ks for the first time, found
himself haled into court at the county seat on some misdemeanor charge.
When asked "Who is the President of the United States?" he
unhesitatingly gave the name of the sheriff who had arrested him. So
long had his family lived apart that he knew nothing of the workings of
his own government and nothing about the various offices, high and low.
Yet in the family burying ground of that mountain man inscriptions on
the tombstones of his ancestors show that three of them served with
distinction in the War of the Revolution.

Lest the coming generation forget the ways of their forbears and the
America for which men struggled and died--the America of yesterday--the
scene is being faithfully reconstructed in various ways in national
parks. The boys of the CCC camps are having a very important hand in
reconstruction and conservation.

Some years ago a nephew of Fiddling Bob Taylor of Tennessee met with
several friends on hallowed ground in that State, not for a patriotic
celebration but merely for the joy of roaming in the great out-of-doors.
The ex-governor's kinsman, like his forbears, had been born on the site
where in 1772 the first step was made in American independence by the
Watauga Association. This autumn day these sons of those early
patriots fell to talking of the country, its scenic beauty, its
resources--particularly in the mountain region. "Fitting shrines set in
the beauty of the great out-of-doors are the finest monuments to our
patriots, it seems to me," said one. Another said, "The world's history
shows that from the time of creation the successful men were those who
really loved the out-of-doors. Abraham was a nomad whose home was
wherever he pitched his tent. Moses sought the silence and solitude of
Midian before God could speak to him. David was a shepherd boy on the
Judean hills. Elijah dwelt in a cave. In the New World we see
Washington, the surveyor, a lover of the out-of-doors; Thomas Jefferson,
finding happiness and contentment in roaming the hills of Virginia; the
immortal Lincoln, coming from the backwoods of humble parents; Theodore
Roosevelt, cowboy on the plains of our western country."

With a smile Fiddling Bob's nephew turned to his friends. "Fellows, I'll
wager there's not one among them from Abraham down to Teddy but would
enjoy a canter over a good highway to take a look at the Blue Ridge
Country. The most beautiful forests and parks in the world. Ought to
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