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would cover the funeral. Bill called me. He knew that these Southern people wouldn't let anybody remotely Yankee in the house unless he had some kind of credentials. So Bill called up and asked if I would take him down. I said, “Sure I will.”

It was very odd when we got down there. We flew the day that we got the news and spent the night in Memphis at a hotel where we were interviewed by the newspapers as Bill's publisher. The next morning we hired an air conditioned Chevrolet and drove ourselves from Memphis to Oxford, about ninety to one hundred miles, the very road where some months later the militia came down to quell the University of Mississippi rioting.

We got to Oxford and drove up to the courthouse. I felt I had been there before because this is where they made Intruder in the Dust and the whole picture was taken around that real courthouse. So we all felt that we knew it although we'd never been near it! I got out and didn't realize the heat because we were in an air conditioned car. We got out into the Oxford heat. It was over-powering. We realized at once why people don't do much in the summer down there. It was just like walking into a steam bath.

Especially after the air conditioner.

Yes.

There were about twenty fellows sitting around on the