3 million young men, some homeless, all jobless, many hungry, and with hungry loved ones at home answered the call. A beacon promising 30 dollars wages a month, of which $25 was to be sent home, and better physical conditioning and more hiring appeal to those 18-25 years old. It was hard work that made a difference in so many ways. As I stood there on the last day of 2023 and read the sign telling of how Hapgood Pond came to be, I realized that it was highly likely that no young man who provided the hard manual labor to build this beautiful park was still alive today.
All over the country, from 1933 through 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps was designated to develop national resources in rural lands. Young unmarried men, wielding, saws, axles, shovels, and machinery worked long days, living in tents, eating together at long wooden tables, and served 3 meals daily. They built roads, bridges, and structures. Run mostly by the Army they shared in the responsibility of taking care of nutritional and sanitary needs.
For a moment, I place my feet in the shoes of a young man, sitting on a bench at the dinner table under a newly built roof. Every muscle and joint in his body tells the tale of the hard days of work he has put in. He listens to the conversation that echoes off the roof planking above his head. There is laughter, there is enthusiasm, homesickness, and loneliness. For all of them, however, there is hope. Something is happening. Promises of better days seem to be in the air.
Many of these men will not be alive by the spring of 1945 and what awaits them makes it look like they are playing in their backyards today. Yes, there will be books and movies that tell grand stories of their heroic future, but there is so much more to that. Being swallowed up by time itself, it becomes clear that there are bigger players controlling everything.
These parks not only edify spectacular achievements but also tell a tale of the last days of innocence. The final years before we understood what the world we live in really is.
It is the contrasts between what happened in this park in 1936 and what was happening to that same young man 7 years later in 1943 in Europe, crouched down in a 100 year old bombed out church, pinned down by enemy fire, not knowing how many of his friends are still alive. He needs a moment to escape. He closes his eyes. He tries to shut out the sound of the artillery. It takes every bit of concentration he has, but he manages to hear those voices under the structure at Hapgood Pond in the summer of 1936 before the rage spread across the globe and told everyone in the world what they were really here for. He laughs to himself because these two things can’t live in the mind of one man. Three seconds later, the sound of a nearby artillery explosion pulls him back, he is still here.
In the 1960s, the son of that young man who never made it back home packs up his car with heavy canvas tents, wife, children, and cousins and enjoys a vacation in a park that his father helped build back in the Depression. As he spends the days feeling the sand of the beach on his bare feet, his children swim in the water, that is possible because of the dam his father helped construct back in 1936. He tries so hard to imagine his young father, sitting on the wooden bench under the structure, eating a hot meal with dozens of other young men, weary from the hard day’s work.
The daydream does not last, however, because it always gets overshadowed by the imagined sound of artillery that eventually leads to the visit from two uniformed men to his childhood home. He did not know then what it meant, but he could feel the heaviness of the moment and still does today. He tries to push this from his mind, only wishing to think about the young man, building this beautiful place that families now enjoy. It takes a little anger, but he does it. He tries to touch things that he imagines his young Father also touching and taking in views that his father appreciated. His children laugh and squeal with joy as they play on the beach.
In the 1980s, a grandson of the young man who built the camp arrives with his family, the tents are lighter, the mood is lighter and the stories immortalized yet obscure. He only knows what his father told him and even that is sort of a facsimile today. In the next 20 years, his family will stop coming here. They will exchange this for tag-a-long campers, full hookups, and pathetic private campground recreational activities. Before they know it, they will be 42 years old, with blood alcohol content at twice the legal limit, driving golf carts way too fast, singing, and yelling like they are still in college on a bender. Fortunately, everyone in their camping neighborhood is just like them, and that makes it funny. For them.
Forty years later, I am standing in front of this sign. I never knew the young man who helped build this park, but I remember you. This far away I can see you as an innocent and down-and-out young man. I can see your hopes and dreams. I know what it is like to be torn from your universe and then put into another in which someone else controls everything. I have contemplated your (our) end many times. As I come here in the future, I will always think of you. You will always be important to me. I have not forgotten you, sir. Thank you.