Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

mother was in a school system and that, you know, sort of stayed pretty much
as it was. W e didn't have anything like script or anything like that; they
wer *e paid their regular salaries. As to my dad, it did have an effect because,
you know, the price of cotton went down. I remember they had a song, "~ive
cents cotton and ten cents meat. How's a poor man gonna eat?" (chuckles)
Cotton was not as big as it had been.
I think for one period my dad worked for a governmental project.
Be worked
with the, what they called . . . CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] camps they
had. And he was sort of a supervisor down at one of those CCC camps for, oh,
about a year, I guess.
Q: Where was this located?
A: Dyer, Arkansas.
Q: Do you know what kind of project it was?
A: It was a project where they were cleaning new ground, Yes. Preparing the
woods for agricultural pursuits.
Q: Did he act as foreman d m
there, then?
A: He was a foreman down there, yes.
Q: About what year was that, do you recall?
A: I can't remember. I was just trying to think of that, an instant before
you asked. I only remember being down there once; he was home on the weekend
and we took him back down there, so it had to be--well, it was after 1930,
because we wouldn't have had a car before 1930. It was probably 1932, 1933,
1934, somewhere along in there. I know Roosevelt was president then,
because he brought on the program and Roosevelt wasn't elected until 1932.
So it had to be after 1932, probably 1933 or 1934.
Q: So, other than that, you didn't see any drastic effect in the family.
A: Well, no. No, not any drastic effect in the family at all. There was a
general economic down spiral, but most of the people in my community had not
been affluent anyhow, you know, not really affluent, so--it really didn't
affect poor people as much as it did people who had made big money, you know.
Q: Did your mother have much difficulty in locating a school for summer . . .
A: No, none whatsoever. No, she always had a very high, good reputation as a
teacher and there were always plenty of schools, she had her choices.
Q: You said your first encounter with a lawyer was at Little Rock a t a very
young age. Did you know any lawyers there in Blytheville?
A: Yes, there was a fellow by the name of Barham, George W. Barham, who was a