Columbus Cardwell, Emerts Cove, Sevier County, Tennessee
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Columbus Cardwell, of Emerts Cove in Sevier County, Tennessee, was about 20 years old when recorded in 1939. He worked as a CCC truck driver and as a manager of a National Park Service maintenance shop. For the recording session Edmund Thomas, another CCC enrollee, was apparently also present and may have participated in the interview.
[transcription copyright Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
[C = Columbus Cardwell; I = Interviewer]
I: Say uh how many canteen books do you draw at the end of the month, do you guess?
C: All the way from two to three.
I: Two or three.
C: Well sometime I could draw five or six.
I: Uh do you ever get cold standing in the chow line waiting for the sergeant or mess steward to let you in?
C: Yeah, I’ve got cold several times.
I: Guess you throwed snowballs at each other while you’re in line?
C: Yeah.
I: Have a lot of fun there, don’t you?
C: Sure do.
I: Did you ever get extra duty for turning your plate over a little too quick?
C: No, I never did get no extra duty.
I: You ever throw a cigarette butt down on the ground and get extra duty for that?
C: No.
I: Did you have any extra duty at all?
C: No, I never did have no extra duty.
I: Never had no extra duty, didn’t have a, didn’t have a gymnasium account?
C: No.
I: Didn’t play no basketball?
C: No, I didn’t play much basketball.
I: Didn’t have much teams?
C: No.
I: Did you play baseball?
C: Yeah, I played some baseball.
I: Who’d y’all play, what camp did you play?
C: Four eleven.
I: Play four eleven, did you ever beat them?
C: No, I don’t think so.
I: Never beat them, well, you must not have had a good team to work.
C: No, I never did have much of a team.
I: Well uh how do they feed over there?
C: Pretty good.
I: Pretty good, huh? y’all had, y’all have a chaplain in your company?
C: Yeah.
I: And you hold services once in a while?
C: Yeah, every once in a while.
I: Uh, y’all have a very hard time policing up in the morning, have police calls?
C: Yeah, a pretty hard time.
I: You didn’t take exercise during the cold weather, though, did you?
C: Yeah, they, they didn’t care for the cold weather.
I: Did they retreat too?
C: Yeah.
I: Well, hey, that’s, that’s pretty tough, we don’t have to do that, uh what kind of a lieutenant do you have, pretty good?
C: Uh pretty good’uns.
I: What was your lieutenant command officer’s name?
C: Floyd.
I: Floyd?
C: Yes.
I: So he’s pretty good?
C: Yeah, pretty good.
I2: Just tell about the time that xx.
I: What’d he say to you about that car? Didn’t you tell us something about, something about taking your car out?
C: Yeah, he told me to take my car out of there, and I brought it in to come back in home in, I was getting discharged in about a couple of weeks, and, and he told the sergeant to tell me to take it out, and I told them to just let it be there for about three more days and I’d take it out and he’d never see it no more.
I: They say anything more about it?
C: No, he never did say no more about it.
I: Didn’t say no more?
C: Nope.
I: Well, he knew you was going to take it out anyhow sometime, didn’t he?
C: Yeah.
I2: Tell about the time you uh [extended unintelligible passage].
C: I don’t remember about hit ...
I: What kind of sergeants y’all have over here?
C: Pretty good’uns, yeah.
I: And mess stewards, was they all right?
C: Yeah, they’re good stewards.
I: That reminds me, did they feed y’all them good scrambled eggs over there every morning like that?
C: Yeah, they uh sure did.
I: Bet you got that half pint of milk too, then?
C: Yeah.
I: That’s pretty good there, you know it?
C: Yeah.
I: You get, you get a half bottle, I mean, a bottle of milk’s a half-pint, wasn’t it? they ever, they ever give a pint over there anytime?
C: Yeah, they give a pint a few mornings.
I: Did they?
[extended unintelligible passage]
I: Tell about when you made music around here.
C: Well, we made some music over there one night and me and bunch of boys and we’d just all sit there and we’d just passed the guitar around and sang and picked and we sure had a big old time.
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C: Columbus Cardwell.