Moving into the YWCA

I had about a month of summer before I moved to Springfield Missouri to attend the beauty college. Mom drove me and my "stuff" up there, it is about an hour's drive. I was moving into the YWCA. It had a real nice common use lobby and there was a desk for the lady in charge to sit at. She answered the phone and called us on the intercom to tell us we had a phone call. The only phones were downstairs. in the middle of the hallway. We would hear our name on the intercom and then we would go out in the hall and holler "yes" to let her know we were up there. Then she would tell us we had a call. When I first moved in I had a room on the third floor. All the rooms were for two girls. I, of course, didn't know any of the girls including my roommate. She was nice enough but was so quiet and timid. As I got to know some of the other girls I moved to a couple other rooms. The first move was to a room in the basement with a girl named Gloria. She was nice and kind of funny, but she would wear my clothes sometimes and stretch them because she was a bit larger then I was. Then I moved in with a girl on the second floor and that one worked out just fine. I stayed there all the rest of the time that I was at the Y. When we would have a visitor, the lady would tell us so over the intercom . No boys or men were allowed past the lobby. Whenever we went out for the evening we would have to be back "home" by midnight because that is when they locked up the doors and there would be no getting in.

This was a good place for me to live in between leaving home and living in an apartment. I was not immature, but I was still very young. This arrangement worked out just great for quite a while, and then Jane and I decided to move into an apartment. This was about a year later.