SHIPYARD DORMITORIES

One of Grandpa’s stories about working at the shipyard at Brunswick, GA, in World War II.

They had built new dormitories right there at the shipyard for single people like me coming in. It was a gun barrel building. There was an outlet at each end. You went in the end of it, and there was a hall, and rooms on each side, just like horse stalls in a mule barn.

Each room was a little biddy cubby hole of a room. There were two single beds in there, with just enough room to walk in between them. Your dresser was at one end of the bed, and that bed would be against the wall. So the other one was opposite from that. I don’t know what the width of it was - it must have been maybe ten feet wide and twelve feet long, or something of that nature.

Then they had a community bath, you know. Showers where everybody went to the same place in the middle of the building. And that was it. There was no eating facilities or anything. Just somewhere to sleep. Then they charged you so much a month, and whenever you hired on, you didn’t have an opportunity to go over there and see what you were getting or anything. They’d just tell you where to stay. Here’s your room number, certain dormitory, and that’s where you’d stay. That’s the way it was.