Interview with Lois Beville Cone 23
March 30, 1995


C: My earliest memories of Gainesville are things that I did. Now, that University Avenue, the
 college was already there, but Ms. Walker, whose husband was in the Army and I think was head of ROTC at the University of Florida, she was our Girl Scout leader, and we used to go for weekend campouts in the area where the bank is now, when it was just a tremendous pine
 grove.

O: What bank would that be?

C: The one not too far from where your mother lived, where you all lived.

0: Barnett Bank.

C: The one that is on University Avenue. And that was a pine grove and that is where we would
 have our weekend campouts.

0: So you belonged to the Girl Scouts, and Mrs. Walker was your leader? Well then, you must
 have been the first Girl Scouts in Gainesville, or one of the first troops.

C: I really do not know, probably so.

0: At that time, did Girl Scouts sell cookies?

C: No, no, we did not. I really do not remember what we did. I remember being a Girl Scout
 and going camping in that pine grove.

0: In that pine grove on University, what is now University Avenue near the University. Do
 you remember any special events that happened in Gainesville? You mentioned a fire, but
 that was when you were older?

C: No, not really. I think Gainesville was just a nice, quiet, you know, a family oriented town,
 and I can not remember anything.

0: Do you have any memories of the University and how it impacted on Gainesville as you
 were growing up?

C: No, I can remember, though, in high school, Jessie Gibbs had a Ford and it was our delight
 to get in the Ford and ride out to the University to look at the students, that was about it. I can remember, yes, I can remember an impact, when we lived on Arredondo Street. Mother and daddy had a sleeping porch all the way across the back of the house, so that is where we slept, year round, and then we had a dressing room, and that is where we would dress. In
 growing up, I did not have a bedroom. We were all on the sleeping porch.

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