Off Screen: Any particular lessons or things you picked up or learned as you went along that might have helped you later on?

CASHION: I'll tell you, this was—it helped me personally to be in the CCC.

I was a little old farm-raised boy and it was during the Depression, very deep depression.

We didn't have anything.

My father was a share cropper.

And I never had a job except working in the farms, and that didn't pay any money, see.

As I grew older, I became depressed and wanted to run away, and that's why my dad got me in there, in the three Cs.

And would you believe, that when I went into the three Cs, that was the first time that I ever owned a toothbrush?

Most of my brushing was with salt and soda and a rag.

And they issued us a little small compact toilet kit with a razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, the whole nine yards.

And that was the first time.

I thought that was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, was getting to brush my teeth with a toothbrush, a factory-made toothbrush.

That sounds—well, I'm honest about it—but we were very, very poor.

Most everybody was in those days.

This was in the thirties up until World War II.

And when I came out of the three Cs, for one year or two, still the same.

I didn't get a job. I worked on the farm.

Then along came World War II, and I was drafted in 1941.