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P: When you got downtown you could go to Florida Theatre or the Lyric.
L: Yes, and stop and get ice cream at the drugstore in the middle
of the block facing the front of the old courthouse--McCullums's
Drugs.
P: And you went to the Lyric Theatre for the movies.
L: Yes. I never did take a course in the movies, but I did go
to the movies.
P: You finished the university that year andyou went where to work
on your degree?
L: To the University of Chicago.
P: In political science or history?
L: In political science under Dr. Charles E. Merriam, one of the
greatest-personalities I've known in my life. Although I knew better
in class Leonard E. White, who was a well-known figure in public
affairs back in those days.
P: How long were you in Chicago?
L: One year. At the end of the yearI went back to Gainesville and
I would prefer to connect the University of Chicago experience
with the subject that I said I'd tell you about when we discussed
O. K. Armstrong. We'll now go back to that and pick it up.
P: All right, why don't we pick up at that point.
L: I explained earlier in the interview that I did not tell my
mother goodbye when she died, and I was eight years old at
that time. I would have been eight years old three months after
her death. I always felt a sense of guilt and wondered if she would
ever forgive me for not telling her goodbye. I never mentioned
it to anyone, Ididn't discuss it, but I began a practice which
she had taught me of saying prayers every night. AfterI went
away to school, I didn't kneel by the bed, but I prayed myself
to sleep at night. I can't recall a single time when I failed
to pray at night. In praying, I'd think about everything I
had done that day and everything I should do the next day. So I
developed a messianic complex.
In high school there was a girl in my class that I thoroughly