There was a reason those classrooms were so crowded.  I have written about it before, but some of you have joined me lately, so I'll tell it again.  The government built a dam just outside Pryor.  Grand River Dam.  The reason for the dam was a need for electricity--to run a powder plant that was built to make ammunition for the war.  Men who had not been drafted flocked to the town for the jobs, and with them, their families.  Their children.  What had once been a small town now burgeoned.  There were no houses to rent.  Families lived three and four to a house.  They lived in tents in the park.

My dad commuted from Tulsa on Monday and came home on Friday, until I was three years old, and we finally got a two room place.  And were very thankful for it.  I slept on the sofa.  The kitchen was a short wall in the tiny living space.  A little burner, oven, sink and ice-box.  No refrigerator.

Grades 1-6 were crammed into a building that had once housed the entire school.  The government started construction on a building to house grades 7-12, but in the mean time, they set up Quonset huts in the park for high school.  A hut for each subject.  And churches opened their rooms as well.

The government constructed housing--hundreds of them.  They called them the Court Houses because they were grouped into courts of seven houses.  Three facing each other and one at the end with a walk up the middle.  But it took time and each house was filled the moment it came available.  After a year on the waiting list, we got a four room house.  Heaven.  Each house in the court had shutters with designs.  Ours had candlesticks.

It was a unique American situation caused by war.  But somehow, we all got through it.  Within two years things were better.  And then, when the war ended, the ammunition plant closed and hundreds and hundreds of men were out of a job.  The court houses emptied and the government sold the houses.  People who stayed bought them and moved them to empty lots.  You can still see them all over Pryor.  God bless America.  We are a people with grit.