Yes, I was for a short period. [unknown] fortunate enough
that… I don't know whether you would call it luck or what you would call
it. It wasn't exactly luck, but… There 's a white family, and the
gentleman is still living today, Mr. Floyd Culp. He was what we called
at that time the walking boss over the construction department. And me
being the youngest coming along, he taken an interest in me, and he let
me work and kept me working during most of the Depression. I'd work
fifty hours of the week for ten dollars. I worked sixty hours of the
week for twelve dollars [unknown] That's work ten hours a
day and work on Saturday, when we'd make sixty hours. And I had my
mother; I had two sisters and my three brothers, was all at home with
nothing to do, and I worked and supported them and kept them going out
of ten and twelve dollars a week. And I can recall mighty well Mr.
Fickes, who was superintendent of the construction department. We had to
live so close till… I would need to buy my sister maybe a pair of shoes.
My mother would say that they needed shoes or she needed a dollar and a
half or two dollars to buy them dresses. Well, I couldn't get that far
ahead, and I'd go to his home at night, and Mrs. Fickes would meet me at
the door, and she'd say, "Walter, it's Clyde." "Well, tell him to come
on in."
Page 7 And so he was a Yankee, and he'd go to bed
at sundown. And so whenever I'd go in, sometime he wouldn't wait. He'd
say, "Clyde, sir, what's the matter? You need money? Them girls need
some shoes or something?" I'd say, "Yes, Mr. Fickes, I do. I need some
money. I need to get them a few things, and I don't have the money." He
said, "Would you want five dollars?" Five dollars was a good bit of
money then. I told him, "Yes, let me have five dollars." And he'd tell
me, "Well, now, don't you try to pay it all back at one time. You just
pay a little bit of it back at a time. Don't try to pay five dollars
back." And I really wasn't able, out of ten dollars a week, and you
could figure it. If you ate, and what I was doing was keeping my sisters
in school, and both of them graduated from high school.