The Civilian Conservation Corps, or the Three C’s, was part of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation, started by Executive Order back in 1933. This was in the depth of the Great Depression and the program was designed to give work to young men who could send money home to help support their families. They were paid $30 per month, with $25 of it sent directly home to their families. That seems like very little today, but at that time the average cost of rent for a month was $18 and a loaf of bread cost 7 cents.
Dad (William R Kinney) had pretty much been the man of the family since he was 12 years old. His father, (William John Kinney) left home at that time, to spend some time in Columbus, Ohio as a guest of the Ohio State government, where he was affectionately known as #61758. This left Dad, his mother and his two sisters, trying to get by in the middle of the Great Depression.
Dad did some squirrel hunting after school to help supply food for the family. He also worked occasionally as a courier, delivering some moonshine to the local businesses that still did some of that during those prohibition years. All of this helped the family to get by, but it was not enough.
Shortly after the CCC program started, in the depths of the depression, Dad was in his Senior year of high school, where he was the President of his class. He dropped out of school at that time and joined the Three C’s, leaving his mother and his two younger sisters at home and heading for the great northwest to start the next chapter of his young life. That $25 each month would be a lifeline for his family.
If I remember correctly Dad spent most of his time in the Three C’s in Oregon, working with the forestry department planting trees and helping to create and develop the parks in the state. He told me much later in life that these years helped him to develop his love of the outdoors. If there had been a way to be a forest ranger and still have a family it would have been an ideal life.
The only story that I recall that came from his time in Oregon was about the time that he and a friend were traveling on a train in that part of the country. That was a pretty common mode of travel back then for the more adventurous young men, and the price was attractive since they could just hop a freight train and travel for free. They had hopped a freight train at this time for a long trip, probably headed back to Ohio. They were sitting in the open door of an empty box car, just the two of them, legs dangling out over the graveled edge of the right of way and gazing out at the countryside rushing by without a care in the world.
Then, suddenly they were in the open sky, with nothing under them for a thousand feet. No gravel, no countryside and nothing else but open space and the river and rocks a thousand feet below. It was a great long gorge and the wooden train trestle that carried them across it. Dad never did scare very easily, but he said that the suddenness of seeing a thousand feet of nothing below him was quite a shock and sent them both scrambling back into the interior of that empty box car.
