Tricia Jones came to the MobileBooth with her mother Gen Fields and talked about some of her favorite memories. “I will always remember us dancing because I can’t dance with anybody else the way I can dance with you,” said Tricia. “It was really special for me to get to, unscripted, unplanned, get to dance with you at my wedding party. It was a big party, but you know, it was awesome to have the opportunity to dance with you and get you to show your stuff and twirl me around the floor and make me look damn good!”

“You’re very good,” said Gen.

“Only because of you,” said Tricia.

Jeanna Houston came to the MobileBooth with her sister Connor Barnas to commemorate what Connor calls “the most stellar, fabulous, profound sister-sibling relationship that exists on the planet.”

Jeanna recalled her own wedding. “At [my] wedding we had the first dance together instead of husband and wife. It was the two of us and we danced to Steely Dan’s Babylon Sisters. It was special.”

“One of the things we’ve always said is that we’ve traveled through many lives together,” says Connor. “This is our karmic payoff. That we get a perfect relationship: one that is based so much in love and friendship and respect.”

Geographically speaking, Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S., boasting miles of open beaches and waterways. We kicked off opening day in the heart of downtown. Jacksonville’s Hemming Plaza—originally a village green—was the first park in the city, and is now the oldest.

Frances Kinne inaugurated the booth with the first conversation of the day, but Frances has been the first of many things. She was the first woman to become president of a Florida University when she took the position at Jacksonville University. She later became chancellor, and then chancellor emeritus. Frances shared stories of living in China, Japan, and occupied Germany while married to her husband Colonel Kinne, during World War II.

Alton Yates joined his daughter Toni Yates in the StoryBooth soon after. At the age of nineteen, Mr. Yates left his hometown of Jacksonville to serve in the Air Force. While stationed in New Mexico, he joined a research division studying the effects of g-forces on the human body. He did this by becoming the division’s “human guinea pig,” literally placing himself inside rocket sleds for testing. Mr. Yates remembered coming home from the relative egalitarianism of the military to return to a Jim-Crow era Jacksonville. He still has a scar on his head from an injury he incurred at a Civil Rights demonstration. The demonstration took place in front of a Woolworth’s department store that still stands downtown, not far from where MobileBooth East sits today.