Oral History Interview with Franklin Snowden

WILLIAM BERGE: Mr. Snowden I want to thank you for letting us interview you today. It is really helpful for us. This is an unrehearsed taped interview with Mr. Franklin Snowden of Clay City, Kentucky. The interview is conducted by William Berge for the Kentucky Oral History Commission at the Cumberland Falls State Park. The interview is conducted at the Cumberland Falls State Park, on September 29, 2000, at about Three PM. Mr. Snowden, tell me your full name, and where you were born.

FRANKLIN SNOWDEN: Franklin Snowden, Clay City, and I live in the house I was born in.

BERGE: Well, that doesn’t happen very often.

SNOWDEN: I own it, so I was in the three C’s in Benton, Kentucky.

BERGE: In Benton?

SNOWDEN: Huh-huh.

BERGE: What was your father’s name?

SNOWDEN: Bryan … BERGE: Bryan …

SNOWDEN: William Jenniston Bryan Snowden.

BERGE: Ok.

SNOWDEN: Weigh about one hundred forty pounds. That’s what I weighed in July.

BERGE: And what was you mother’s maiden name?

SNOWDEN: Fanny Tipton.

BERGE: Fanny Tipton. Where were they from?

SNOWDEN: Ah, my mother was raised right there, where I am at. My dad was raised just a little way from there, he was in the same locality.

BERGE: Clay City area. Tell me this, where did you go to school?

SNOWDEN: Clay City. Darlingsville is the name of the school.

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

SNOWDEN: Seven years, almost eight.

BERGE: What year were you born?

SNOWDEN: 1923.

BERGE: In—what date?

SNOWDEN: April 29, 1923.

BERGE: 1923. Now where, ah—after you finished school, and you said you went 1:00seven years, what were you then, probably about fourteen, thirteen, fifteen, something like that?

SNOWDEN: Well, no I was younger than that.

BERGE: Twelve, thirteen?

SNOWDEN: Well, see then, I went when I was just three or four years old.

BERGE: Ok. Ok.

SNOWDEN: And done pretty good, and for the last two years, and then the teacher couldn’t figure out ( ). I finally said that’s it.

BERGE: Yeah, she said, “I’m the one screwing around the school, not you,” or something like that. (laughs) 2:00BERGE: Yeah. Huh-huh.

SNOWDEN: And that was about the end of it and …

BERGE: What did you do after that?

SNOWDEN: Well, I worked the farm for a little while then I wound up in the three C’s

BERGE: How did you hear about the three C’s?

SNOWDEN: Well when the WPA come around they give us—they told us—they—when got our age—I wasn’t hardly eighteen when I went in, by the time they caught up with me I was eighteen. (laughs) And … BERGE: When you enlisted in the three C’s, where did you enlist? Do you remember?

SNOWDEN: Well, I enlisted in Stanton, which is the county seat. Then they take me up to some place called, they called it the Peckerwood Camp. It was old World War I veterans. So I was up there then got that—they put us on the train there—give us a couple of sandwiches—we’ll get off tomorrow, in the morning, well we did about two or three mornings later in Benton, Kentucky.

BERGE: Is that where you went to? 3:00BERGE: You never did go to Fort Knox like most people?

SNOWDEN: And then that’s where we started at.

BERGE: When you went to Benton, was that camp pretty well established when you got there?

SNOWDEN: It was a new camp. The old camp, the three C girls got it. NYA they called it.

BERGE: NYA?

SNOWDEN: Hum-hum.

BERGE: At that three C camp in Benton Kentucky, did you all have to help build it?

SNOWDEN: No, it was already built. It was built with the first bunch in it.

BERGE: Most of the people who were there, where were they from?

SNOWDEN: All over the country. I know one of the officers, he was out of Arizona. And one Danville over here, and I don’t know where the captain was from.

BERGE: Was there anybody else from around Clay City there?

SNOWDEN: Ah, there was one in, and they found out he was too young and they sent him out.

BERGE: Ok.

SNOWDEN: But they was a bunch 4:00of them from Wolfe County.

BERGE: Right next door.

SNOWDEN: Next door to it.

BERGE: Yeah. What did you do out there?

SNOWDEN: Well we dug graves, and got all the pottery, whatever they had, and bones and stuff. That is all they done for a solid year.

BERGE: Who was in charge of that, do you remember?

SNOWDEN: Ah, it for the University of Kentucky.

BERGE: Was somebody from Kentucky there?

SNOWDEN: Oh, yeah. Well, see that lieutenant he was from 5:00Danville over there.

BERGE: No, I mean from the university.

SNOWDEN: ( ).

BERGE: You are the first person I have ever talked to that did anything like digging these Indian graves. Was it interesting to you?

SNOWDEN: Very interesting. Very interesting. After a while they put me on the reading the depth—down there …

BERGE: Keeping the chart?

SNOWDEN: Yeah. And after you opened up a grave, and you found a bone, you had a steel trowel, and whisk broom, that was what you worked with.

BERGE: Hum-hum

SNOWDEN: Right out there in that sun, beating down on you, and you worked, worked, worked.

BERGE: You have a pretty good record where you found the bodies?

SNOWDEN: Yeah. Yeah. Found one well with five in it.

BERGE: Huh!

SNOWDEN: There was three down and three up.

BERGE: Yeah. Yeah.

SNOWDEN: It over two months to dig that up.

BERGE: What were they going to do with that land after you all dug it up?

SNOWDEN: They—it’s under water.

BERGE: That’s what I thought. I assume that’s what you were 6:00about to say.

SNOWDEN: That—when things—everything under the ground that was …

BERGE: Going to be covered anyway.

SNOWDEN: Going to be covered anyway.

BERGE: Yeah.

SNOWDEN: The—see that little town of Gilbertsville, was right there beside it—they moved the whole town over beside the lake now.

BERGE: Yeah. There were a couple towns like that down there. Eddyville was one.

SNOWDEN: Yeah.

BERGE: And they moved that

SNOWDEN: It’s not too far from Gilbertsville. 7:00SNOWDEN: Yeah. A year.

BERGE: What did you do after that?

SNOWDEN: Come back in, went back to work, and Uncle Sam pointed his finger at me, said “I want you.”

BERGE: What year—you were in the CCC’s for one year then?

SNOWDEN: Yes, that’s right. Thirty-nine and forty.

BERGE: Ok. That’s what I was going to ask you what year you were in. If there hadn’t been a war, do you think you would have signed back up?

SNOWDEN: Probably would have. Without a doubt, I would have.

BERGE: When you came out, what kind of work did you do before you went in the service?

SNOWDEN: I worked at the tobacco—at the tobacco warehouse in Lexington.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

SNOWDEN: And that was as far as I got until Uncle Sam got through with me.

BERGE: When you went in the service, what did you go in?

SNOWDEN: I went the—first went in the infantry, then …

BERGE: When was that?

SNOWDEN: Ah, forty-two, and 8:00about six weeks, and then ( ) tanks, and I stayed with tanks until it was over.

BERGE: Did you stay up there at Fort Knox?

SNOWDEN: No, I was all over Europe.

BERGE: Where were you trained?

SNOWDEN: At Campbell.

BERGE: Fort Campbell.

SNOWDEN: Yeah, from Benton to Campbell is about ninety miles.

BERGE: Yeah you were in the same part of the …

SNOWDEN: Yeah I was in the same part. I thought, “ I ain’t going to get out of Kentucky, I don’t believe.” (laughs)

BERGE: But you did.

SNOWDEN: Yeah, finally. I stayed there at Campbell for over a year.

BERGE: That camp at Benton, how many of you were in 9:00there? Was there just one company?

SNOWDEN: Yeah. hum-hum. One. There was about five or six barracks.

BERGE: Did you get in town much?

SNOWDEN: Well, it was a mile into town—(??)---Wolfe County.

BERGE: Did you go in much?

SNOWDEN: We’d go in every night except one night a week. There was this curfew and we couldn’t got 10:00out—every night but one, I think it was Monday night. And boys in the—two boys from Wolfe County there slipped out and went out and used cars and come home. We did and got out in a car wreck.

BERGE: They got caught.

SNOWDEN: Yeah. They got caught and they didn’t say anything, I got three teeth knocked out and one of the boys got cut from ear to ear.

BERGE: Huh.

SNOWDEN: And Taulbee (??), he didn’t get nothing wrong with him.

BERGE: Who was driving.

SNOWDEN: Taulbee. He had a license.

BERGE That happens a lot.

SNOWDEN: But the drunk, he was right there on Main Street, right in front of the church.

BERGE: In Benton?

SNOWDEN: Hum-hum. Right there in town, we got stopped at—where we got the car at, wasn’t not a bit--from here down to the—down to that office down the hill. It wasn’t too far away from there—where he got us.

BERGE: Have you ever seen any of the stuff that you dug? After you dug it do you know what they did with it or anything?

SNOWDEN: Have no idea. 11:00SNOWDEN: Well, what we got there is what we seen. Tomahawks, rocks, big stones, and arrow heads, and bones, potteries, we did dig up a couple of just little bitty ( ) not pottery …

BERGE: Boy that was something to find that pottery.

SNOWDEN: Oh, yeah, yeah. It shore was.

BERGE: Was it kind of eerie at first to be digging in those graves?

SNOWDEN: Well, I don’t know, I just ( ) stuff like that …

BERGE: It’s like anything else I guess. Who did you take your orders from? The people who were in charge of the three C’s or those from Kentucky?

SNOWDEN: No, we take—what we had—we take it from the company commander who was—he was captain but what—but he told us where we had to go, and what we had to do, and everything. I didn’t see any civilians out there at all.

BERGE: Was that the only kind of work you did out there?

SNOWDEN: Hum-hum. 12:00BERGE: That was very interesting wasn’t it?

SNOWDEN: Oh, yeah. Very interesting. That was the only one in the world that I know that did that.

BERGE: I had never heard of anybody in the three C’s, who did that before.

SNOWDEN: I never did either. 13:00SNOWDEN: Yeah. That was the nice part of it, and they was going to cover it up with water, and they wanted to get it out of there. They still didn’t get half what was …

BERGE: Oh, sure.

SNOWDEN: Not even a tenth of what they would have liked to have got out of it if they had the time.

BERGE: It was lucky that they got any of it and learned what they learned from it.

SNOWDEN: Huh-huh.

BERGE: Sure.

SNOWDEN: Yeah, they was lots of bones, and every kind—anything you could think of was in there, and way down there—down next to the river we dug a four by four--straight down is what you go, you go straight down—you got a number—you got down there, and got one white bone about that long, it had to be a some kind of animal, it wasn’t no human bone at all, it was an animal bone.

BERGE: Yeah. When you were doing that kind of work, did you feel like you were lucky to be doing that rather than some of the other …?

SNOWDEN: No, I didn’t at all.

BERGE: It was just work I guess.

SNOWDEN: Just doing something, you get by with it.

BERGE: Yeah. That was an interesting development though that you had that.

SNOWDEN: Oh, yeah. Hum-hum.

BERGE: What do you remember about environment in the 14:00camp itself or did you—what—were you contented in the camp or happy or unhappy or …?

SNOWDEN: We was all busy, there wasn’t no bad times to have. It was just a good time and—that one guy he said I want you, and somebody to develop these pictures, they take pictures every day of it.

BERGE: They did.

SNOWDEN: Yeah. I don’t know where they at.

BERGE: I am sure they were over at the University of Kentucky somewhere, that they have records of it.

SNOWDEN: Yeah. Yeah. And we did develop them of a night. But he have a …

BERGE: Now when you had the—when you were doing this digging did—was it—did you work by yourself, or did you work in teams?

SNOWDEN: You worked in—you—four here—one here, you worked in …

BERGE: Four corners, and then they would do another spot later.

SNOWDEN: Yeah. Each time we’d (??) you know we’d have to work like that. Something like that and it … [coughs]

BERGE: You need some water or something? 15:00BERGE: Oh, ok. Ok.

SNOWDEN: Just plain ole Rolaids.

BERGE: When they had, when you—when you did this, did you ever—did you tell your folks what you were doing—did they have any idea what you were doing down there?

SNOWDEN: Ah, I wasn’t home …

BERGE: You never wrote home or anything?

SNOWDEN: Wrote home, but I never said nothing about it.

BERGE: Did you realize it was that big a deal?

SNOWDEN: No, I didn’t think—I just thought it was something to kill time with, I supposed.

BERGE: How did you get along with the people in Benton?

SNOWDEN: Perfect.

BERGE: You did.

SNOWDEN: Yeah, we had the awfulest time there in town you ever seen.

BERGE: Most everybody that I ever talked to said they got along better with the girls in those towns, than they did with the boys. (laughs)

SNOWDEN: Yeah. Well they had a—see we was on one end of town, and on the other end of town was the NYA Camp.

BERGE: How many girls were there?

SNOWDEN: There was about as many girls as they was boys.

BERGE: Yeah. Were there many NYA Camps?

SNOWDEN: That was the only one I knew of.

BERGE: I talked to somebody else that had something to do with an NYA Camp. There weren’t nearly as many people in the NYA as the three C’s.

SNOWDEN: Three C’s, 16:00 huh-huh.

BERGE: Did those girls sew? What kind of work did they have them do?

SNOWDEN: I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what they did.

BERGE: Some places they had them on sewing machines and things like that.

SNOWDEN: Oh, I’d say they did, I think they did. 17:00SNOWDEN: Huh-huh. I don’t know anything ( )—but they got the uniforms—and like we did thirty dollars a month.

BERGE: How long did you stay in the military?

SNOWDEN: I was a three years in.

BERGE: Huh-huh. And then what kind of work did you do after you got out of the army?

SNOWDEN: Well, I was went to—putting in service stations. Stayed a little while at that, then come back went to the ( ) right there in Winchester.

BERGE: Oh.

SNOWDEN: And then out of there, went to pipelining, best job I ever had in my life.

BERGE: That is what you liked the best then?

SNOWDEN: Oh, yeah.

BERGE: Where did you work on pipelines?

SNOWDEN: You name it. All over the country.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

SNOWDEN: Pennsylvania, New York, 18:00then Ohio, huh …

BERGE: What part of Pennsylvania, do you remember?

SNOWDEN: It was center—Mahanoy, (??).

BERGE: Whereabouts in New York?

SNOWDEN: Albany, all the way back this way.

BERGE: Oh, ok, all the way across upstate New York then.

SNOWDEN: Hum-hum.

BERGE: That’s pretty country up in there.

SNOWDEN: I—I’ll tell you, there is very little difference in it and Kentucky.

BERGE: Yeah. They are very much alike, even along those Finger Lakes, there.

SNOWDEN: Yeah, see, my wife’s sister Leah’s right over there side of Lake Erie, they own a farm of about 19:00a hundred acres up there.

BERGE: You know that part of the country as week then.

SNOWDEN: Well, I knew when we took off to go up there well—if I had went on up to the second exit, and went down and hit—70, I’d only have about one mile and would be at the house.

BERGE: Oh.

SNOWDEN: I asked one time after I got on seventy, I said, “you’re on the other end of town.” Straight on through and—crossed through (??).

BERGE: When you were in Benton—in the three C camp in Benton--did you get involved in any of the evening stuff like recreation athletics or …?

SNOWDEN: Well, whatever they done was what we all had to do. What ever one done they all had to do it.

BERGE: Yeah. Did you get involved in any of that education stuff?

SNOWDEN: No.

BERGE: That was pretty big though, some people did that. Did you ever do any of that boxing, 20:00 basketball?

SNOWDEN: What I did--I took a course …

BERGE: You went up to the other end of town where those NYA girls were. That’s what you were doing.

SNOWDEN: I tried to yeah. But they had another one on out there from there and when I couldn’t see her, I’d see somebody else.

BERGE: You didn’t have time for all that athletic stuff.

SNOWDEN: No. What I did was take a course in ( ).

BERGE: Oh, you did?

SNOWDEN: Yeah.

BERGE: Did you ever do any more of that later?

SNOWDEN: Well, when I was out there on those pipelines, I did a whole lot of it. And then when I worked there where I retired from, I done a whole lot there; but after that I did not pick it up anymore.

BERGE: When—when—what did—what would you have to say 21:00about your experience in the three C’s?

SNOWDEN: It was good experience for anybody. I don’t care who it was, it was good. It forces you to depend upon yourself more. You have to depend on yourself—take care of yourself.

BERGE: No, place for a lazy boy either, was it?

SNOWDEN: Well, yes, they was—wasn’t there?

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Yeah a few.

SNOWDEN: They sure was. 22:00SNOWDEN: Yeah. Well, we had a good time in there. ( ), go to the NYA, most of the time we would go over to that Friday Night Club.

BERGE: Yeah.

SNOWDEN: It was a club, but there wasn’t no whiskey in it.

BERGE: Huh. What did you –did you ever think about reenlisting in it or …

SNOWDEN: Very seriously, but I said well, I’ll wait a little while, and I waited too long, cause he says, “I want you.” 23:00SNOWDEN: Used to you got seven and they sent the rest of it home; then the later part of it, you got seven, they put eight in the bank and sent fifteen home.

BERGE: Oh, so they saved some of it for you.

SNOWDEN: Yeah. Hum-hum.

BERGE: Now it was different earlier on, I think.

SNOWDEN: Usually you just got the seven dollars—wasn’t that what you got?

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: I got five dollars a month.

SNOWDEN: Yeah, right, might have been five …

BERGE: The rest went home didn’t it?

SNOWDEN: It might have been five.

BERGE: Twenty-five went home and you get five. I think that’s what it was in the beginning. Fifteen later. When did you go in?

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: I went in, in thirty-six.

BERGE: Yeah, well he went in earlier than you.

SNOWDEN: Oh, yeah?

BERGE: Did you ever think about the fact that something like that might be pretty good now for some of these young …

SNOWDEN: I believe it might be. But they won’t make you do it anymore. The ( ) won’t let you do it.

BERGE: That a—did you have any idea when you enlisted where you were going to go? You didn’t did you? Were you wanting to go a long way away, like out west, like everybody else did? I guess you got a raw deal when you were just going to Benton Kentucky didn’t you?

SNOWDEN: Yeah, I went to Benton and then I went to Gilbertsville, and I stayed there for over a year.

BERGE: That’s just right down the road.

SNOWDEN: Yeah. Ninety miles. I said you ain’t going to get out of Kentucky.

BERGE: Did you ever—when you were—when did they fill that lake over there?

SNOWDEN: Well, they was getting ready to—it wasn’t ready to go when I was there.

BERGE: But it wasn’t too long was it?

SNOWDEN: No, it wasn’t long.

BERGE: Did you all fish in the river?

SNOWDEN: Well, I didn’t have time to fish, I don’t 24:00like to fish no way so it didn’t make no difference. Some of them might have, but I didn’t. I was too much into girls—went and looked for the girls. But we always had a good time over there.

BERGE: Yeah. Your experience was different from a lot of others because most of the people that enlisted here in Kentucky wound up going somewhere else. You were one of the few that really stayed around.

SNOWDEN: I stayed in Kentucky. I had –on Saturday night the boss said let’s go take a little ride, and go over to Paducah. Went over to Illinois, got over there across that bridge, Lord the Speakeasies ( ) eyes will let you see.

BERGE: Yeah, yeah.

SNOWDEN: But you see everything—you see a boat, why it would be the next day before it got down the river.

BERGE: Just like it was right there, yeah.

SNOWDEN: And …

BERGE: Well, it was a good experience for a young man .

SNOWDEN: Yeah, boy.

BERGE: I’ll tell you Mr. Snowden we really want to thank you for coming by and letting us talk to you about this. I need to have you do something before you leave if you would.

END SIDE ONE TAPE ONE SNOWDEN

END OF INTERVIEW