OFF SCREEN: What were some of the roles, the duties, that you had for that department?

TREES: All the enrollees who had not graduated from high school had to attend school, as I remember, from about seven-thirty to ten o'clock at night.

We had some WPA teachers assigned to teach.

Then we had some of the boys that graduated high school taught some classes.

About the nearest I can explain to that is I did nearly what a high school principal does.

James D. Gray was our educational advisor, and he saw that it got done, and did very little of it.

I kept records on these enrollees, and when they completed a course, we gave them a certificate.

The ones who had finished high school got to take first aid classes, life-saving courses.

Some of them worked in the shop. I taught shop because I had two years of industrial arts in high school.

OFF SCREEN: What kind of equipment did you have in the shop?

TREES: We had a first-class shop. They had all kinds of equipment that came from one of the Army bases.

We had thirty-six inch sanders and joiners. Any cabinet maker would have been glad to have what they had.

OFF SCREEN: Were these electric powered tools?

TREES: All of it was electric. We had DC at the time when I come in here. We had two big old diesel motors.

We had everything when I first come here was on that DC.

Today we saw one of those cedar chests that was made while I was teaching that course.

OFF SCREEN: The students got to pick a project that they wanted to build? The cedar chest, you said, was one of the common choices?

TREES: They built anything they wanted to. We went to take a truck to Allen and Allen Lumber Company in San Antonio.

I think I got five thousand feet of cedar one time.

They built cedar chests, small ones as big as four feet long up to one for a vanity, size for a vanity.

Then there was one boy made a bedroom suite out of it. Just anything they wanted to build.

OFF SCREEN: Did they have to pay for the lumber?

TREES: No, we furnished everything.

OFF SCREEN: So they got all that for free.

TREES: That's right.

OFF SCREEN: Wonderful.