An excerpt from The Story of Highland Park Club by Robert H. Wilson 1987.

Among Alfred Major's Quaker friends and neighbors at Buck Hill were William and Alice Reuss, also of Philadelphia. Years later, Alice wrote a light hearted account of the adventures of 15 or 20 of them who traveled to Florida as a group to see the Yarnell development:

A group of carefree Philadelphians arrived at Haines City at seven in the morning after a journey of two nights and a day and were metby Mr. Yarnell and Mr. Major, the high-pressure salesmen of the Elysian Fields of Highland Park. It was a crisp sunny morning in February, and we were driven through the pleasant country in a procession of six or seven automobiles, everyone exclaiming with enthusiasm and pleasure over the beauty of the landscape.

When they reached the clubhouse, they burst into the dining room chattering like the numerous parrots outside and took posession like a horde of invaders.

After breakfast the visitors were shown to their rooms which were in a wooden building caled 'The Dormitory' built along severe lines but with all the classic charm and simplicity of a chicken coup, having thin partitions so that everything was perfectly audible and just escaped being transparent.

There were fourteen rooms in the dormitory, a bath on one side for the ladies and one for the gentlemen on the opposite side of the U-shaped edifice. Heat was provided by individual oil stoves.

Oh, those were the cozy, clubby days when slippered kimonoed ladies and barefooted, bathrobed gentlemen cordially passed the time of day en route to the bath.

The rooms were each furnished with a bureau, a shelf with hooks curtained as a wardrobe, a minute washstand for cold water only, and a double bed afflicted with weak springs which sagged alarmingly as the occupants lay down to pleasant slumber. They had to choose between sleaping in a heap or stretched rigidly along the edges.

At seven each morning the slumberers were aroused by the jangling of a pair of cowbells hung at the end of the porch. This untuneful performance was operated by vigorous and enthusiastic hands.

Hardly had the desired effect been accomplished before there was a clarion call, not to prayer, but to setting up exercises, conducted by Dave Halstead. These exercises took place directly before each bedroom, outside in the open, and were of the snappy variety as the hairpins flew, various protions of muscles and clothing gave way. Groans, giggles and squeaks were emitted by the sufferers as they renewed their strength to go out an view the promised land.

There it lay, acres and acres of it - ten acres to a membership, more if desired, in order to become part of this earthly Paradise. That was the esthetic side. To the more commercial, the prospect offered a golden harvest of fruit which would automatically transfer itself into delightful dividends.