Conversations with an Undergrad

Today I spent an hour talking to one of my brightest Running Start students.  This young woman took my U.S. History II course last quarter and was a very active participant in the discussions.  One of the questions that I asked the class at the end of the quarter was "what was the impact of the protests that happened in the 1960s."  This inevitably led to a discussion of the differences and commonalities of Americans ages 16 to 90.  What the class decided is that those of the current generation are very much like that of the 1960s, where they want societal change to happen immediately and that protesting is the only way to get what they want.  This generation (the 16 to 35 year old group) is also one that expects instant gratification for everything thanks to the world in which they grew up.

This last lecture apparently struck a chord with this student because during Spring Break she sent me an email asking if I thought that there was a correlation between all of the young people getting married out of high school today was similar to that of the Baby Boomer generation.  Since I did not initially respond, she was in my office today asking the same question.  One of the conclusions that we came to is not only is there a definite correlation between the Baby Boomers and her generation, but the idea of getting married at a young age is a socially acceptable thing for those (especially of a lower socio-economic class) that don't see college as something they can achieve.  So, since college is out of their reach, the next best thing is to get married early; a trend that has been around for generations.

So this led to the question of, why is it that those of a lower socio-economic class are rarely encouraged to go to college?  Why do we as adults only encourage those from the middle classes to go to college for something more than just a simple trade?  These questions didn't have answers, but the conversation and the connections that the student was making was, in a word: awesome.

As an instructor, you always hear about students coming to dig deeper into the history that is talked about in class.  It is really encouraging to see someone so young look for these connections.  It is even more encouraging to know that this young woman is planning to become a teacher herself.

The ECW, Part III

One of the other major CCC camps in Pend Oreille County was Camp F-103.  This camp was not the typical junior enrollee camp with young men age seventeen to twenty-three.  Instead, this was a Veterans’ Camp, with men that had served in the Spanish-American War and World War I.  The first group of sixty-seven men were transfers from Company 1924 at Priest River, sent at first to Tacoma Creek.  Camp F-103 was located south of the Usk School, or what is now the Usk Community Hall.  Today this encompasses the land that Pend Oreille Valley Railroad (POVA) has their buildings, as well as the McGill and Nelson properties.  The officers’ quarters were located opposite the main camp, overlooking the Pend Oreille River.  Directly south of the camp was a cleared tract of land for recreational purposes, with a nine-hole golf course, a baseball diamond, and tennis and handball courts.  The camp would have eight bunkhouses (20 x 80 feet each) with each having a bathroom and lavatory facilities, and a laundry room.  The camp’s kitchen would be 40 x 50 feet with all of the modern amenities found in a commercial kitchen of that era.  The kitchen would be adjacent to the dining room (20 x 120 feet).  Camp F-103 would have an administrative building, a supply building, an oil building, a recreation hall, a school room, a fully equipped infirmary, a machine shop, and a sixteen-car garage.  Because the camp was to be occupied year-round, all of the buildings were built for that purpose.

Location of Camp F-103 in Usk

The 260 men that served in Company 2936-V at Camp F-103 Usk undertook a variety of jobs, just like the junior enrollees at the other camps in the region.  The primary occupation of Company 2936-V was fighting fires, fire suppression, smoke chasing, guarding lookouts, and patrolling for fires.  As a result, the company had a 200-man fire-fighting unit that handled that part of their work.  There would be two spike camps sent out of Camp F-103: one near Penrith (a forty-man unit), “an area which has been repeatedly the scene of fire outbreaks the past two years,”[1] and another forty-man unit in the vicinity of Box Canyon.  These spike camps would do a great deal of roadwork, including improving the road to the Calispell Mountain summit with drainage culverts.  In fact, between 1935 and 1941 Camp F-103 would construct twenty-three miles of fire trail and forest protection roads.  The veteran enrollees at Camp F-103 would construct almost four miles of telephone lines, maintain 99 miles of horse and forest trails, build fire halls at Colville, Chewelah, Valley, Deer Park, Newport, Usk, and Ione, and build six lookout towers and guard cabins.  Because this was a permanent camp from the start, some of the work projects were designed to be for the winter months.  One such project was the construction of a road on the east side of Davis Lake (State Route 211), with a great deal of the rock blasting to be done in the winter.  There were “thousands of tons of rock blasted into Davis Lake with places “where there were 100 foot cliffs to drill and blast.”[2]

By 1941, Camp F-103 was still occupied and doing Civilian Conservation Corps-type work while the other CCC camps in Pend Oreille and Bonner Counties were being closed.  By February 1943 the camp and its lease (which had to be renewed) would be turned over to the War Department.  In 1944 the camp would be occupied again by German and Italian “detainees” from the Four Corners Camp (F-164) near the Falls Ranger Station in the Kaniksu National Forest.  These German and Italian “detainees” or prisoners of war would continue the work that the CCC enrollees had done in the 1930s.  They would especially concern themselves with blister rust control and fire-fighting, but they did also maintain the trails and roads that were constructed by the CCC enrollees.

Today you will only find remnants of the ECW/CCC camps here in the Pacific Northwest.  Most of these camps were torn down with their buildings taken over or removed by the Forest Service or the War Department once the CCC disbanded in 1941.  The oil house from Camp F-1 Sullivan Lake is currently on display at the Pend Oreille County Historical Society complex, the Tacoma Creek camp is now part of the U.S. Air Force Survival School, and Camp F-103 at Usk is now Part of the Pend Oreille Valley Railroad complex with a few scattered homes around it.

Current View of Camp F-103 (POVA's Yard)

Another Current View of Camp F-103, Taken From Black Road

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[1] Newport Miner, 6 June 1935.

[2] Linder, Arthur. The Big Smoke, 1974.

The ECW, Part II

The ECW/CCC camps that were located in the Pend Oreille Valley (including those in Bonner County) were part of the Fort George Wright District.  Fort George Wright, in Spokane was the supply center and focal point for enrollee conditioning and distribution as was Fort Missoula.  This area was part of the Ninth Corps Area according to the CCC administration, and included the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and California, this area also included Yellowstone Park.  The young men from this area that wanted to enroll in the Civilian Conservation Corps had to go to one of the three enrollment centers to do their initial paperwork.  These enrollment centers for the Fort George Wright and Fort Missoula Districts were Lewiston, Helena, and Coeur d’Alene.

Much of what the Civilian Conservation Corps did here in Pend Oreille and Bonner Counties, as part of the Fort George Wright District, were things such as:  road, bridge, and dam construction, the construction and maintenance of lookout towers, blister rust control, and fire-fighting and prevention.   On the Bonner County side of the Kaniksu National Forest, one of the main camps was that at Kalispell Bay (F-142) near Priest Lake.  Some of the other major camps in the Priest River/Priest Lake area were:  Four Corners (F-162), Experimental Station (F-127), Kalispell Creek/Gleason (F-102), and Blowdown #2 (F-159).  There was also a camp on the lower Westbranch where the Humbird Lumber Company had Camp No. 19.  Probably two of the largest camps in Pend Oreille County, also in the Kaniksu National Forest, were Camp Sullivan Lake (F-1) and the Veterans CCC Camps at Usk (P-215).  There were other large camps, specifically one at Tacoma Creek (where the current Air Force Survival School is located), a camp at Ruby, a camp near the Hanlin Ranger Station in the LeClerc Creek Basin, and quite a few spike camps scattered throughout both counties.

There were three major Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Pend Oreille County and a number of smaller camps and spike camps.  The three major camps were at Sullivan Lake, Tacoma Creek, and Usk.   The locations of the smaller camps were: in the LeClerc Creek Basin, one at Ruby, Hughes Meadows, Gypsy Meadows, and Harvey Creek.  Regardless of their size, these camps built roads, fought fire and blister rust, built bridges, as well as building miles of trail. 

The first contingent of ECW/CCC enrollees arrived at Camp F-1 Sullivan Lake in April 1933.  Most of these men were from Spokane, but there were men from Metaline Falls, Ione, and Spokane, other places in the Northwest, and one man each from Georgia, Kansas, Arkansas, and New York.  By the end of the summer the number at Camp F-1 reached 206 enrollees, 105 from Spokane, twenty-three from Metaline Falls, seventy-two from other Northwest localities and one enrollee each from Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia.[1]  This first group of ECW/CCC enrollees were organized into Company 938.  There would be twenty-five LEMs from Newport, Metaline Falls, and Ione that helped with the projects done out of the camp.

Company 938 would have to construct the camp they were to live in that first year.  This included four barracks, a mess hall, canteen, infirmary, office, oil building, and showers.  The Ranger Station during the 1930s was actually not where it is currently located.  Instead, it was on the hill above the dam, and the barn and other outbuildings were near where the current Ranger Station is located.  Some of the projects that Company 938 worked on during its time at Camp F-1 included thinning trees, blasting stumps out of what is now the Sullivan Lake airstrip, and fighting fire.  Between May and October, Company 938: Constructed Sand Creek Road, linking the east side of Ione to Metaline Falls; built six miles of road up Harvey Creek to get to a stand of cedar timber; built five miles of road on the LeClerc Creek-Calispell Creek project on the west side of the divide and six miles on the east side; improvement of seven campsites (Sullivan Lake, Crescent Lake, and five others around Nordman Road and Stagger Inn), and planted 1,000 trees.  Probably their biggest project that is still in use is the Sullivan Lake airstrip.

In the spring of 1934 Company 950 would arrive at Camp F-1 Sullivan Lake, and was another group of enrollees that were from the 9^th CCC Corps Area.  This company would make improvements to the public campsite at Sullivan Lake, and construct a number of roads that are still being used: Harvey Creek Road to the summit at Bunchgrass Meadows, Tacoma Creek Road to the summit of Calispell Peak, the East Branch of LeClerc Creek Road from the east side of Kalispell Bay on Priest Lake, and Mill Creek Road to connect with Squaw Valley Road on the east side of the divide (Pyramid Pass) by way of Solo.

On 15 April 1935 Company 1745 moved into Camp F-1 Sullivan Lake.  This group of enrollees were actually from Washington State, but they had started their career at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri (7^th CCC Corps Area).  When Company 1745 arrived at Camp F-1, there weren’t enough of them to constitute a full camp. So, when the rest of the enrollees for Camp F-1 arrived, a new company was formed: Company 2920.  This put the complement of enrollees at Camp F-1 at 228 men, all of them from Washington State.  This company was immediately designated “Washington’s Own CCC” or the “All-Washington Junior Company.”

Camp F-1 was designated as a year-round camp during the summer of 1935.  Much of the work to convert the camp to a more permanent status was done by the Company 2920.  Once Camp F-1 became a permanent, year-round camp the enrollees lived in wood barracks that had a big pot-bellied stove in the middle and a shower room with flushing toilets.  There were four of these barracks that held fifty men each.  Mornings saw the enrollees assembled at the flagpole in the center of camp for the Pledge of Allegiance and the flag salute, after which they went to the mess hall for breakfast.  Every meal was served on china and the enrollees were called to the mess hall (this was 20 feet wide by 140 feet long) by a bell for all meals.  The evenings after 1939 especially were spent in educational classes, and on the weekends the enrollees were often taken via CCC truck to Metaline Falls for a ten-cent movie.[2]  Many of the buildings at the current administrative and utility-type buildings at the Sullivan Lake Ranger Station were also constructed by Company 2920.  All of the other buildings located in the camp (mess hall, canteen, and etc.) remained in place.  Company 2920 would remain in place of other camp locations, or by enrollees’ enlistments ending until 1941 when Company 5703 arrived.

The projects that Company 938, 2920, and 5703 accomplished between 1933 and 1941 included crib work along the shoreline of Sullivan Lake, recreation facilities for the Sullivan Lake and Noisy Creek campgrounds (also built by them), telephone and power line construction and maintenance, a great deal of trail construction and maintenance, water systems for the Sullivan Lake and Noisy Creek campgrounds, bridges on both ends of Sullivan Lake as well as on Harvey Creek, the construction and maintenance of both the Hughes Meadows and Sullivan Lake airstrips, fire protection and suppression, smoke chasing (also known as lookout duty), blister rust control, and stand improvement such as tree planting and slash burning.  Company 938 would construct four lookouts, three of which were:  North Baldy, Salmo Mountain, and Plow Boy Mountain.  A great deal of their time was spent on road construction and maintenance.  Some of the roads constructed between 1933 and 1941 included: the three branches of LeClerc Creek, Slate Creek, Dry Canyon, Ione to Sullivan Lake, Metaline to Nordman, and Harvey Creek.  There would be three spike camps that worked out of Camp F-1:  Hughes Meadows (29 miles from Sullivan Lake) and Harvey Creek (22 miles from Sullivan Lake).  These camps were mobile, temporary jobs so enrollees lived in tents and didn’t have the conveniences of back at the main camp.  This meant that assigned duty to a spike camp wasn’t always the favorite duty to have.  Many of these work projects were undertaken by spike camps at Gypsy Meadows (Camp F-101) and LeClerc Creek near Hanlin Ranger Station (Camp F-2), Hughes Meadows, and Harvey Creek.

The enrollees didn’t always have to work though.  Early in the program, enrollees at Camp F-1 would have Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesdays off for recreation or educational pursuits.  The boys at Camp F-1 would play volleyball, kittenball (a type of baseball with a sixteen-inch soft ball), horseshoes, boxing, and baseball.  Tournaments of all sorts of sports were held with local teams, other CCC teams, and even the CCC Indian Division on the Spokane and Colville Reservations.  The enrollees at Camp F-1 would host community dances at the Rod and Gun Club as well as the Metaline Falls School.  On Saturdays they could board a CCC bus to go see a movie in Metaline Falls for ten cents.  Camp F-1 had a large recreation room for card games and ping-pong, as well as a classroom or building for the seventeen educational classes.  The most popular classes were auto mechanics and typing.  The camp even had a newspaper, “The Post” that had a five-star rating from the national CCC newspaper “Happy Days”.

As with all CCC camps, educational classes were offered at Camp F-1.  At Camp Sullivan Lake the enrollees had their pick of seventeen different courses, with auto mechanics and typing being the most popular.  The enrollees also had the opportunity to learn dynamiting, heavy machinery operation and maintenance, and truck driving.  The closer the United States came to its entrance in World War II, the educational focus for the camps changed to emphasize vocations that would be helpful for the war effort.  “The Corps’ contribution will come largely through the training of young men in the maintenance and operation automotive and mechanized equipment, in auto mechanics at central repair shops, in radio communications, and in other civilian activities useful in national defense….it will be a huge reservoir of trained man-power upon which industry and the national defense services can draw.”[3]

Camp F-1 would remain part of the CCC network until the fall of 1941.  Company 5703 would abandon Camp F-1 after it was disbanded on 28 November 1941.  Many of the young men in the CCC at that point would join the armed forces or go to work in an essential industry.  As for the twenty-three CCC buildings at Camp F-1 Sullivan Lake, they were transferred to the Forest Service in November 1942.

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[1] Strelnik, Jillene S. “History of the CCC at Sullivan Lake,” 22 January 1987.

[2] Gilliland, Charles

[3] McEntee, James J. “The CCC and National Defense” American Forests: The Magazine of The American Forestry Association. July 1940.

The ECW, Part I

This September (after a summer of research) I gave a lecture on the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) at the Pend Oreille County Historical Society's museum in Newport.  Today's post is one in a small series from that lecture.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was established in March 1933 as part of the emergency relief measures necessitated by the worsening economic crisis of the Great Depression.  Initially when newly-elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the CCC it was known as Emergency Conservation Work (ECW), but by 1937 when Congress renewed the organization, it was renamed the Civilian Conservation Corps, and often called “Roosevelt’s Tree Army”. As one of the first public works programs of his New Deal it was designed to encourage conservation as well as build the nation’s youth into good citizens through outdoor labor that was take the “unemployed out into healthful surroundings”[1] and “…eliminate….The threat that enforced idleness brings to spiritual and moral stability.”[2]  The CCC would be in operation from late March 1933 until early 1942, ending primarily because the nation was then at war and everyone was needed for the war effort, at home and abroad.

The logistics of how to get young men from the East where the majority of the unemployed were, to camps in the West, where the majority of the work was, was immediately an issue.  The Army would quickly mobilize the nation’s transportation system, and began moving trainloads and truckloads of enrollees from the induction centers in the East to work camps throughout the nation.  To staff these camps the Army tapped into its reserve and regular officer corps.  It wasn’t just the Army though that managed the camps, because even the Marines, Navy, and Coast Guard had officers commanding companies, but that be as it may, the Army officers made up the bulk of the company commanders for the ECW/CCC.

The Departments of Agriculture and Interior would identify what work needed to be done by the ECW/CCC and then organize those projects.  The majority of this work was in the national forests, but there was also coordination with each state for work in the state forests and parks.  In states where there was a need for soil conservation work, there were camps set up for that as well.  The Department of Labor would be tasked with selecting and enrolling the young men for the program.  Much of this task was delegated to the relief offices in each state, and then further yet to local relief offices.

A quota system was established to fill the ranks of the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW).  This quota system was devised by the Department of Labor, and was based primarily on the population of the individual states and the number of families on the relief rolls.  Once these factors were determined, each county in every state was given a quota of young men that were eligible and that needed to be enrolled.  This system obviously favored the high populated states in the East over the states in the West.  For example, in April 1933, the quota for Washington state was 3,250 out of a population of 1.6 million and Pend Oreille County’s quota of that 3,250 was fourteen.[3]  There were also more young men found on the relief rolls in the East than in the West.  This quota system would be in effect for the duration of the ECW/CCC.  It was also determined that the enrollment periods would be January, April, July, and October however applications could be submitted year-round.

Selection of enrollees was the responsibility of each county’s Department of Public Welfare based on the given quota number from the State Department of Public Welfare.  Applications were received in Pend Oreille County by a Miss Davis, according to the local newspaper, The Newport Miner.  The applicants were between seventeen and twenty-three years old, unmarried, citizens of the United States, unemployed, and needing employment.  Preference was given to young men from families that were dependent on Works Program earnings or that were on county direct relief rolls.  Those doing the selection of the enrollees were also advised to choose those that were “clean-cut, ambitious, and willing to work.”[4] By June 1933 the ECW/CCC was accepting applications from American Indians as well as veterans of both the Spanish-American War and World War I.  The American Indian enrollees were typically sent to their work projects during the day and then returned to their homes at night.  The veterans were given special camps that were typically more lenient than the regular camps.[5]  African-American enrollees were generally segregated from the white enrollees in camps of their own with white camp commanders.

Once enrollees were selected they were then sent to the nearest Army recruiting station, given a physical examination and inoculated for a variety of diseases including smallpox.  If the enrollee passed the physical examination he was then sent to a two-week conditioning camp on a nearby military installation.  This practice was stopped by 1934, in favor of shipping the enrollees straight to the ECW/CCC camp that they were going to be stationed at.  At this conditioning camp, the enrollees were prepared for some of the hard work that they were going to be faced with at the ECW/CCC camps.  Nothing resembling military training was done however, as this type of militarization was a concern of many in the nation.  The enrollee would also take an oath of enrollment that they would obey the rules and regulations of the ECW/CCC, protect the government’s property, take care of the clothing that they were issued, and agree to stay for the entire six months.

At the conditioning camp (or before they were shipped to their ECW/CCC camps) enrollees were issued blue denim work shirts and pants, heavy black shoes or boots, and a modified Army dress uniform.  This uniform consisted of black shoes, woolen olive drab trousers and coat, khaki shirts, and a black tie.  There would also be red chevrons for sleeves.  The enrollee would be allowed to bring a suitcase with their toilet articles, one suit for trips to the nearest town, and anything else he might absolutely need for six months.  They would even be issued a handbook for what they could expect and what would be expected of them while they were in the Civilian Conservation Corps.[6]

Enrollees would receive $30 a month, however $25 of it had to be sent back home. The remaining money could be used by the enrollee to purchase things at the camp canteen or be spent when they were allowed to visit the nearby towns.  By 1934, enrollees could receive as much as $45 a month (with a specific amount also being sent back home) if they were placed in camp leadership positions.  The amount of money that was sent back home was instrumental in taking care of their families. This allotment money would also boost the economy in that local purchases in communities near the camps averaged $5000 a month, keeping many small businesses from going under.[7]

The enrollees would enroll in the ECW/CCC for six months, however they could re-enroll for up to two years.  If they received outside permanent employment, which could be proven with a letter from the employer the enrollee could leave before his six months was up.  Otherwise, leaving the ECW/CCC before their six months was up could bring a dishonorable discharge.  There were many though that re-enrolled up to the two year limit.  Once they were honorable discharged from the ECW/CCC was over, enrollees were given a suit of clothing and then transportation back to their homes or their place of enlistment, which ever was closest.  In the nine years that the Civilian Conservation Corps were in existence, 80,000 American Indians, 250,000 war veterans, 25,000 Locally Employed Men (LEMs), and approximately nine million junior enrollees (17-23 year olds) participated in the program.

Once the enrollees’ time was completed they were sent to their work camps.  For some enrollees they were fortunate enough to stay near their homes, but there were many enrollees that were sent to other states and even across the nation.  The transportation of young men from East to West started 24 May 1933 when thirty-two companies were sent from Fort Monroe, Virginia and Fort Meade, Maryland to Utah and Idaho, respectively.[8]  The transporting of men to the West would continue throughout the nine-year history of the Civilian Conservation Corps in order to make room for more enrollees.  These men would be sent from the East to the West to work in the forest work camps planting trees, building roads and bridges, and fighting blister rust and forest fires.

The early work camps in 1933 were simply tents, but these would be replaced with simple wooden structures by the end of the first summer in 1933. By the spring of 1934 the Army had designed a wooden building that had panels and interchangeable parts, one that was easy to construct and take down, and one that was also able to be mass produced.  This new building type became the standard at all camps and all the pieces to them were being mass produced by 1935.  The buildings were simply covered with tar paper or the wood was creosoted, and the barracks (especially in the colder areas) had a large wood-burning pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room for heat.  Each barrack also had a shower room with flushing toilets.

The standard main camp was in a “U” shape of twenty-four structures all constructed of wood.  Each of these standard main camps had barracks, officers’ quarters, a mess hall, a recreation hall that also contained the camp canteen or PX, a garage, a hospital or infirmary, and a schoolhouse all arranged around a cleared space for assemblies and sporting events.  The side camps, also referred to as spike or fly camps were small camps away from the larger main camps were used extensively in the West.  These spike camps were all tent camps, and were highly mobile.  They would be used to handle jobs that didn’t require the entire complement of men to accomplish, although everyone would get a “chance” to work in a spike camp at one point.  Some of the jobs that were done out of the spike camps were: planting trees, insect control (especially bark beetles), blister rust control, building lookouts, and fighting forest fires.

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[1] Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Three Essentials for Unemployment Relief” Reprinted in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. 2, 1933 (New York City: Random House, 1938), p. 80.

[2] Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Three Essentials for Unemployment Relief” p. 80

[3] The Newport Miner, 20 April 1933.

[4] Paige, John C. The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park Service, 1933-1942: An Administrative History. The National Park Service and Department of the Interior, 1985. Located at http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/paige/index.htm (Last Modified 4 April, 2000).

[5] Paige, John C.

[6] Hoyt, Ray. Your CCC: A Handbook for Enrollees. (Washington, D.C.: Happy Days Publishing, Co., Inc. (1940.).

[7] CCClegacy.org

[8] American Forests, “With the Civilian Conservation Corps” Publisher The American Forestry Association. July 1933.

A Re-Introduction

Since I have decided to attempt to amuse myself with a project this quarter, this blog is going to be one of those projects.  I am also going to try to finish at least one of the books that I have started over the years.  This book is a children's book (I think) about a doll's perspective of the Great Depression, and is sort of based on the the childhood of my maternal grandmother and her siblings.  I had put the story away last year because I was simply too busy to work on it.  So why pick it up again?  Well, the simple answer is that I needed a project to do because my course load this quarter seems to be lighter than usual and I have more time to devote to writing.  The more complicated answer is that this book needs to get done.  My grandmother, her sister Dory, and brothers Wally and Kenny are all that are left of the eight children that her parents had.  So, this is a labor of love that I would like to finish before they are gone.

The other part of the answer as to why I am starting to write again (both this blog and the book) is because I am a historian.  Historians write and teach - that is what we do, or at least should do.  I am fortunate to teach for an institution that focuses more on teaching, but in some ways I do miss the researching and the writing that I had to do in grad school.  This summer I was fortunate to be able to do some research and writing, but I feel that I should be doing more especially since I received a tenure-track history position at the college that I work.  This sort of position, at least in my view, demands that I research and write and do more with history than I ever have before.  I know that there are other history professors that have blogs they write on regularly, telling the world about the tidbits in history that would be forgotten (and in some cases not even be known about).

My problem is, I don't think that I am a good enough writer, let alone that the things that I find interesting would be interesting to anyone else.  In fact, I started this particular blog back in the fall of 2011 as a place to throw out stuff that I was thinking about and experiencing at that time.  I didn't make it public other than to a couple of friends, but now if I am going to truly write like a historian should, this blog needs to be more. It is going to have to be public.  It also needs to cover topics (historical ones) that I find interesting and want to tell the story of.  So, now that I have yet again started this blog up, stay tuned for some random historical blathering.