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wholesale grocery and dried goods store, farmer's service. He said, "Will
thirty dollars a month be too much?" I said, "No, it just happened that
you gave me thirty-five extra." That's the way I got started there, and
then the economy started to pick up, and I had to have more money. When
they got a vacancy, they started to send me to Quincy, and I was packed
up. They stopped me, and then they sent me to Taylor County. They'd had
three county agents there. When they have trouble they used to send me, see.
K: What sort of trouble would they have?
M: Political. In other words, the county agent wasn't suiting them. He was on
the wrong side of the fence. Another county commission would get into some-
thing, and get on his coattails.
K: What sort of thing could a county agent do that would irritate the local
political power?
M: Well, when I worked for Taylor County, the last county agent likedotohunt: and
fish, besides treating the hogs, too. He told the farmer one day that he'd
been hunting, was sore, he couldn't climb over those things. That's what
started the ball along. Well, he wasn't adjusted to those type of people in
the first place. That was sawmill and turpentine country, Perry, and it was
rough. That's where I got the name of Dangerous Dan. I had to have some
fights.
I fought with some deputy sheriffs. One eventually got to be sheriff, but he
killed two or three people. I wouldn't back down, but I found out that they
were my friends, after I showed my colors, they would do anything you wanted.
I always had to work to make a living and I knew how to mix with people. I
could get along with them. Mr. Spencer, the head of the extension service,
said, "Dan, I don't care what you do, you just keep everything on the county
level. You get along. That means live with the people that you are working
with." I just got along with people. I knew how to handle them. I'd talk
their language, and I could get them to do most anything.
K: Did the individual counties have any say in who was hired as county agents?
M: Yeah, they had to match the money. But beginning way back there, they didn't
match the money. In other words, fifty dollars was all that county was putting
up now. Some had put up a hundred, a hundred-and-twenty-five, and a huided-andd-
fifty. But West Florida was a poor country. I call it the 11Hogiin .Harmony."
Everybody got along all right. They worked hard, but it wasn't like the citrus
and the vegetables down here, and they were getting tourist money,too. Up there
you weren't getting anything except what you got from the soil.
K: Between the wars, particularly during the Depression, did the agricultural
extension service try to get farmers to diversify their crops by getting away
from the old staples of cotton and peanuts? Did they begin growing food that
could be eaten?
M: In a way, but I wouldn't say too much. They were getting them to put up more
meat, more vegetables and to can. That's a woman's side,-canning and processing
the food, one thing or another. Put away for the rainy day.