Over past the brook and up the Turnpike and over behind the Police Station (that’s the old building that used to be the poor house back in the thirties) there is a middle school. But on the ground it now stands once stood Vet Haven. That was a group of about fifty homes built by the town to house returning World War Two veterans. Cost them about thirty-five bucks a month to live there. The buildings were small and up on stilts, so the bathwater in the tubs wouldn’t stay warm long with the winter wind blowing beneath the house.

Anyone who visited one of these homes would be amazed at how orderly and clean they were. The people who lived in them knew what a debt of gratitude they owed the town, were starting new families and did the best they could to improve themselves and get established and move on to other housing.

By the early 1960’s the homes were all razed or moved to other locations and the middle school built, but the children who lived there, some born there, tell lovely stories. I’ll end this with an anecdote told by a lady who was a little girl there.

She remembers her family not having a television and every night her father would sit on the side steps with her and read to her from a book. That alone I find touching but what moves me even more is that the neighboring children would come around and sit and listen in. I guess they didn’t have TV’s either—or did they?

Chapter 31---Wow! Reading your description brought memories flooding back to me when I attended what was then Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville, Missouri. Some of the married student housing were in structures similar to what you described. Cheap rent, but bare minimums in comfort.