In Search for Blue, my current novel project, here's a recently composed passage from chapter ?. The time period is 1935; the place is Blue Ridge Parkway under construction in North Carolina:
Meanwhile up in Washington Secretary of Interior Ickes was organizing work crews with picks and shovels a-flailing all across the nation, to get all the public lands whipped into shape: trees and shrubs and grasses gettin' planted to stabilize dirt banks, which are, these days, likely more stable the banks on Main Street. But wait a minute, shut my mouth, those money banks have come a long way toward stabilizin' since Mr. Roosevelt slapped a nationwide bank holiday on 'em back in 'thirty-three, to stop the run on the banks, which had caused a whole slew of 'em to run out of money. I mean, what good is a bank if it ain't got no money in it!
Hard times ever'where back then, boys; I'm a-tellin' you. Even the Town of Boone went broke back in 'thirty-one, on account of folks not payin' taxes on account of not havin' enough business and income and money a-circulatin' to keep the wheels of progress a'rollin'.
But after Mr. Roosevelt and his New Dealers got the banking system near'bouts shut down, after a while they got it cranked up again; it was pretty much from the bottom up, as much as I can tell. The Feds rolled out a whole slew of work programs; they all had alphabet names. The main ones 'round these parts were CCC and WPA. Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's man in charge of the WPA, said North C'lina would get its share of funds for puttin' people to work, and sure 'nuff it happened. After a while they had local boys out there a-cuttin' a trail all along the Blue Ridge. They started up at the Virginia line. The Virginia crews started there near Cumberland Knob--not Cumberland Gap, mind you--that's way over at Kentucky, where Dan'l's first trail took him to. Anyway, the plan was for the Virginia crews to work northward while the North C'lina crews got things a-goin' and worked to the south. After a while the CCC and the WPA had the Scenic project pret'well cranked up and hummin' along blazin' a trail, kinda like Ole Dan'l did back in the day . . .seventeen-hundreds . . . with workers from the unemployment and relief rolls. After the State got the right-of-way and the land acquisitions prett'much squared away, they turned it over to the Feds, which meant Secretary of Interior Ickes handed it off to the new National Parks Service, headed by a fella named Demaray, with Roosevelt's man Harry Hopkins headin' up the WPA to get the workers lined up and swingin' their axes and shovels and whatnot to blaze a trail, kinda like Ole Dan'l Boone did back in the day, you know, seventeen hundreds.
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