A short title for

On Sept. 18, 1937, I left Morton headed for the C.C.C. camp (Company 4436) at Greenville, Alabama, where I would replace an operator whose C.C.C. time had run out. Getting to Greenville by train was quite an experience. I first had to go by train from Morton to Meridian, Mississippi. After a wait, I boarded a poor quality train on which I rode as far as Akron, Ala., a very small town south of Greensboro, Ala.

When I arrived at Akron in the early afternoon, it was too late for me to make connections with the train to Selma, and the station agent told me that I would have to wait nearly 24 hours and take the same train the next day. I had considerably less than a dollar in my pocket, including the money I had been given for the two meals that I would have missed if I had made proper connections. I bought something to eat at the local general store, and realized that my remaining money would not allow me to eat much for the rest of the trip. I also had no place to sleep.

The railroad station was manned for only one shift, and had no waiting room. When the station agent went off duty, he left a straight chair on the platform on which I could sit. The platform was covered with cinders and soot from the steam locomotives, so I couldn’t lie down on it. Thank goodness, there were no mosquitoes and it didn’t get too cold, so I managed to get a little sleep during the long miserable night.

The next day, after what seemed like an eternity, the train finally arrived. The train was a combination freight and passenger train, with only one passenger car. It dropped off several freight cars on a siding, and picked up several more to take back to Selma. Several passengers boarded with me. Since there was only one car, the colored people sat in the back and the whites in the front. The passenger car was very old and dirty, and had hard wooden seats. Although not needed at the time, a centrally located coal-burning pot-bellied stove was used to heat the car. By lying on the seat with my legs in the aisle I managed to get some sleep before arriving in Selma.

The railroad station at Selma was much better, and I had time to get a bite to eat while waiting for the train to Montgomery. The train to Montgomery had a better car with comfortable seats, but it arrived in Montgomery too late to make a connection to Greenville. I spent the last of my money on a cinnamon roll at Montgomery. Fortunately, the station was not too crowded, and I stretched out on one of the hard benches in the waiting room and caught a few hours of sleep.

According to the schedule, L&N train #5 would leave Montgomery at 6:50 AM. It would stop at Letohatchie at 7:22 AM, if there were any passengers to get off or board, and would arrive at Greenville at 8:05 AM. I was really filthy, and before time to board, I washed my face and hands, and moments later boarded the train, and began the last leg of my journey. I was already more than 24 hours late on a trip that should have taken less than 24 hours.

I wondered what I should do if the train stopped at Letohatchie. I believed that Melvin Sanderson, who had become my step father since I last saw him, would still be on watch in the depot, so I decided that I would run in and say hello. However, the train didn’t stop, and as it passed I saw that my mother’s filling station and store, which was not far from the tracks, was boarded up. Up the street, I could also see Mrs. Powell’s home, where my family were then living and felt sad that I couldn’t have seen them.

This #5 train, is the same train that I used to catch each school day when I attended high school in Ft. Deposit, before we had a school bus. When it stopped at Ft. Deposit, I remembered those days and wished that I could have finished school. After I left home, students no longer went to Ft. Deposit, but rode a school bus to Hayneville, which was much closer. I hoped that some day I could finish school there.

I had only my barracks bag with me, as my foot locker that I had bought in Pensacola had been shipped from Morton. Upon arrival in Greenville, I was told how to get to the C.C.C. Camp, so I walked to camp and checked in at the Commanding Officer’s office.

When I told Lt. Derrick, the C.O., about my travel problems, and the fact that I didn’t have any money, he apparently felt sorry for me and gave me an advance of one dollar and told me to go to the mess hall where I would be given something to eat. Later, after being assigned to a barracks, I went to the supply room and was given bed clothing. After lunch, my foot locker arrived in camp. It had apparently traveled on the train with me. My assignment to Greenville was a very lucky one because it was the nearest camp to Letohatchie. It was only about 40 minutes from Letohatchie by rail, making it feasible for me to visit home when I could get some time off.





A camp scene at C.C.C. Company 4436, Greenville, Alabama - The building at the right side of the photo is the Headquarters Building, which housed primarily the Commanding Officer’s office and the radio telegraph station. The post at the front-left corner of the building supported the feeder end of the antenna, and the other end was supported by a similar post in a field to the right of the building. The barracks were also located in the field. The mess hall, supply building, recreational building, and shop were all located in a shady, park-like area.
The previous radio operator was known as “Screw-Loose Benson”, and although he had left, his reputation remained. I hoped that the reputation didn’t belong to the job. The camp had the same buildings as at Valley Creek State Park and at Morton, but it was located in a beautiful park-like area on the eastern edge of Greenville. One was free to walk to town whenever duties permitted. I thought that everything was working out fine, but when I went to the office to check into the radio net, Lt. Derrick told me that the receiver had failed just before Screw Loose Benson had left. They were waiting on a new receiver from district headquarters in Ft. Barrancas.

The receiver, which was an old National SW-3 (three tube) receiver, was indeed dead. The tube filaments lit up, but nothing could be heard. Perhaps Screw-Loose Benson had done something to it. That was very bad luck, because while waiting for a new receiver to arrive, I was assigned to a work group that dug ditches and planted trees all day. We also ate food that was delivered to the work site and was stone cold by the time we ate it. Back to square one!

Few of the men in our work group showed evidence that they had received any schooling. However, one man reported that he had read in the newspaper where someone had recently gone higher up in a balloon than anyone had gone before. Another man very seriously wanted to know if he went high enough to hear the angels singing. Nobody in the group acted as though that was a silly question. However, another man seriously opined that he didn’t believe that the man could have gone high enough for that. That was the most stimulating conversation that took place in our work group.

Our work group rode in the back of a truck to and from our work site out in the country. When we would pass the Magnolia Cemetery on the western edge of Greenville, one of the men took a fiendish delight in screaming out at the top of his voice, “skull orchard!”, even when there were people visiting graves in the cemetery.

I would have disliked the man’s disrespectful behavior even more had I known at that time that the old Farrior Family cemetery plot was located there. It contains the graves of my great grandparents, John and Sarah Farrior, and my grandparents, James S. and Mary Elizabeth Farrior, and some great aunts, great uncles, and cousins. At that time, I knew nothing about the history of the Farrior family, except that my grandfather, James Spurlock Farrior Sr., (I’m the third) had lived in Letohatchie, and his old home (built in 1895) was still standing. It was then occupied by Farrior cousins, descendants of my grandfather’s brother, Edward Farrior.

I didn’t learn until many years later that in 1832 my great great grandparents, William and Nancy Farrior, with their large family had come to the Union Springs area in Central Alabama from North Carolina, and that my great grandfather, John Farrior, after having run a store in Montgomery during the 1840s, had moved with his family to Greenville before the Civil War. My grandfather had served in the Civil War, and had returned home to Greenville, where he married my grandmother in 1871. Some years later they moved with their children to a farm near Letohatchie. In the 1960s, my first cousin Alvahn Holmes, who lived in Baltimore, and I had the tombstones and slabs cleaned and re-set, and the wrought iron fence repaired. Since then, I have visited the cemetery a number of times, and recently found that the handsome wrought iron gate with the name “Farrior” on it has disappeared, apparently to make it easier to get a riding lawn mower into the enclosure.

After about two weeks with the work group, I decided to take the matter into my own hands. One Saturday, without asking Lt. Derrick, I took the ailing receiver to a radio repair shop in town. I was lucky because the repair shop was run by a radio amateur, Ed Montgomery, who listened with compassion to my sad story. When he learned that all that stood between my being a ditch digger and my being a radio operator was the inoperative receiver, he put it on his workbench and checked it out. An inductance in the plate circuit of the audio stage was open, and at no charge, he replaced it with a resistor. Although not an ideal fix, the receiver worked well enough for me to get WUGI back on the air. What luck! Lt. Derrick was happy to have the radio back in operation, and immediately gave me some messages to send. He assumed that I had fixed it, and made some kind comments, but I couldn’t see any reason for destroying his pride in having such a competent radio operator. Besides, Ed Montgomery didn’t need the credit as much as I did. Life at Greenville had suddenly become quite pleasant.

After the ditch digging experience with work-mates who seemed to feel that ditch-digging was a high calling, it was really good to be able to stay in camp and operate the radio. One evening, Ed Montgomery, whose ham radio call was W4FAZ, took me to his home and showed me his fine homebuilt 160-meter ham station in an attic room. He told me how much fun he had had building and operating the equipment, and I knew then and there that some day, somehow, I would have a amateur radio license and would build my own equipment. Only recently, in 2003, I learned that Ed Montgomery and J. D. Lamar, my previously mentioned friend from Ft. Deposit, were good friends, and that after I left Greenville, Ed would make arrangements to have the radio operator then at Greenville give J. D. the code test for his amateur radio examination. The nearest Federal Communications Commission office was in Atlanta, and the rules permitted that anyone living in a distant location could be given the entry level (Class “C”) amateur radio license exam by a person holding a higher grade license.

It was a most happy day when the fabulous RME 69 receiver arrived and was placed on the operating table. What a beauty! It even smelled good. In addition to copying the messages that I heard on our net, I practiced copying on the “mill” (typewriter) for several hours per day the fast code transmitted by Press Wireless. Gradually, I became quite good at it. Mother loaned me $8.00 to purchase a McElroy speed key (bug), and I repaid her over the next several months. Many hours were spent learning to use it proficiently.

There was no darkroom at Selma, so I couldn’t sell photos to the men. Instead, there was a small woodworking shop, and I learned to use the lathe, drill press, circular saw, and planer. Only one other man in camp showed any interest in the shop, so we had it to ourselves. Using the equipment was fun and good training, but I couldn’t find any way to earn some extra money, as I had done using the darkroom at Selma.



Lt. Derrick. the C.O., at his desk. - His office was rather small, and the radio table was very close to his desk. He also had a company clerk, a C.C.C. man, whose desk was across the room from him. The headphones for the radio can be seen in the foreground. Lt Derrick spent most of the day doing paper work at his desk. As can be seen, when my chair at the operating table was pulled back, it almost touched Lt. Derrick’s desk. I’m sure this cozy situation wasn’t very good for him, but he never complained to me about the almost constant code that could be heard in spite of my using the earphones and having the volume turned down.

Shortly after WUGI was back on the air, Pascal Morris, my assistant operator, arrived. Actually no assistant operator was needed, and it was a temporary assignment to await a vacancy. One good thing about having the assistant operator was that I was able to get permission from time to time to spend a Saturday and Sunday in Letohatchie. As I recall, the net had schedules all day on Saturday, but not on Sunday.

Previous to my first visit home after joining the C.C.C., I had not observed or felt much happiness in our home. However, Melvin welcomed me like I was his son, and I was delighted to find Mother, Melvin, Anne and Joe all very happy and enjoying Mrs. Powell’s home. Even Mrs. Powell, who had lived in the big house by herself, seemed to be glad to have them. For the first time in Letohatchie, our family had electricity, a refrigerator, running water, a bathroom and an inside toilet. Mother was delighted to be able to spend her day making a home for the family, rather than worrying continuously about how the family was going to have food to eat. I had not seen them for nearly a year, and both Joe and Anne had grown a lot. What a pity I could not have remained there to enjoy it with them! I was pleased to see that all of my stuff was stored in a safe, dry place.





Radio Station WUGI at the C.C.C camp in Greenville. - Pascal Morris is copying a message on the “mill”, the telegrapher’s name for the typewriter. Ed Montgomery, W4FAZ, the owner and operator of a radio repair shop in Greenville, with whom I became friends, gave me the speaker that is on top of the RME-69 receiver. The 28 watt transmitter, not seen, is on a shelf just above the speaker. The speaker could be used only when Lt. Derrick was not present. When the net was not in session, short wave and long wave broadcast stations could be received. The book beside the receiver is my much studied radio theory course that I bought in Pensacola.

At our camp, there were two wires that ran down the center of the barracks to provide power for the several overhead light bulbs. The two insulated wires were separated and held in place by ceramic insulators, and where the light bulb sockets were connected, the wires were bare. One big powerful, but not very bright, man in our barracks had a silly habit of touching one of the bare spots on the wire, and challenging the men to line up holding hands. The last man in the line had to touch the bare spot on the other wire, thereby completing the circuit through the men. What a jolt! Anyone who wouldn’t participate was called a sissy, so everybody present usually got in line. It didn’t make any sense to me, but I didn’t want to be called a sissy.

Mother wrote telling me that she and Melvin had decided to buy Mrs. Alma Williams house, which was a rather nice house by Letohatchie standards. Miss Alma was a widow, whose husband had many years before died a horrible death from rabies, after having been bitten by a dog. She was moving away to live with her sister in another town. Miss Alma, who was a nice elderly lady, had some fruit trees in her yard, and in season, she would sometimes hand me a much appreciated piece of fruit when I would pass her house. The house had electricity, but had no bathroom, inside toilet, or running water. On a small screened porch in back of the kitchen there was a well with a rope, pulley, and bucket. The house had a large backyard, a hen house, a feed house, a cow shed and lot, and also a large garden. There was no down payment, and the payments would be $20.00 per month, only $5.00 more per month than the rent paid to Mrs. Powell. They were happy to have a nice place of their own, and they moved into the house on Oct. 1, 1937. Mother had maintained a goal of some day moving back to Birmingham, but I’m sure she no longer had to desire to do that. Things had changed considerably in Birmingham, and she was now quite happy in Letohatchie.

About two weeks after they had moved, I spent a weekend at the new home, and was delighted to see how happy they were. Melvin treated me like a son, and told me that he wanted me to leave the C.C.C. at the appropriate time to enter school the next year so that I could finish high school. Mother had already checked and had been told that I could enter the 12th grade in spite of my not having attended the second semester of the 11th grade. Melvin said that I could close in the back porch to make a bedroom. I made a design having two small windows to provide light and ventilation, and prepared a list of materials that would have to be ordered and shipped in by rail. When I told Melvin I could do the work in two weekend visits, he said that he would order the materials right away. Unfortunately, in January Pascal was transferred to another camp at Chunchula, Alabama, making it difficult for me to get any time off. I left Greenville before the materials arrived, and they were stored in the feed house.

The C.C.C. Camp at Torch Hill, near Ft. Benning, Georgia

The previously mentioned problems about the radio net possibly having to shut down were all solved as a side effect of a redistricting of C.C.C. camps. In early February 1938, I copied the last message that I would receive at WUGI. It stated that WUGI would be temporarily closed, and that I was directed to depart immediately for Company 4455 at Torch Hill, at the northern boundary of the Ft. Benning military reservation. Since I might not return to Greenville, I was directed to carry my personal things with me.

The Net Control Operator explained to the net that due to the redistricting, the Greenville Camp and some others were being assigned to District H, which had its headquarters at Fort Benning, Georgia. District H already had a functional radio net and code school. The Net Control Station at Ft. Barrancas was being closed, and Captain Phillips had already departed to become the Signal Officer for District H.

The next morning, I took the train to Montgomery, and waved a sad goodbye to Letohatchie when passing through. At Montgomery, I took a train to Opelika, where I changed trains and went to Columbus, Georgia, which was a short ride. A truck from the camp met me at the station in Columbus, and I was taken to the Torch Hill Camp. This travel experience lasted a little over 4 hours, and had been a breeze compared to the awful trip from Morton to Greenville.

The Net Control Station for District H, WUGA, was located in its own building at the Torch Hill Camp. It was already operating with those stations, new and old, that then had operators. Capt. Phillips had inherited a code class, with instructors, that had 16 students, 8 of which were new, and 8 were nearing graduation. One of the operators at WUMA, the Net Control Station, had already left because his time had run out, and the other operator had to be replaced because he would soon leave.

Capt. Phillips had called in a group of operators to be tested to see which one would be chosen to replace the outgoing Chief Operator. A few days later, after all of the candidates had arrived, we were given examinations in radio theory, code copying skills, and the Army Signal Corps traffic handling procedures.

Capt. Phillips interviewed all of the candidates, and his deputy, Ensign Dausman, administered the tests. My many hours of studying radio theory, copying code, and practicing with my bug really paid off because after the tests, I was selected to be the Chief Operator. Noel Vaughan and Franklyn Moorehead, would continue to be the classroom instructors. Noel Vaughan would also serve as my assistant operator. In addition, the administrative clerk, Samuel Talbert, would remain on the station staff.

I was the only one in the group of men that had been called in who personally knew Capt. Phillips (W4CRA), and that probably had something to do with my being selected. It was hard for me to believe that I had gone from a student at the school in Ft. Barrancas to Chief Operator of the Net Control Station at Ft. Benning in less than nine months. And part of that time had been spent doing manual labor at Greenville.

Left: - Pascal Morris, who had been my assistant operator at Greenville before he was transferred to WUGM at Chunchula Ala. After the selection process was over, Pascal returned to Chunchula, and Samuel J. Grice was assigned to replace me at Greenville.

In 1948, while I was attending Auburn University and living in Opelika, my wife Peggy and I went to Columbus, Ga. We took the opportunity to visit the Torch Hill site where the C.C.C. camp had been located. It was a beautiful site, overlooking the Chattahoochee River valley. We had arrived just in time as a bulldozer was preparing the site for a housing development. The view from the site was I remembered it, but the only relic of the C.C.C. camp was the small stone-lined goldfish pool seen in the above photo. But for that, I would not have been sure that I was at the correct site. If we had arrived an hour later, perhaps that, too, would have been leveled. Probably none of the people who would live in that development would ever hear about the more than 200 young C.C.C. men who had once lived on that site.

At WUGA, I gained a considerable amount of maintenance and repair experience on a variety of communications equipment, in addition to handling telegraphic traffic for about eight hours per day. Capt. Phillips, had a good library of technical books, which I enjoyed studying. He had installed his amateur station in a room in our building, and he often invited me to sit in on his amateur operating sessions.

Initially, all of the stations in the net had old army surplus equipment, but Capt. Phillips was very good at getting funds, and immediately began replacing the old equipment with new RME-69 communications receivers and new 80 watt Harvey 80T transmitters. That was an excellent combination that met all of our needs.

Early on, a very few of the students would demonstrate an inability to learn the code, or were otherwise unqualified, and they were sent back to their camps. The possibility of being sent back to their camps to do manual labor was sufficient motivation for the students to do the best they could.

Keeping all of the radio stations manned, some with two operators, was difficult because of men leaving the Corps for various personal reasons, or for having completed the maximum allowable service of two years. Only men who were recently inducted were considered as candidates for the radio school.

Franklyn Morehead, the Lower Class Instructor - He, is using an “Instructograph” automatic code sending machine for sending code characters and text that could be heard in the earphones. The machine used paper tapes with holes corresponding to the code characters to be sent, and the tape speed could be adjusted to send at the desired speed. A telegraph key on the instructor’s desk could be used to send messages of the type the student would be required to copy when assigned to a station. The student’s desks also had a telegraph key, and both sending and receiving were practiced.. One student could send a message to be copied by the other students. The Upper Class spent more time simulating traffic handling.

Since the Net Control Station operator would normally send traffic on a semi-automatic key (bug), the Upper Class instructor would often use a bug to send code practice. At the stations, the operators were required to deliver their messages typed on radio-telegram forms, so the students were given basic instruction in touch typing and the art of copying code on the telegrapher’s typewriter, which is called a “mill”. The mill has all capital characters. Mills were available for the students to practice typing after class, and most of them did.

By the end of the school, the students had achieved a code speed of at least 15 words per minute. The students were taught the same traffic handling procedures as were used by the U.S. Signal Corps. Enough basic radio theory was taught to enable the students to tune their equipment properly.

Each student was expected to continue practicing after arrival at his station by copying on the typewriter the messages that were sent to other stations in addition to those send to his station. At his station, he could also gain practice in the evening by copying the amateur and commercial transmissions that could be heard on the air.

Amateur Radio Station W4CRA - Capt. Phillips’ fabulous 1 KW station was brought from Ft. Barrancas, where I had helped him do some work on it while a student there. The radio frequency rack is on the left, and the class B modulator rack is on the right, but is not shown in the photo. The unit on top of the RME-69 receiver is a RME DB-20 preselector, which made the receiver far more sensitive. The small box to the left of the receiver is an “electron coupled oscillator” (ECO), which allowed the transmitter frequency to be set to any frequency in the amateur bands. Capt. Phillips had an excellent technical radio background, but was not a good telegraph operator. Instead, he used a microphone. He operated primarily on 20 meters, and he enjoyed contacting foreign stations. In those days, the transmitting components were large and very heavy, especially the transformers. Today, a station having the same power will fit into two relatively small desk-mounted cases. One would be a transceiver, and the other an RF power amplifier. . The class B modulator equipment would not be required today as a modern amateur radio station using voice would use single sideband modulation (SSB) instead of class B, amplitude modulation (AM).

Radio Station WUGO, Auburn, Ala., with Dalton Hildreth at the operating desk. - The installation, which uses an 80 watt Harvey 80T transmitter and a RME-69 receiver is identical to the standby station at WUMA, which was also used as a radio amateur radio station with the call W4EQI.

When I was at Auburn installing the equipment, I would not have dreamed that I would some day attend college there and would receive a degree in Electrical Engineering (Communications Option). While attending Auburn, I served as Chief Engineer of the local broadcast station, WJHO. Following graduation, I taught radio engineering subjects at Auburn for a year before joining Dr. Wernher von Braun’s guided missile group in Huntsville, Alabama.

Left -- Thurston L. Lee (W5GOH) - He sent me this photo of him when he was the operator at WUGE, Sulphur Springs, Florida. He was one of the best operators in the net. He already had his amateur radio license when I went to WUGA.

One day Noel Vaughan was operating, and he thought he had sent a message. However, unknown to him, the transmitter’s plate voltage was off. He could hear the side tone, but there was no power output. He was patiently waiting for an acknowledgement when I spotted the problem.

While at Torch Hill, I was very happy and proud when I received my amateur radio license (on Aug 2, 1938), with the call W4FOK, which I still have. Capt. Phillips gave me the test. At Torch Hill, we had a standby radio station equipped with a RME-69 receiver and a Harvey 80T transmitter, the same setup as shown in the previous photo of Dalton Hildreth at WUGO. Most of the outlying stations had the same equipment. I could also use the standby station for amateur radio when not on duty. It had a “club call” of W4EQI, and I used it before I was licensed. Such operation was legal when done under the supervision of a licensed amateur, and Noel Vaughan held the call sign W4EUO.

When the C.C.C. camp at Torch Hill C.C.C. camp, where we lived and where WUGA was located, closed down, WUGA was moved to a centrally located site on the Ft. Benning Army base. We moved into a small building that contained a new 400-watt Harvey transmitter, an office, a classroom, a shop, a storeroom, and a dormitory room.

Although the new radio station was immediately put into operation, the sleeping quarters were not ready, so for several weeks we slept at a vacant C.C.C. camp at Harmony Church, about three miles east of the main post. Like the Army companies in those days, the C.C.C. camps were either black or white, and the Harmony Church camp had had black enrollees, but white officers. We lived in what had been the officer’s quarters. There was a recreational room with a pool table, so we played a lot of pool in the evening while we were there. We had a military truck for commuting between camp and work.

We ate at an Army mess in walking distance from our new location, so once again I enjoyed excellent food. The Post Theater and the army PX were close at hand, so we could take advantage of things that were not available at Torch Hill. Compared to our previous living conditions, the Army was ‘first class”.

The only thing that was not good about our new facility on the army base was that we were not equipped for amateur radio operation. We didn’t have the W4EQI club station that we had had at Torch Hill. There was also no place for Capt. Phillips to install his amateur station, so he moved it to his home in Columbus.

A photo of me standing beside a giant WW-I tank that was on display near our Net Control Station building.

Our store room contained not only our spares, etc., but also some old surplus radio equipment that had been brought in from the stations when they were upgraded. I wasn’t allowed to take one of the old transmitters, as they had not officially been declared junk, but from the junk I collected some parts, including an old inoperable pair of headphones, which I fixed. The prize, however, was an old National SW-3 regenerative receiver, which was inoperable, but I knew that I could repair it. Without it, I would probably not have been able to put a station together, as I had no parts with which to build a receiver. The National SW-3 was an old three-tube battery set that was identical to the receiver that had been at Greenville when I had first arrived there. One man's junk was certainly another man's treasure. I also found enough parts to build a power supply for the transmitter. My foot locker was filled with radio stuff, and I had to keep my clothing and other personal things in my barracks bag.

Noel’s call sign was W4EUO, and I talked with him over ham radio after WW-II. I also saw him at a ham fest in Melbourne, Florida, in 1988. I received a letter from his wife in 1998 saying that Vaughan had died of cancer on August 5, 1997, at age 83. His career was in aviation radio repair and maintenance.

In accordance with Melvin’s and Mother’s invitation, and my plan, I left the C.C.C. on Sept. 1, 1938, and went back home to Letohatchie. Noel Vaughan became the Chief Operator at WUGA. As expected, I was allowed to enter the 12th grade even though I had only attended the first semester of the 11th grade. The first thing that I did after I arrived at home was to enclose the back porch for which the materials had been previously bought and stored in the feed house. I hired a colored boy for 50 cents per day to help me for several days so that I could quickly have a room of my own.