313 Ferrell Place was just one of the unremarkable white two storied houses that lined each side of the steep narrow street. In ‘their day’ these houses had been homes of the ‘well to do’ of the small Texas town. Now, most of them had been turned into boarding houses for students attending the nearby business college. Some of them stood empty. In others, elderly widows held on to the last remnants of their past lives.
As you climbed the concrete stairs leading from the street you could see the porch swings on each end of the veranda that ran the complete width of the house. The windows had no shutters & the house was very much in need of a paint job but Mrs. Scott, who owned & ran the boarding house, was long past caring much about how the property looked. The entry way was a small dark area with doors on all four sides. Entering the front door, there was a parlor to the left, a bedroom (which was always locked) to the right and straight ahead was the large dining room. In the dining room were two long tables each able to seat 12 people and a sideboard along one of the walls, which were covered with a long faded floral wallpaper. In the middle of the ceiling hung an ugly light fixture that when turned on, threw weird shadows across the whole room, thus making it a most unappetizing room in which to eat.
A staircase leading to the second floor was built into one side of the dining room and a door at the back of the room opened into a small kitchen & washroom. The stairway went straight up twenty steps leading to a landing with 6 bedrooms and 1 large dorm-type bathroom built around it.
