In high school football practice, there was a drill we particularly hated. It consisted of running up a short, steep hill and crashing into an ancient chain link fence. If you hit the fence hard enough, you would rebound, land part-way down the hill, and roll unceremoniously to the bottom – where you tried to avoid being trodden on by the next guy.

If you hit the fence with anything less than full force, our coach blew his whistle and you had to go again. And again. Until you struck with enough power that the fence, offended by your attack, sent you tumbling down the hill.

That was one tough fence. The coach had been around for a while, so I guess that over the years, hundreds, maybe even thousands of guys had sprinted up that hill and given it their best shot.

Another drill we had – not so much a drill, but a conditioning exercise – was to run the stadium steps. Today, many high school stadiums have aluminum seats and aisles and stairs. Our stadium was made of sterner stuff. It had concrete steps and solid concrete seats that were planked with wood.

To run the stadium, we went up one set of steps, down another, up another, and down a fourth. Then we crossed the field and did the same on the opposite side. We did it in full gear, and the steps didn’t mind at all that we had on cleats.

Recently – more than 50 years since I hit that fence and ran those steps – I learned something about the stadium. It was built in 1936 as a WPA project.

During the 1930s and early 40s when the U.S. was struggling to recover from the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a plan for putting millions of unemployed Americans to work. It was called the Works Project Administration (WPA). The goal was to employ as many people as possible, allow unskilled workers to acquire some skills, and to create quality building projects that would benefit states and local communities throughout the nation. Buildings were built, bridges constructed, and roads created or improved, paid for by the federal government and employing work-hungry people.

The stadium in Guthrie, called Jelsma Stadium, took 153 men about six months to build. Locally, it is known as “The Rock” because it has a 30-foot high stone wall at one end. (Football players running the stadium steps had a different name for it.)

In 2005, improvements were made that cost three million dollars. Today, Jelsma Stadium is considered one of the finest high school stadiums in the nation.

What about Maine? Were there any WPA projects here? And are any of them still in use today?

A search of a site called Living New Deal (livingnewdeal.org) reveals that there were hundreds of WPA and other federally funded projects in Maine during that era. And a surprising number are still in use. One I go into often is the Norway Post Office, built in 1940.