Until I was ten years old, I shared a bedroom with my two sisters. The saying, "as crowded as three in a bed, " became truer and truer as our bodies grew and our spirits rose. In an upstairs corner of the house was a tiny room which was being used for storage. This, it was determined, was to be made into a room for me.

Glory be! Opal was going to have her very own room! Mama showed as much enthusiasm as I did, which was fortunate, because she was the kind that would see a project through if she put her mind to it. She helped me plan it all and to secure the necessary things to make that little storeroom into an adorable haven for a little girl" coming into her own.

I had accumulated a little over six dollars, saving it for "something important." By today's prices, it seems utterly ridiculous that anyone could furnish and decorate a bedroom for six dollars. But this was the time of the Big Depression, and sometimes it was nothing short of amazing what a little money and some ingenuity could produce.

We found a store that offered, for a dollar, enough matching wallpaper to cover a room. We chose a blue and white flowered design for the walls and wide border. I felt so right with the world while I helped cut, paste, and ease the strips of paper into position. I was enthralled at the flower garden effect it gave the room. We found a special sale on some white pricilla curtains for fifty-four cents a set. When the curtains were hung, they gave the room an aire that was crisp and pristine.

Mama learned of a sale where household goods were to be auctioned off. So with four dollars I had left, tied up in the corner of my handkerchief, I went along with her to buy a bed. We walked among the furniture and I spotted a three-quarter sized brass bedstead, but Mama said "We'll just have to see how the bidding goes, so don't get your hopes up. " When the bed went on the block and the auctioneer asked for a bid, nobody offered one. Then he began chanting for five dollars, then two fifty, then a dollar fifty. He could not have missed the gleam in my eye that betrayed my turmoil He pointed to me and asked whether I would give a dollar and a half. I nodded that I would Someone in the crowd said, "I'll give a dollar seventy-five, " but somebody else said "Shhh, " and the bid was withdrawn. The bed was mine! In much the same way, I purchased a commode, a tiny clawfoot table, and a wobbly chair that Mama said she could make solid again. A dull brass-framed mirror received no bid, so the auctioneer laid it on the commode saying it went with My "dresser. "

Even though my brother informed me that I'd bought a pile of junk, I felt great because I had visions of what could be done to glorify it. Pictures in magazines showed me "before" and "after" displays of rooms made beautiful with bright colored paint, so for forty-nine cents I bought enough blue paint to cover the bed, commode, mirror, chair, and table. When I put them in my new room, I thought they looked magnificent, especially the commode with its marbleized top and tiny shelves that jutted out over the hack-board probably designed for a soap dish and a glass. But for me they held tiny bottles of cheap perfume and trinkets I wore for jewelry. The commode had brass drawer pulls, but they were dull looking, and brass was considered cheap then, so I replaced them with round wooden knobs I bought for a penny each. On the dresser I placed a little vanity set (hand mirror, brush and comb) I had received as a Christmas present earlier.

An elderly lady, taking an interest in my new room, gave me a small glass kerosene lamp with a handle on it. This I placed on my little table. It was a time well before rural electrification, so having one's very own light was indeed a luxury. I read many wonderful books by the light of my little lamp.

We filled a tick with feathers Mama plucked from the geese on the farm. We tied two comforters, and I appliqued a sunbonnet quilt to use as a bedspread. A triangular corner shelf held my kewpie doll, and I displayed a Japanese folding fan and parasol on the wall. My "whoopie hat" perched on a bed post. Behind the door, Dad fastened a board that had clothes hooks spaced about eight inches apart. This served very well for my three school dresses and one "good" dress.

All told, it was a delightful room. The family referred to it as "Opal's room " I do not believe anything in my years of growing up gave me more a sense of worth than did that little room where I gathered my treasures and dreamed my dreams. It was there my girlfriends and I could giggle and whisper secrets and put Edna Wallace Hopper sample beauty masks on our faces to make us lovely.

This room became my haven, my own private place when I needed my own space; whether it was for a quiet time to learn just who I was, or to pout, or to exult in the joyful events of my young life. A pine tree as tall as the house itself shaded one of the windows. I can still smell its twangy fragrance and hear its whispering in the night when gentle breezes wafted through its branches.

After I went off to college, it returned to being a storeroom. One scorching summer day, unbelievably, every bit of that lovely flowered wallpaper fell down onto the bed, the dresser, the night stand, and the boxes that had begun to accumulate since I had left. Perhaps it symbolized that a little girl had grown up and now must sever ties.

The little kerosene lamp and the sunbonnet quilt constitute the only souvenirs I now have from my little room on the farm. More than sixty years have passed since then, but I remember it with joy and sometimes feel a bit lonesome for it. Published June 1999 Auxier Newsletter