This is one of those dime movie/nickle candy bar things, but having started college in the early 1950's, I had to pay $40 a quarter, or $72 if I stayed in the dorm. After the first quarter I moved to a rented room in town, because the Freshman dorm was such a zoo I couldn't sleep or study.

In my senior year, they switched from a quarter system to a semester system and the cost went up to $65, without a dorm room. But with two semesters being the same as three quarters, the increase was really only about ten bucks.

However, in those days, that was a lot of money. I had $140 when I started and by the time I got some books, I was almost broke. I went hungry a lot, borrowed 35 cents from my sister a time or two, or hitch hiked home to Nashville 32 miles each way on Sunday because I knew my mother would feed me a square meal.

Then I got a job making 75 cents an hour and I thought I was rich. Basically, I worked 19 hours a week. That was three hours a day and four on Saturday. Sometimes they needed some extra help and I would get a couple of hours more. After deductions, my check was usually less than $15, but a hamburger was 35 cents and I could live on two a day. I gave up coffee to save five cents a day.

It took an act of Congress to get me a raise, but when I was a junior, they raised the minimum wage to $1 an hour. By that time, I was working two jobs at the paper most days; three hours in the editoral room in the morning and three hours in the shop in the afternoon. I generally had classes from 8 until 3. Some weeks I got in more than 30 hours, but I was getting up at 4:45 every morning, and seldom got to bed before 10 or 11 o'clock. I lost weight.

At the beginning of each quarter, I had to come up with $40. Sometimes it seemed like I was never going to make it. It might as well have been $40,000. But something always came up. I got to work all night on election night, or I would cover a ball game to get a few extra hours. Once I was sure I was not going to have the forty bucks, and here came an income tax refund.

There was no scholarship money, no GI bill, no loans, no grants. It was pay-as-you-go, cash only please.

And before I graduated, a coke went to six cents. It took me almost 5 years to get a 4 year degree, and I think I went to the movies twice during that time.

Would I do it all again? You bet.
Howard