POVERTY LEVEL CONT’D

Living in Flavet on the University of Florida campus on @ $250/month sounds like a pretty miserable life, but there were plenty of good times while we were there. In the first place, everyone living around us was in the same boat; no one had any money, so we could commiserate with each other. And for the most part, the people were intelligent and fun. So we enjoyed making new friends.

Also, we all knew that this was just temporary; it wasn’t like we were all going to have to spend twenty years living in these conditions. In fact, we all had hopes that we would be better off financially than we were before because of the additional education. A family of four moved in across the hall from us about the same time we did. The husband was getting his law degree and the wife told me that he had been quite successful in business; that she had gotten to the point where she could go into a store and buy anything she wanted. Now they were reduced to living like this.

We had no air conditioning, of course, and when the windows were open (which was most of the time), we could hear the frat parties not too far away. We heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles over and over again and loved it. And speaking of music, we were able to see a very young Johnny Cash in concert. We sat on the gym floor not twenty feet away from him while he sang; he was obviously high on something, but we didn’t care, we just loved his music.

Another person we were able to see was the famous (or infamous) Steve Spurrier, quarterbacking the football team as he was on his way to winning the Heisman trophy. We have been Gator sports fans ever since and have had many hours of enjoyment watching the various teams. The highlight for me as a fan was attending the 2007 BCS Bowl championship game as my team upset favored Ohio State for their second national title. I’ll be forever grateful to my son-in-law Mike for getting such great tickets to that game.

So all in all, it wasn’t too bad living in Flavet. We celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary in 2000 by visiting Gainesville and other places we had lived in Florida. Where the apartments had been there is now an open field with the sign on it that reads “Flavet Field.” I wonder how many people have come back to remember that time they lived in “army barracks”; I bet there are many.