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their yearly supply. Each family would come to the spring,
and they would camp out:there for a week and made their own what
we would call rum, moonshine, white lightning. So I was
accustomed to drinking at Christmas time, but I didi't
drink at the university, never did.
P: How did the university let these boys shoot crap on the
sidewalk?
L: How do they let boys do a lot of things they're not supposed
to do today?
P: I see.
L: I don't know that there was any prohibition against it, and
they bet sometimes on it.
P: You ate in the Commons?
L: Yes.
P: How was the food there?
L: Compared to the food at Laird's Camp, it was wonderful.
P: You found nothing wrong with :the university.
L: The only thing wrong with it was that-they gave us spinach
sometimes and I can't eat spinach to this day, although
they've improved it a great deal.
P: Who was in charge of the dormitory? Who was the matron?
L: An elderly lady named [Mrs. Margaret] Peeler. Later on, in
order to develop some refinement, Dr. Murphree made arrangements
for a Miss Elizabeth Skinner, a graduate of Smith College. Her
family was rather wealthy down in Pinellas County, the Skinner
family. They came originally from Wisconsin. They employed
her as the director of the YMCA on the campus. She was a
vivacious kind of a person, and they gave her an apartment in
one end of Buckman Hall. By that time I was out of Buckman
Hall, but I knew Miss Skinner. She had a lot of influence over
my life. We used to say that the dormitories were in charge
of Peeler and Skinner.