Stories and Songs about the Civilan Conservation Corps

Michigan based author Bill Jamerson will present a music and storytelling program about the Civilian Conservation Corps at the Pekin Public Library on Thursday, March 8 at 6:30 p.m. The hour-long program will include stories, video, reading excerpts from his novel and playing original songs about the CCC with his guitar.  Jamerson’s novel, ‘Big Shoulders,’ follows a year in the life of a seventeen-year-old youth from Detroit who enlists in the CCC in 1937. The enrollee joins two hundred other young men at Camp Raco, a work camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula run by army officers. It is a coming-of-age story of an angry teenager who faces the rigors of hard work, learning to get along with a difficult sergeant and coping with a bully.

Some of the songs he performs include ‘Chowtime,’ a fun look at the camp food; ‘City Slicker,’ which tells of the mischief the young men get into in the woods; ‘Borrowed Mom,’ is the story of an orphan who finds a mother; and ‘Tree Plantin’, Fire Fightin’ Blues’ tells of the hardships of work. The folk songs range from heartwarming ballads to foot stomping jigs. The stories and songs are as educational as they are entertaining, as honest as they are fun.  Please register for this program at the Adult Services Desk or call 347-7111 ext. 2.