George Cressel Narrator Amy Rieger Interviewer September 8, 1993 Cressel’s home in Park Rapids, Minnesota AR: Let’s begin with where and when you were born. GC: I was born in north Minnesota on March 6, 1912. Project AR: You grew up in the Duluth area? GC: I did. I went to grade school in Woodland and went to Central High School. HistorySociety AR: Your father was a plumber, correct? GC: Yes. My mother came from Austria. SheOral was only 14 years old when she came to this country and worked for people as a house maid. My dad was born in this country, in Chelsea, Wisconsin, and then his folks later moved to Ashland, Wisconsin. They were building the ore back then, and his father fell off the dock somehow and got killed and left his wife with two boys. ShePark never remarried Historical and the boys went to school and that sort of thing. My dad moved from Ashland, Wisconsin to Duluth and that’s where he evidently met my mother and they were married. AR: What was yourState father’s name? GC: Frank Benjamin Cressel. AR: And your mother’sMinnesota name? Itasca GC: Margaret. AR: What was her maiden name? GC: Sansa. Don’t ask me how to spell that, SANSA, I guess. AR: Let’s talk a general overview of your life and the life of your family as the Great Depression hit. 1 GC: We lived in Duluth, Minnesota at 832 West 4th Street, which was up on the hill overlooking Duluth. It wasn’t far from the Boulevard Drive. You could see the whole town of Duluth if you drove over that. I went to the Emerson School there. And from the Emerson School my dad bought a place in Woodland and (unclear) studio at the very end of the road. You’d turn around and go back into town. It wasn’t too far from the Ridgeview golf course, where I spent most of my time as a youth, caddying and learning to play the game of golf. I went to the Emerson grade school, and when I graduated I went to Central High School. Before that, my life in Woodland was… I was nine years old when we moved there and spent my early childhood life there. My life in Woodland was mostly…in wintertime, I played hockey a lot. We had a local hockey team and we played teams all over Duluth, Hibbing, Virginia, Two Harbors. Skating rinks, we called them the Wheeler (??) rinks, we had hockey games scheduled against different teams from the town of Duluth. Business people sponsored teams like Marshall House (??) and furnished us with jerseys and sweatshirts and jackets with their logos on, of course. Project From there, times got tough in the thirties and my grandmother and my uncle were staying with us at our house and my dad… my uncle Phil lost his job first, and it slowed down to a point that they didn’t need him, so he was laid off. Then after that my dad was a plumber for a shop that had six plumbers and seven steamfitters. It was a big shop. Business wasn’t progressing so he laid them off one Historyat a time andSociety my dad was the last one to let go. He said that he only had work enough for himself and had to let him off. Then when times got better he’d like to have him back. That stuff never happened because in the meantime my dad got another job. But before that, in order to sustain the home, I joined the three Cs and the money was sentOral home to my folks so they could buy groceries and pay rent and that sort of thing. AR: When did you first hear ofPark the CCC? Historical GC: When I was sure of (unclear) it. Before that I worked on the WPA for a while. That was doing work around Duluth that had to be done like street work and helping to do the work that was needed.State I got laid off of that job, I think the work ran out is what happened . At any rate, my dad still hadn’t had any work and it was getting to the point where it was pretty tough on him and he’d pick up and odd job here and there but not enough to sustain the home. So I heard about the three Cs and I told my dad I was going to go in the CCC to help him, so that’s whatMinnesota I done. The first place I was sent to was Breckenridge and Walker.Itasca We worked on the river there, cleaning it up and doing highway work, cleaning up on the highways. Cutting up dead trees and that sort. When I first got to Breckenridge we stayed in an old schoolhouse. They’d built a new high school so the old one was empty, so they allowed the CCCs to billet there. Things were worked out so that (unclear). Our camp was sent to the Smoky Hills section of Hubbard County, and part of it was in Becker. Anyway, we were billeted there in army tents at first because they didn’t have the camp built yet and they weren’t going to until they’d located enough water to sustain the camp. So they had the water drills in there and my recollection is that they were at that a couple or three weeks and never hit enough water to sustain the camp. So 2 then we were disbanded and a lot of us went to Lake Itasca Park where we started a new camp. AR: Before we get into the new camp at Itasca, I’d like to go back for a couple of quick things. When you first enlisted in the CCC, was there an enlistment center right in Duluth? GC: Yes. I don’t know if they had an office there, but you could apply, and if you qualified you would be sent to, I think if I remember right we were sent to Fort Snelling first for induction into that kind of a life. Then we were sent to Wahpeton and Breckenridge and other places that I’ve told you about so far. AR: How long between the time that you signed up and going down to Fort Snelling and then back up to Breckenridge and Wahpeton, how long was that? Project GC: Not very long. I tell you it’s almost a week or a week and a half or two weeks. Not over two weeks. AR: Were you hauled down by truck or by train? HistorySociety GC: By truck. AR: Did you know anyone else that wasOral signing up? GC: No, I didn’t know any of them. They were all new to me, everyone. And the same way when we went to Wahpeton and Breckenridge. Evidently they sent a whole group there at a time and they were allPark strangers toHistorical one another. AR: How long were you at the Breckenridge/Wahpeton camp? GC: Not very long.State About three, four months maybe. We were assigned to do everything (unclear), and then they decided to ship us up to the Smoky Hills area to build a new camp, start a new camp. All of the ones that went up there were (unclear) the Breckenridge camp. We were mostly acquainted there. They did send up new ones. I finally wound up in Minnesota1722, I think was the number, in Itasca Park. Itasca AR: This was 1934. GC: Yes, 1934. AR: Approximately how long were you at Smoky Hills? GC: We were there for quite a while, not at that camp but in the park area, we were there for quite a while in the Smoky Hills camp when they discovered it didn’t have enough water to maintain a camp, they sent us up to Itasca. 3 AR: By truck again? GC: Yes. That wasn’t much of a shot up there. AR: You said where they sent you was a new camp. Were there any buildings at all there? GC: Yes, they had some in the meantime we built more. We started out with a small unit and progressed until we had a full camp there. AR: Can you describe your first impressions…that was an awful long time ago, I know! GC: It was a long time ago, that’s true. Of course, we were pretty well acquainted with one another and we integrated pretty readily, although I wasn’t too excitedProject about it. But we had work to do while we were getting the camp ready and there was enough work around the camp, like cleaning up and getting camp ready for our units. I remember we had an old army captain that was in charge of everything, Captain Dietz, and he didn’t put up with any shenanigans. You had to work. You weren’t just laying around in the sack or anything like that. It got so he was pretty well liked. History Society AR: About how many people were there at first? Oral GC: I don’t really know, but there were four or five barracks and they must have housed 30, 35 people each barracks, whatever you want to call it, a unit. So I would say about 100, 150 all together. Then the cook house was separate and the cook, his name was Pete Check, I don’t know how to spellPark his last name,Historical but Check was his last name, he wasn’t a foreigner or anything but you could tell he had traits of his native land.