When one thinks of the US labor movement, one doesn't typically think of black rural poor communist miners in the Jim Crow South. Dan Friedman's Ain't Never Been Easy attempts to remedy this notion, portraying true events from Birmingham, Alabama. To emphasize the feel of the Great Depression and the former slave quarters-turned-black worker housing in industrialized neighborhoods of the time, I created two primary motifs: wood walls, pieced and patched ad infinitum; and a dirt floor throughout. The dirt floor was ever-present and evoked a feeling of poverty but also of earthiness. We wound up using mulch and it gave off a lovely, earthy scent throughout the space, moistening the air, making the space feel "close". Every patron I spoke to had a different emotional response of the smell (uneasy, homey, comforted, homesick, youthful, etc.), which I feel made it successful.