University of Florida 01

I need to take care of a few small but important details before jumping into academic life at the University of Florida. After I accepted the research assistantship, Prof. Anderson invited me to Gainesville at the Department’s expense to tour their offices, meet the faculty, be introduced to the University campus, and sign a housing contract. Sandy, who had yet to recover completely from being pissed off at my agreeing to go to the University of Florida and leave St. Louis without sufficient consultation with her, demanded that I take photos of the married student housing where we would be living. She also insisted on it being air conditioned since Florida was so hot and humid.

Naturally, wanting to mollify her, I had agreed but knew problems were on the horizon. From the pile of information Anderson had sent me, I knew that of the four married student housing complexes, on the RA salary I would be paid we could only afford the cheapest, a grim looking place called Flavet Village. Flavet was short for Florida Veterans since the two-story wooden, barrack-like buildings had been constructed in 1946 to house married veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill. So, you can imagine what they looked like in the mid-1960s. That was going to be a very hard sell and I wasn’t sure how it would work because the brochures Anderson sent included the information that Flavet units could not be air conditioned because of electrical wiring issues.

Since I was under specific instructions to take pictures of Flavet on my trip I had to come up with something but hadn’t a clue as to what that would be. Because I knew that if the housing didn’t meet Sandy’s requirements she would NOT go to Gainesville and my plans for an academic future would be circling the drain. I was not about to let that happen. Call my attitude selfish if you like but that was my dream and I wasn’t going to let it slip away over something like the lack of air conditioning.

The trip was a fantastic success. After introducing me to the faculty — and the departmental secretary, Sharon Leigh, a slim, incredibly foxy young woman about my age with short carroty-red hair and devil-may-care eyes — Anderson took me to the Grad Room, a large open room filled with carrels, light tables, shelves filled with geography and related books, a couple old but still serviceable couches, a new refrigerator, two electric typewriters, and various types of cartographic equipment. It was bright and airy and looked like a grad student’s dream. Mine at the very least.

On the second day I walked to the Housing Office and signed the contract for Flavet. Only then did I think about the photo. I walked to Flavet and went up and down the narrow lanes looking for an attractive building to shot. No luck. Using my version of Sandy’s eyes I knew they all looked unacceptable. That’s when I remembered seeing a Flavet-like structure that was in good condition on one of the main roads. So, I hiked in the direction I thought would bring me near that building and was right on the money. There it was, looking exactly like the Flavet Village units. But recently painted and with an air conditioning unit in the window. Of course I took that picture and represented it to Sandy as a typical Flavet building.

I’d pay dearly for that decision later but moved we did. When we packed the car and a small trailer with our non-furniture possessions I made sure we brought my grandfather’s old window fan. It was easily the most powerful fan I have ever seen, before or since. An old industrial model it could literally suck a gold ball through a hose. We turned out to be the envy of all our Flavet neighbors because our apartment was always the coolest. By far.

*     *     *

The University of Florida’s Geography Department was an exciting place to be in the late 1960s. It wasn’t in the top ten grad departments in the U.S. but had a better than adequate reputation. One shining light was the Chairman, James Anderson, known to grad students as Big Jim because of his stature and girth, who had started his career as an agricultural specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (and who over the course of the next few years taught me why all Americans should hate that agency and the billions of ag welfare dollars doled out to wealthy corporate farmers by their good friends in Congress) and then developed a national reputation in land use and land cover analysis. Another was Stanley Brunn, a young professor from Ohio State who specialized in urban social issues like crime and poverty. I immediately requested Stan as my advisor and that was arranged.

The critical variable, and one that I hadn’t given much thought, were the grad students. Most of them were very bright and hard-working. Some were exceptionally so. I found out that Wayne Hoffman and Gerry Romsa, two of the older guys everyone looked up to, had been TAs/RAs and PhD students at Ohio State University and switched to the U of F when Brunn came. I initially thought that was strange but then was told that the two had been fucked over by the OSU Geography Department. They had been forced to leave when they supported a university-wide TA strike for better pay and working assignments. When they refused to cave in the department dismissed them and Brunn had gotten them assistantships at Gainesville. Not my first introduction to how assholes thrive in academia.

During that first semester I worked as a research assistant for David Niddrie, a South African who specialized in Africa, tropical agriculture, and Caribbean (island) geography. He was a stern task master who I got along with well, working hard to make sure he was always pleased with my efforts. I drew a number of maps for a book he was writing on the Cahora Bassa project in Mozambique, did research for his professional papers, and taught his classes in the cultural geography course when he was too busy or was traveling on a research project. I also taught a few classes in Brunn’s urban geography course.

To my surprise and delight, halfway through that first semester, Anderson called me into his office and offered me a National Defense Education Fellowship. It would pay all my tuition, books, and fees as well as provide $500 a month and have no duties, meaning no teaching or research responsibilities. Plus, it would pay $2,000 toward my dissertation costs. All I had to do was get a B average over the year. Knock me over with a feather. Hell yes, I accepted his offer. Back in 1967, $500 was worth around $4,000 today, not counting the money for books, fees, and tuition I suddenly didn’t have to pay. It was a sweet deal.

*     *     *

Another sweet deal for Sandy and I fell out of the sky about two weeks after we had arrived in Gainesville and one week after starting coursework. One night after an extended session in which we played one of the early games that simulated urban development, Gerry Romsa, a third-year grad student who hailed from Canada, asked me if I was flush.

“Flush?” I asked. “You meant financially?”

When he responded in the affirmative I told him the truth, that we had about $200 in our bank account and no real prospects of adding to that until I received the monthly paycheck from the University for my RA duties. He then told me his wife was leaving a part-time job she was doing for Harry Warfel, a professor in the English Department. It was a tedious but simple job that involved cleaning up Xeroxed copies of old manuscripts using White-Out and very fine tipped paint brushes. Warfel would then publish those old books. If Sandy would be interested in taking it on his wife would arrange an interview with Prof. Warfel. Hell, yes, she’d do it. I knew she would because taking care of David, who was four months old at the time, didn’t occupy all her day. And we needed the money, big time.

When I returned to our Flavet apartment that night I told her about Gerry’s inquiry and she immediately agreed. In short, she got the job, which paid $2 an hour, and we both did what we came to call Warfel-work from then until we left Gainesville in May 1970.