Charles Barney, Former Player, on players eating well even during WWII rationing

1944 Team: Gumbo, 1944. LD3118.G8 University Archives.

Jennifer Abraham: So you mentioned rationing earlier. How did rationing affect life on campus?

Charles Barney: Well, we were privileged is about the best I can say it. We were not really affected.

Abraham: None of the students?

C. Barney: Oh, some of them were, sure. But I’m talking about the athletes.

Frances Barney: But the football players, yeah. The athletes.

C. Barney: [laughing] We had what was called the training table. They probably still have it, I’m sure. But that’s where we’d eat every day, on the training table and we’d have people [laughing] . . . We’d have people lined up watching us go down to the training table, wishing that they could . . . Tell us how they wished they could go down and eat on the training table. Because we had everything, we had . . . At that time, you couldn’t get beef, you couldn’t get . . . There were just a lot of things you couldn’t . . . couldn’t get to eat. We always had big steaks. We had everything we wanted.

-- Charles Barney, and wife Frances, interviewed by Jennifer Abraham, 2007