roadster with the top down, and have a procession through Gainesville and
 around the campus.

 Gainesville did not have a regular airport; they had a glorified cow pasture
 with a wind sock. For about two hours a very small plane like a Piper Cub
 circled over Gainesville with some type of a sound system announcing that
 Bernard McFadden was going to be in Gainesville that evening for a
 campaign talk. We went out to the cow pasture to pick up this great man
 with all the muscles, and here came someone who looked about 5'2" and
 looked like he weighed about 85 pounds soaking wet, which really made us
 feel somewhat let down. But we picked up our candidate and put him in
 our procession, and we drove around town and through the campus honking
 our horns. We ultimately deposited him down at the Courthouse Square
 [downtown Gainesville] for his talk. Then we got rid of him.

 I did not vote for him. He was probably the last man on the ballot. Many
 of my friends accused me of getting a life subscription to the magazine that
 Bernarr MacFadden put out. Actually, all we got was his thanks. But that
 was my early introduction to politics.

P: I remember the parade, and I remember going down to Courthouse Square
 and listening to Bernarr MacFadden. He was a loon then, as he always was.

M: That is right. [laughter] When I was in Houston I was active on the precinct
 level in the Democratic party. I was a precinct chairman, and I was a
 delegate to the city and the state conventions. But I have felt that I am an
 old-time southern Democrat and that the Democratic party has left me, I
 have not left it.

P: That makes sense if you talk about the period since 1948, perhaps, but it is
 hard to believe, coming out of your tradition, that you would have been
 voting Republican in 1940.

M: Florida went for [Herbert] Hoover for president in 1928.

P: But that was on the Catholic issue, and not really the Republican situation.

M: Not as far as we were concerned down here. Al Smith [the Democratic
 candidate] did not have it. Now, south Florida has never been a member
 of the Bible belt. I do not really think that north Florida was, either, but it
 came closer. I do not think that Al Smith lost down here on the basis of
 being a Catholic.

P: All right. If you want to conduct a successful oral history interview, you
 should never get into an argument about religion, sex, or politics with the
 interviewee. [laughter] But sometime when the tape recorder is not going,
 perhaps we can discuss the 1928 campaign.

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