Handbook Updates

I've made several edits and additions to the CCC Uniforms Handbook recently.  Highlights include a new section on civilian denim chore coats in workwear, a revised discussion of procurement of civilian service-style shirts during the mobilization years in early dress uniforms, and a new entry for the late spruce-green dress Mackinaw coat (companion garment to the spruce green tunic) in Outerwear.

Personalized CCC Wear #2: Betty Boop and Popeye Moleskin Vest

Along with the Cooper's Rock MC-style cossack jacket, I have tripped across one other example of a truly personalized garment associated with the CCC -- a work or hunting vest hand-decorated with pen-and-ink cartoon sketches and a freehand CCC logo.

I found images of this garment in a blog post with no further information provided.

This jerkin appears to be made of moleskin, a heavy cotton fabric woven and then sheared to create a short, soft pile on one side. Moleskin was a common choice for durable workwear in midcentury, often used as an alternative to whipcord or canvas duck.  

The collar includes a tag identifying the manufacturer as Buck Szein or Buck Stein, with a buck image. The buck iconography is surely a play on the manufacturer's brand name, but may also suggest the core market might have been hunters and outdoorsmen. The vest includes two patch front pockets with slightly angled top entry and is closed with a Talon zipper. The waist includes fabric tabs and buckles on each side for adjusting the fit.

The vest is ornamented on both sides with a variety of quite well executed hand-drawn pen and ink markings. On the right front breast is a cartoon of Betty Boop, the animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer. A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, Betty made her film debut in August 1930. On the right front pocket is a set of monogram initials in a circle -- they seem to be S and B flanking a center C.

On the back center of the vest is a hand-drawn shield with the letters CCC and the legend Civilian Conservation Corps.  Below it is another fine cartoon featuring Betty with Popeye the Sailor. Popeye was another Fleischer creation; he debuted side by side with Betty in 1933's "Popeye the Sailor with Betty Boop," which combined Popeye's origin story with an animated short featuring the established and very popular Betty.

This was surely a private purchase item decorated by its owner, a CCC enrollee.  

The anonymous owner seems to have identified with Popeye, the tough guy with a heart of gold. In the famous theme song, written by Sammy Learner, Popeye proclaims that

I'm Popeye the Sailor Man. I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.
I'm strong to the finich, cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.

I'm one tough Gazookus, which hates all Palookas.
Wot ain't on the up and square.
I biffs 'em and buffs 'em and always out roughs 'em
and none of 'em gets nowhere.

If anyone dares to risk my "Fisk", It's "Boff" an' it's "Wham" un'erstan'?
So keep "Good Be-hav-or", That's your one life saver
With Popeye the Sailor Man.

He's Popeye the Sailor Man, He's Popeye the Sailor Man.
He's strong to the finich, cause he eats his spinach.
He's Popeye the Sailor Man.

Popeye's combination of toughness and chivalry would have been a remarkably good match for the values promoted among enrollees by the 3C's, with its "We can take it!" motto and ethos.

 

Personalized CCC Wear #1: Coopers Rock State Park Company 3527 Cossack Jacket

Personal alteration or decoration of CCC-issued clothing was prohibited by regulation. Uniform clothing was "GFE"-- Government Furnished Equipment.  As a 1940 Enrollee Handbook sternly admonished,

"All clothing is purchased and issued by the Army. The company commander is responsible for enrollee's clothing, as he is for all government property. The enrollee's uniform is issued for wear during his stay in the CCC... . During his stay in camp he is required to use and protect his uniform as he is other government property... . Enrollees are required to take the utmost care of all clothing issued them. While replacements will be made for articles worn out in regular use, the cost of clothing lost or destroyed is charged against the enrollee's pay."

It followed that defacing uniform parts with personal markings was strictly forbidden. The existence of the famous bell-bottom pants modification to the wool dress trousers suggests that many camp commandants took a relaxed attitude toward the letter of this rule when it came to alterations. However, vintage photographs otherwise confirm the message of the handbook: enrollees were not to embroider, deface, or otherwise personalize their issued clothing.

That said, I have so far encountered two examples of very personalized CCC-related clothing. Each is almost certainly a private-purchase garment, to which the ban on altering government property did not apply.

First up is this fascinating whipcord cossack jacket. An enrollee named George Morgan evidently served with Company 3527, building the beloved Cooper's Rock State Park on the Cheat River Canyon 12 miles east of Morgantown, West Virginia. He was apparently so proud of his association with the CCC and this project that he had his private work jacket customized as a memento.

Morgan's jacket is itself quite interesting. In the 1930s, "cossack jacket" was the generic term for a trim waist-length jacket. The earliest such jackets were made of leather and were close cousins or derivatives of the military A1 flight jacket.  As the style spread, other variations were made in every conceivable fabric, including wool and cotton. Morgan's jacket seems to push the cossack style towards a fusion with the civilian chore coat. It retains the trim cossack cut, but employs a heavy blue corded fabric more like what would usually have been used in a loose-cut overall or work coat. It includes a falling collar, two slash hand warmer pockets, a single zipper-closed utility pocket with an ornamental pull chain on the left breast, and fabric straps with buckles to adjust the fit at the waist. Visually, it anticipates by a decade or more the combination of workaday fabric and a trim fit that would come together definitively in 1953 in the iconic Levi's 507 "Type 2" trucker jacket of Elvis Presley fame.

But what really fascinates is the stunning custom embroidery -- name stitched on breast, and on the back panel, park name, plains Indian-style chief's head, and Company number and town name. The overall effect is stunning -- artistically, this is a postwar motorcycle club jacket a full 10 to 15 years before such things came to be in wider American culture. So uncanny is the resemblance to an MC "cut" that it is tempting to think the jacket might have been embroidered in the late 1940s or 1950s as a retrospective memento.  But it otherwise is clearly of true 1930s manufacture, and other than the uncanny pre-figuration of the MC style, there is no reason to believe the needle art is not prewar as well.

Whatever its probably never-to-be-known origin story, it is one of a kind -- perhaps one of the very earliest examples of a style of embroidery that would, in the hands of disaffected vets after World War II, become the iconic MC cut of Easy Rider and Sons of Anarchy notoriety.

New Reproduction Service Shoes - Type I Pattern with All-Leather Sole

For the first time, a replica of the Army Service Shoe with a leather rather than composition sole is now available. The new shoe has been brought to market by SM Wholesale, a noted vendor of replica uniforms for film and TV productions.

Up to now, no one has made an "off the rack" Type I Service Shoe--all prior replicas match the US Army Type II pattern with rubber heels and taps.

As the Handbook discusses, there is ample evidence to justify wearing service shoes with composition soles for CCC impressions. That said, a purist CCC living historian might prefer SM Wholesale's new leather sole service shoe as a still-closer approximation to the true early 1930s shoe which would have had both a leather sole and a stacked leather heel.  

In making a choice, quality may enter into the calculation. Among WWII reenactors SM Wholesale has a reputation for goods which are affordable, but more "prop grade" that "heritage grade" in materials and workmanship. I cannot speak to the quality of these new 1930s service shoes, but I do have a pair of SM's black US Navy oxfords as a stand-in for the CCC low-quarter "sturdy black shoes," and the workmanship and materials of my SM oxfords are indeed a cut below heritage grade, though not out of line with the price point.

I would be eager to hear from anyone who gives these new SM Wholesale Type 1 service shoes a try.

 

 

Mobilization Expedient: Civilian "Levis 501-style" Denim Trousers

In an earlier post I highlighted a remarkable high-resolution photograph of the boys of Company 720, Baudette, Minnesota, 1933, collection of the Minnesota Historical Society. High resolution version available from MHS.

In that first post I singled out for attention the remarkable custom-printed CCC sweatshirt one boy is wearing. Taking a second look, I'm reminded that many boys in this image are also wearing civilian blue jean trousers, a notable deviation from standard CCC practice.

Below are screen captures of three boys from this group wearing jeans with arctuate hanging front pockets and reenforcing rivets in the general style defined by Levis 501s of the 1930s.

It seems likely that when this company was outfitted during the initial mobilization rush, the regional QMC depot had a shortage of Army denim fatigue coverall trousers and went into the market for a civilian substitute.

These jeans serve as a reminder that, when it comes to CCC-issue clothing, there is an exception to every rule. Issue of civilian-cut denim dungarees to a CCC company was clearly rare. Overwhelmingly, the denim work pants on CCC boys in vintage images are standard post-1919 US Army fatigue coveralls. However, in an organization as sprawling as the CCC, mobilized under such hasty conditions, expedients abounded. Sometime and somewhere, if it could happen, it probably did.

In any event, if you are a reenactor interested in creating a CCC impression, and want to wear your prized pair of full-cut, straight-leg 1933 selvage denim Levi's instead of boring M1937 fatigues, go for it. Now you have the image to make your case.

 

Object(s) of the Day: Deadstock Denim Fatigue Uniform Assemblage

In researching the CCC Uniforms Handbook I came across a remarkable post from May 2015 in the "Denimbros" forum, in which forum member Charles DiSipio of Historic Preservation Associates, the US rep for Buzz Rickson, presents a complete denim work uniform in pristine, deadstock condition from his personal collection.

The assemblage includes the M1937 denim pullover and trousers, heavy leather gloves, underwear and socks, as well as a rare pair of russett leather garrison shoes--the lighter, lined variant of the Service Shoe issued prior to World War II. The individual items were made under a mixture of CCC and USA contracts. The assemblage was issued as a group to a US Army Air Force enlistee; however, it every item in it could have equally well been issued to a CCC enrollee.

This is as close as any of us will ever come to seeing complete, skin-out CCC work uniform in original, as-issued condition.  Visit and enjoy the complete post and detailed photographs at:

https://www.denimbro.com/ccc-u-s-army-uniform-work_topic1679.html

Featured Reenactor: CCC Living History at Maryland State Parks' Senior Rangers

Senior Rangers is a new program developed by Maryland Park Service Ranger Jamie Petrucci of Patapsco Valley State Park, now also extended to Seneca Creek State Park under the direction of Ranger Shelby Smith. It offers active adults 55 and over an opportunity to explore the natural, cultural, historical and recreational opportunities of Maryland's parks through weekly explorations guided by Maryland Rangers and other DNR staff.

This spring I was honored to bring my character, "George Richter Jr." of Company 326, Camp S52, New Germany Recreation Area, to both Senior Ranger Programs.  Below are images of "George" interacting with the Senior Rangers.