It was 1934 and jobs were scarce. With so few prospects, Frank Davis, age 18, joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. For the next two years he would live and work in Western North Carolina. He, along with hundreds of other young men his age, worked to build hiking trails, roads, overlooks, and walls through the Smoky Mountain National Park. Those were the best and most important days of his life, a time when he matured, learned a trade, and met some of the finest people he has ever known. Relive those days of the Great Depression in these pages where Frank has recorded in vivid detail the experiences of those times—some harrying, many hilariously funny, but all memorable and exciting.

Frank Davis was born and reared in Mebane, North Carolina. After leaving the CCC, he married a young girl he met while there and had a child. He later moved to Norfolk, Virginia, where he got a job at the U.S. Naval Air Rework Facility. He retired from their Production Engineering Department in 1975.