FIRST LIGHT IN LINDA’S HOME - 00094

I stayed with a millionaire in Gainesville who let me use his Mercedes to take some hitchhikers up to Jacksonville. On the way back I saw Linda’s shack and stopped. I immediately fell in love with the bright small girl who lived without light, indoor plumbing and even with only an outdoor fireplace. The next night I brought them some kerosene for their old lamp and started spending all my spare time with her and her family. It became one of the most moving stories in my slideshow which for years after night after night made Americans cry when they saw it. “To enter Linda’s home was like stepping into a Hollywood movie in which poverty was romanticized. While the poverty everywhere in America is ugly, and inflicts an ugliness on both the people and their surroundings, here it had somehow permitted love to survive.” - - - La Crosse near Gainesville, FL - Marts 8th 1974