Excerpts
from the interview given by James Walker
Patrick, February 5, 2002
Patrick: I'm James Walker Patrick. I was born in Jackson
County
in a town of Bell Wood, up close to Marianna. Raised on a farm, my
Daddy
was a sharecropper . . . [after only completing the seventh grade, I]
joined
the CCC Camp . . . At the Villas Woods CC Camp in the Appalachicola
National
Forest, they protect the forest from the forest fires; I learned to
fight
forest fire. Fought several of them. Also, they planted trees -- pine
trees
. . . I worked on bridge construction building bridges all over the
forest
and those sloughs and through the little rivers and canals through
there.
Also, cut a right of way for a road accross Ocklocknee River. Put three
bridges through there.
Nelson: How did being in the CCC, do you think, help you when
you went
into the military? Do you think it helped you at all?
Patrick: Yes, sir. It learned me how to work, how to do
work,
learn a trade in there. Bridge work. I run a pile driver in there and
drove
pilings in there . . . The CC Camp made a young man out of a lot of
young
fellows back in them days.
Nelson: When you were in the CCC and you weren't working, what
did you
guys usually do?
Patrick: Well, back then there was hunting and fishing
seasons, just
liike now, closed at times during the year. But we would treck off and
catch a fish and come back and cook him. And we had duty every other
weekend.
You had to stay in the CC Camp for fire protection. You didn't have to
do nothing, but just lay around and smoke and all, but you had to stay
right there close to the camp if the siren went off, you had to go. And
on the other weekends, you could just go on liberty. And it was hard to
get out from down in there because there wasn't no paved roads. Just a
sand road right through the middle of town . . . we'd built most of
them
roads . . . The laundry truck would come down there on Saturdays going
back to Marianna. Some of us boys would give him fifty cents and let us
ride in the back in there on top of all of them clothes, back to
Marianna
with him . . . Back in them days there were a lot of things called jook
joints up and down the road. We'd get that truck, the sergeant would
have
it stop in them places and they'd go in, give them all they wanted to
do
. . . Up and down the road, they don't have them that way no more, but
you could get caught and go to jail. There was plenty of recreation,
fishing
and so on. That bridge gang, we'd pick up gophers going back and forth
to work. Put them in the tool box, and when we got four or five
gophers,
we'd get out there and butcher them. We got spit forks in the kitchen
and
we'd bring it out there and we'd cook them right out there on the job
[laughing].
That was my job sometime: cooking and fishing. The foreman, he would
knock
off around ten o'clock and he and one or two of the boys take an old
stick
and put a line on it and go down to the creek -- it wasn't no job to
have
a mess of fish in just a few minutes. Bring them back and dress them
and
go up there and fry them fish, and when dinner time come around,
everybody
had a good meal. We enjoyed it. And we learned a whole lot, too.
