you went in the CCC—did you ever see any forest fires?

FULLER: Well, now you know farmers has a bad habit of burning brush—they took care of it—but they always took care to keep it away from the woods. Nothing in the forest like we had. There would be a whole field burning.

BERGE: When you all were here and you were living over here how often would you go home to Barbourville? When you were in the CCC?

FULLER: (laughs) BERGE: I mean you were courting a woman so you probably went home more often than most people.

FULLER: No, I—about twice a month , if I could—one time I missed coming back. I missed a ride and had to walk. (laughs) Turn it off (click) BERGE: When you were a boy you said that you floated all the way from Barbourville down here to the falls ( ) fish. Do you remember how long that trip took?

FULLER: Well we didn’t 25:00move too fast we just let the current pull us.

BERGE: So you don’t remember how long it took?

FULLER: No, it was a week or more.

BERGE: How rough was the water?

FULLER: ( ) you had to ( ) now there were three or four shoals in Cumberland River on the way down, but we found out that we could wade and drag the boat through.

BERGE: Did you catch any fish?

FULLER: No. Now I’ll tell you a couple of the boys will fish the mouth of the creek, or the river, and if you’ve got muddy water you got a mess of fish. But we had carbide lights, and had carbide with us and we’d hear a bull frog and we’d light the lights and get the gig and go out and get us two or three frogs.

BERGE: An old dynamiter like you, if you’d had the dynamite you could have got all the fish you wanted, wouldn’t you?

FULLER: ( ) (laughter). 26:00BERGE: Did you ever dynamite your fish? Never did, huh? What was the most dangerous work that they had you do besides that fire? When you were here? Not just you but anybody, do you remember?

FULLER: Huh, it wasn’t nuthin’ dangerous. What… BERGE: Were they pretty careful of the danger?

FULLER: Well, they ( ) this, that and the other. Wayne knew that we three weren’t in any great danger, unless he had us out in the woods and that was very, very seldom. If he did, he was along.

BERGE: Tell me about Mr. Wentworth you probably knew him about as well as any body that was in the CCC.

FULLER: Well, mostly he was a hell of a swell guy. To work with, to work for.

BERGE: Tell me a little bit more. Describe him to me and tell me… FULLER: Well, I’ve got a picture somewhere. I didn’t bring it with me.

BERGE: Well let’s take somebody here that didn’t know him… FULLER: Well he ( ) he was a little bit on the bald headed, he walked fast, but he talked slow. 27:00BERGE: Walked fast and talked slow. What did he talk about? Did he just ever talk about stuff with you? What was he interested in?

FULLER: Well he would talk about my love life. (laughs) BERGE: He did, he liked that huh? Was he an interesting man?

FULLER: Yes, he was.

BERGE: Did you ever keep in touch with him after you left here?

FULLER: I what?

BERGE: Did you ever keep in touch with him after you left here?

FULLER: Well, you see I was way up—when I left here I went right to Wise, Virginia, Blue Diamond Coal Company. We were married, and I think if I am not badly mistaken we had Blunk up there to show him off our first daughter.

BERGE: Hun-hum.

FULLER: And I didn’t have a chance—I never went back home too much.

BERGE: Who were your good friends when you were here?

FULLER: Where here? Well, with Blunk ( ). I… BERGE: They what?

FULLER: I’m not a close 28:00friend to people. I work behind the buildings to save people all my god damn life, and I’d, know them like a book, and I kind of backed off. Now, I’d talk with them, and kind of shoot the bull with them every once in a while, but that was it. No, buddy, buddy.

BERGE: How come—how did you get to be such a good friend of Blunk?

FULLER: We just took a liking to each other. I just, I, I’ve been a ( ) man all my life and when the war started or getting close to it—see I was still in the National Guard, they mobilized the Kentucky National Guard and I was sent to Camp McCoy Wisconsin. 29:00I was married and had two little ones. I ( ) and I was up there, see it was a long way down and I couldn’t afford an automobile then. Now what was the question?

BERGE: I was just really wondered about how you and Mr. Blunk got to be so close friends.

FULLER: Old hands.

BERGE: Just met here… FULLER: We just met here. Now I kept in touch—when I worked with Dupont… BERGE: You kept in touch with him didn’t you?

FULLER: I kept in touch with him.

BERGE: You were not just friends then, but you remained friends, you know after that. Huh, did you—what did you do for relaxation when you were here? I know you went down to see your girl friend twice a month.

FULLER: I worked, all the time. Half the trouble with me now—now I had when I left 30:00I took—Olli Parsons—I believe—( ) would be working that Milford job at Monroe, ( ) and the ( ) had overspent. We had well had the ( ) ready to go and the old man, when they said now where do you want to go, do you want to go to Washington or do you want to go to Louisiana? I said, “( ) I’m going home.” BERGE: You were going to quit, huh?

FULLER: I was seventy or seventy-four.

BERGE: And you worked until you were seventy-four? Huh! If you can remember—when you—I talked to a man the other day from Georgia, who was in the CCC and he told me that—they were—they had a baseball team. Did they have anything like that here?

FULLER: No that I know of.

BERGE: Do you ever remember them playing baseball down there? Volley ball or basket ball or anything like that?

FULLER: They may have I don’t know.

BERGE: When 31:00you go home and see your girl friend twice a month, how did you get home? Did you walk, ride a bus, or how did you go?

FULLER: No, I would ride the train.

BERGE: From Corbin to Barbourville.

FULLER: Hum-hum.

BERGE: How did you get to Corbin?

FULLER: Sometimes—a time or two I walked. ( ) but a time or two I did. A time or two I had to walk back.

BERGE: Did Mr. Wentworth or anybody like that take you?

FULLER: I could have, I might a had. See I’m a loner and always have been.

BERGE: When you were a boy did you like to go in the woods and hunt and that kind of stuff?

FULLER: Stayed in the woods all the time. I’ve ate more blacksnakes than you ever looked at.

BERGE: Yeah? Where’d you go in the woods? What was your favorite part?

FULLER: Oh, we had a place we called the big rock. This was three miles on top of a mountain. 32:00We’d always go down there and look around the country. Carved our initials back on rocks down there.

BERGE: Let me turn this over a minute.

END SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE FULLER: BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE ONE FULLER: BERGE: ( ) that old hotel that was across the river?

FULLER: Over here? (pause) No.

BERGE: You don’t remember no hotel across there, when you were here. Did you ever remember, when you were here working for CCC, seeing visitors to the park? The State Park was here then, do you ever remember seeing visitors here?

FULLER: Well now there was a building down here that people from Louisville, the girls, would come down and spend three or four days a week and go back. They would hold dances. I forgot about that down there and some of the boys would go. 33:00I never did go.

BERGE: Do you remember the boys going across the river in a basket or anything like that?

FULLER: No.

BERGE: How did you go across the river? Just… FULLER: We would wade most of the time. See I ( ) I asked somebody the other day if they remembered seeing a hound dog down there and they said yes. Sometime Mr. Wentworth told me, he said, “now you don’t have a whole lot to do you can take the boys and to keep them out of trouble walk this river bank as far as you can and come down and spend the night in the woods.” They wouldn’t go up the river they would go down; see they had to go through the sand bars down through there, way down, I don’t know how far and they would go down there and camp. Now he told me he said he ( )and dress the place up. ( ) we said, “we’ll get rid of it.” BERGE: Do you ever remember anybody getting any whiskey down in here? 34:00FULLER: Yes, but I don’t know where… BERGE: You don’t know where they got it.

FULLER; No.

BERGE: Did you ever see any moonshine stills when you were walking in the woods around here?

FULLER: No. Let’s get back to the stills.

BERGE: Ok.

FULLER: I’ve been there and come back. And I don’t know I saw a picture around here somewhere, somebody had it that on the far side of the falls there is an eddy against the bank if you’ve noticed. And that dog, he belongs over on the other side of the river to somebody. And he kept walking and waiting and tagging along and wading and all at once he made up his mind and said the hell with it I’m going anyway. He got half way across and his feet either slipped or he hit a surge in the current and the next thing I knew, I could see the dog’s head, he was going down the river but he was moving to that eddy 35:00and all at once over he went. I said, well there goes that dog. I stood there another two or three minutes and finally I saw him swim to the bank, and walk up the bank and he shook right good, and he turned around and looked, and I thought I know right good what you are saying. I’ve done it again. (laughter) BERGE: That was a good time. When you were all working down here, did you ever see much game?

FULLER: Who?

BERGE: Did you ever see many animals? When you were working down here, like wild animals.

FULLER: Yeah, sometimes when we were out we’d see—now I’ve heard hogs and I’ve heard turkeys, oh I think I saw an old tom or two one time we were back in here doing something.

BERGE: Did you help lay out the trails?

FULLER: No.

BERGE: Who did that?

FULLER: I guess he did. Oh, he knew where he wanted to go… 36:00BERGE: Did he ever take you and those two boys that worked with you, with him when he was doing this kind of work.

FULLER: Sometimes he did and sometimes he’d go by himself. If we didn’t have anything to do he would say well let’s walk this today.

BERGE: Huh-Huh.

FULLER: And we’d take rags and towels, he wouldn’t let us cut anything.

BERGE: Huh-huh. They had crews that did that I guess.

FULLER: Well they had a crew that did that.

BERGE: What did you think of the food that was in the camp?

FULLER: Didn’t bother me any. I ate it.

BERGE: Was it good or did the boys complain about it?

FULLER: I’ll put it this way, just normal camp cooking, is what it was. (accentuates words by thumping on table) BERGE: Did the boys complain about it much or….

FULLER: None that I know of. Oh, by the way , there was two or three of these boys from Louisville got run off then. I don’t know if it was the food or the bear or what came from 37:00but they was all beered up down there one night and got noisy and I don’t know who the top kick was but the next day or that—no, it was the next day—that three or four of them were on the way out.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Just ran them off, huh? Do you remember, did the boys generally get along pretty good together?

FULLER: Seem to be, I don’t remember a fist fight.

BERGE: Yeah. Yeah.

FULLER: oh, they’d growl just like any… BERGE: Yeah, yeah, but by and large they got along. Were they pretty good workers most of them?

FULLER: Seemed to be. What little I looked at, they seemed to be.

BERGE: They did their work.

FULLER: I had two or three extra and they worked—see all that parking lot down there they had to map that up behind. They finally got a roller in and they used—to get it—brought down the size 38:00and brought the rollers in. But then we had to shoot that base line out.

BERGE: Could you—when you were working around did you ever see any of the state people that ran the park?

FULLER: None that I recognized.

BERGE; Huh-huh. The work that those people—that those boys did down there they, a did they take a lot of pride in what they were doing, did you think?

FULLER: Apparently they did. (laughter) I was in no way—I knew what I wanted to do and what I had to do and I tried to keep my nose clean of anything else.

BERGE: This is interesting, he didn’t work with gangs or crews like most of them did at all. (there apparently are more people in the room) FULLER: I was a loner.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Can I ask a question? Were there a lot of people from Kentucky in these crews, 39:00or were you different from everybody else in that you were from the area? I’ve heard a lot of people say, well there were a lot of city kids that were brought down.

FULLER: Well, apparently, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell the difference. Apparently there was a lot of loose people from Louisville down here. They say ( ), now I don’t know.

BERGE: But different kinds of kids than the country boys.

FULLER: None of that bunch country boys, you could tell by the way they acted.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

FULLER: But I wasn’t close to that gang now, I wouldn’t make an estimate of the whole bunch I knew what we were, but other than that why I just… BERGE: Do you remember where those boys were that worked with you? Those two boys.

FULLER: No.

BERGE: You don’t remember where they were from or anything.

FULLER: I don’t know.

BERGE: When you all lived down here did they tell you where 40:00your bed would be, or did you move your bed around, or how was that? Was that like the army?

FULLER: No, they told us. I ( ) hell, how I wound up with a room ( ) when there was two of us in there. How I wound up with that I’ll never know. Now I slept in there I made my own bed and I change sheets and… BERGE: You never did KP or anything?

FULLER: No.

BERGE: Huh.

FULLER: I said I just… BERGE: Were those—were those people that were the bosses were they Army Sergeants?

FULLER: Couldn’t tell you.

BERGE: Uh-huh, you don’t remember.

FULLER: Some may have I don’t know.

BERGE: But you don’t remember for sure about that? I think that what is probably best to do now is when you take Mr. Fuller 41:00and you know he can show you things and some of the stuff that you can see and talk about is really some information we need to get on this tape. What you need to do is ask him about those things again this afternoon when we are all here together.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Right.

BERGE: Because if you don’t mind you and Mr. Blunk can, can… FULLER: I think we can find Blunk and take him with us.

BERGE: You can find Blunk and take him with you and then I’ll talk to the other people. Mr. Fuller I want to thank you for giving us this time. do you have any pictures you want to show us before you… FULLER: No, all I had was Mr. Wentworth and a whole line of trucks down there all full of boys, that’s when the parking lot was finished.

BERGE: That year you were with the CCC, did they give you time off to go to the National Guard?

FULLER: We didn’t go. Now why, why they didn’t ask us or something. 42:00Williams wound up with—no Joe ( ) at that time and I think Harold was sometime—no skip that part it is too hazy. He… BERGE: It could well be that the National Guard would have counted, would have realized that there was no way they could be off—as I—as I –as I remember—as I recollect you signed up for six months at a time with the CCC, isn’t that right?

FULLER: I think so, I don’t know.

BERGE: I think that is the way it was.

FULLER: It didn’t make any difference. I had a job and was working… BERGE: (laughs) UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: How political was it to get a job?

BERGE: Was it hard to get in the CCC?

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Did you have to know somebody to get into the program?

BERGE: Did you ever… FULLER: You see that as far as at that time there was a little carpenter work 43:00and a little building going on. Then a few people worked out ( ) and they was either moved to Corbin or worked back and forth and that was all that was coming into the place. That was ( ). That’s all there was. What was left was farmers.

BERGE: So you didn’t know of anybody who tried to get in and couldn’t get in or anything like that. I know what Steve is getting at. You have the feeling that why wouldn’t everybody try to get in?

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (STEVE?) Yeah and I have heard from some other people with the CCC, that they had to deal with—that there was some politics that was involved.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE TWO: Just at the back of my mind having talked… BERGE: They ( ) in some places. Like over there maybe they didn’t get enough to join. There wouldn’t have been as much of a—you 44:00know there wouldn’t have been—probably wouldn’t have been as important in the rural areas to do it, even though they were out of work, because they could still have something to do. While city kids wouldn’t have been… STEVE: Oh, yeah.

BERGE: Well again I want to thank you and we will talk to you again this afternoon, Ok? Bye-bye.

END OF TAPE.