OFF SCREEN: When you first arrived at the CCC camp here, what kind of structures were around? What kind of barracks did they house you in?

BALLARD: This camp, I guess, was unique because the barracks were six-man barracks. Six men in each place.

It made it real nice because you can get along with six men a lot easier than you can a whole barrack full of people.

The reason was when we got here, they unloaded us out of the truck and they gave us clothes to put on—they fitted you out with the clothes you'd wear— and of course, they throw the clothes at you whether they'd fitted you or not. That was yours to wear.

They sent us down here on the river, back down here, loading gravel in a doggone dump truck with a shovel.

That's the way it was, you know, in those days. Of course, boys were playing around. There wasn't nobody bossing them, and they were playing around.

I come up in the country—and I'm not bragging and all—but we had to work!

So when they gave me a shovel to work, I figured we was supposed to work. I went to loading gravel in that truck.

A lot of them was playing around like I say. It went on for two days that way.

A fellow drove up in a pick-up truck and stopped out there about sixty yards from us and watched us a while.

He got out of his truck, and he come over and tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You come with me." I went with him. He was a surveyor. We surveyed every building in this park right here. That was my job from then on. I never loaded any more gravel.

OFF SCREEN: So, you liked the way your work style apparently decided— BALLARD: I figured it was that reason why.

OFF SCREEN: Good. It paid off.

BALLARD: That was the first two days. Of course, when I got with him, I had never done what he was doing, but it didn't take long to catch on to all of that, to help surveying all the buildings here.

Everybody in this camp had a job to do. You was never idle, only when things finished in the day time.

Then in the afternoons, you could play ball, you could fuss, you could fight, you could box, you could do whatever you wanted to do.

We had a recreation building. You could play table tennis, you know. All this went on.

It was just, after you was here a couple three months, you got to the point where you just hated to leave it, you know.