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CCC Legacy Journal:
March April 2010, Vol 34, Issue 2
Remembering Tally Perrizzo,
Co. 715
By: Norman C. Horton
Tally Perrizzo was the mess Sergeant at Co.
715, a CCC camp in Caledonia, MN in 1934.
I was a platoon leader. Once
in a while, Tally and I would BS about school subjects in the company
kitchen at night. Tally was
very intelligent. He had a
quick wit, good sense of humor and made quick quips in the midst of
conservation.
One time I had a broken jaw and it was
wired shut. I came into the
mess hall that evening and sat down at my usual six man table.
We were fed boarding home style.
Of course, there was nothing I could eat.
All of a sudden, I could see two KP’s
coming towards my table. They
wore white chef caps, white jackets and aprons and they were carrying
trays on upraised hands. There
were 400 guys in the mess hall plus officers in their own section.
Just then I hear Tally say over the
loudspeaker, “We will now serve Curley Horton his supper.”
I looked at the officers. They
were choking, trying to hold back their “guffaws”.
All the rest in the dining hall were roaring with laughter.
I wanted to crawl in a hole and pull it in after me.
The trays contained several straws, clear soup and a glass of milk.
Eventually, Tally was sent to St. John’s
University at Collegeville, MN and became a Priest specializing in
education. When I last heard
of Tally, he had finished a tour as Principal of Lourdes High School in
Rochester, MN. Lourdes is
rated as the top Catholic Education School.
Tally developed cancer, resigned and died shortly after.
His fellow priests said Tally was well
known for his quick wit, humor and sharp witty barbs.
A characteristic he retained his whole life.
Thanks Tally, for the clear soup and straws.
Rest in peace.
PS. This is how I came to have a broken
jaw. I was walking with three
friends along the sidewalk going downtown in Caledonia, MN.
It was dusk and approaching darkness.
All of a sudden something hit me square in the mouth.
I was knocked clean out into the street.
I managed to stay on all fours.
I did not want to go down flat.
I saw the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and Orion, plus a lot of
other stars. A guy had run out
of the darkness of the alley and nailed me.
I saw a man running and my friends chasing
after him. They were unable to
catch him. It was apparent
that I was the guy’s target as there were four of us walking in a group.
I made it back to the CCC Company hospital
and the doctor wired my broken jaw shut.
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CCC Legacy Journal: January-February
2010, Vol. 34, Issue 1
By.
Norman Horton, Member
In
1933 I was in company 723 in Faunce, Minnesota, close to the Canadian
border.
While there I fought
fires, learned to notch good size trees with a two bladed ax and
then, using
a two man cross cut saw, fell the tree, then saw it lengths 2 men could
handle load it on trucks. This was a tent camp.
In
October we moved to Buyck, Minnesota several miles southeast of Faunce.
This was a camp just built
with wooden barracks,
a mess hall, and officer quarters. It was right on the Vermillion River
near a waterfall.
We
fought a couple of fires at that location, but our company consisted
mainly of a survey crew,
a wood detail, and a
crew cleaning out dead trees and underbrush.
We were located 29 miles from Orr, Minnesota, the largest I
town nearest to us with about three or four thousand people.
My
most vivid memory-among
many-was working on the wood detail, sawing and splitting wood to supply
the camp with firewood for heating
all the buildings
during Christmas week. Most of the camp
was home
on five
day Christmas
leave. It was 64 degrees below zero. We worked in 15 minute shifts. We
wore mufflers covering our noses and mouths so we wouldn't
frost our lungs, and three pairs of socks.
In
April 1934 we moved all the way south to Caledonia, Minnesota near the
Iowa border. I became a platoon
leader there. I had
a 55 man crew. We planted thousands
of trees and built
erosion dams on farms in the area.
I
had done some boxing in St. Paul at a gym where Tommy and Mike Gibbons,
two famous fighters, worked out.
They helped us young
guys a lot. Tommy Gibbons had fought Jack Dempsey, the world heavyweight
champion, in a close 15 round match which ended in Dempsey's favor. I
started boxing again at Caledonia and won the district Golden
Glove 135 pound
title.
I went to the
Regional but did not pass the blood sugar test. My best buddy took my
place and knocked out his opponent in 1 minute and 40 seconds of the first
round. I bought him a Chinese dinner (25 cents)
at the Chinese restaurant.
I
left Company 723 in mid-July and found part time work at an Ace Auto
Parts, a used parts facility. I learn to use a cutting torch there and
disassemble junk cars, and drove the 4 cylinder International tow truck. I
was delivering parts to Merrick's DX station on Marion and
University Avenue in St. Paul when Homer van Meter was gunned down. A
photographer reporter for the Minneapolis Minnesota Star Tribune grabbed
the sheet off the body and said, "I'll give you two bucks to lay
under this sheet while I take a picture." Two bucks was a lot of
money. Homer van Meter was John Dillinger's bank robbing partner.
I was only making $10 a week for a 60 hour week. I didn't hesitate.
I got my 2 bucks.
Come
fall, my hours were lessened some, and my pay was cut to $8 a week, $4
paid on Wednesday, and $4 paid on Saturday.
They were taking
enrollment for the CCCs so I signed up again.
I
wound up at Company 715 20 miles north of Virginia, Minnesota. They were
building a fire truck and crew; as I had firefighter experience I was
invited. The truck had bench seats all along each side, a removable a
siren, and painted fire red.
When
we had our first fire call, we raced to the truck, took off two miles down
the county road to the main state highway, siren screaming. As we
"raced" down the highway, people were passing us up and waving
to us. I looked at the speedometer-we were going 30 miles an hour, the top
speed of that truck. They discovered they used a chasis from a dump truck
that had a low speed rear end to pull out of the gravel pit.
The next fire I got on the
investigative team consisting of the camp supervisor, a driver and me. I
rode the back of the pickup truck. We had investigated this fire near this
farm. As we drove down the long drive way toward the road I heard shots
ring out. I flattened myself in the bed of the pickup. When we reached the
main road the driver pulled over. There were two bullet holes in the cab
of the truck.
The next day I lined up with
the wood detail.
I left in the spring of 1935
when my six month enlistment was up. I spent most of the next year riding
the rails with two friends, traveling through the western U.S. looking for
work, staying in F.E.R. A. camps. The National Guard would not let us near
the San Joaquin Valley where the big orange and fruit groves were. There
was a 1,000 people for every orange tree. There were shack towns all over
the area, fenced in.
We headed back north, had a lot
of adventures too numerous to tell here-for instance, one of us fighting a
carnival fighter, 3 rounds which wound up in a big gang fight complete
with police. This was in Sacramento, California. We eventually wound up
back in St. Paul.
I had attended Hamline
University in 1933 but ran out of money. I got a freebie to Dunwoody
Institute night school and learned welding, blue print reading, worked at
various auto salvage yards, managed one, went into the business with two
others (a mistake), then lucked out and got a job at the Ford plant, the
best blue collar pay in the U.S.
I spent 3 and
a half years there until it was forced to convert to war work. I had a job
at an armament plant 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and was asked to do
some undercover work for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services in addition
to my regular job. I did that for three and a half years; was inducted
into the U.S. Army, got married along he way and had five children by 1943. After
the war I became foreman of the crew at the armament plant, but left to
become a scale repairman for Fairbanks Morse Scale Company, and started a
night repair garage, which turned into a rebuilding plant and auto
recycling business with four locations.
At present I am in the auto
recycling business in Minnesota and Orlando, Florida.
As I look back
over all the years I often think of my days in the C.C.C's-learned so much
there; leadership, technical knowledge, appreciation for reforesting,
getting along with others—an endless list of positives; not negatives.
I had my 1929 Model A Coupe
with rumble seat stashed away in the trees at CCC Co. 715, Virginia, MN in
1934.
I rented it to John Arras
from St. Paul who was taking a few CCCers on a five-day Christmas leave to
St. Paul. I was to make a
couple of bucks and John would get a free ride home and back.
When they would got back to camp, I would take a few CCCers and we
would get our five day Christmas leave over New Years.
As you can see by the letter
from John, my poor Model A barely made it to St. Paul.
I had to hitch a ride to Duluth and steal a ride in the
“blinds” on a passenger train to St. Paul (35-degrees below zero and
nearly froze to death), get the car fixed and drive back to camp in five
days.
I
was on the wood detail at Co. 723 in the wilderness of Northern Minnesota
in 1933 Christmas week. We had
to cut logs, into 15” lengths with a model T converted into a saw rig.
Then split those chunks into smaller chunks.
We had to distribute the chunks to Cords piles outside of four
barracks, the mess hall, officer’s quarters, latrine, etc.
Without this wood the whole camp would have shut down.
Everything would freeze up within minutes.
The
temperature was from 9 to 35 degrees below zero.
Then one day it plunged to 64 degrees below zero.
We
had to wear mufflers over out mouths to prevent frosting our lungs.
I put newspaper in my boots and wore three pairs of socks.
We worked in 15 minute shifts, splintering the wood.
The cold was brutal on our hand feet and bodies.
Some
buys tried getting out of our truck running, in case someone got hurt.
Also supply trucks were stalled trying to bring in food.
They
burned our truck to the ground.
They
finally got one running and kept it running 24 hours a day.
The temperature gradually climbed up slowly into the 30 degrees
below range, then to zero and above. A
crisis was averted due to the knowledge of our supervisors and a few
CCCers from that area.
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