http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/06/Tampabay/Quiet_judge_persists_.shtmlJust don't ask Greer about his college housemate Jim Morrison, the legendary front man of the rock 'n' roll group the Doors.
Nobody took Morrison in stride, not even Greer.
* * *
When Greer came into adulthood in the 1960s, he was about as counterculture as Barry Goldwater, the presidential candidate he voted for in 1964. One of Greer's favorite bands is the Bee Gees.
His biggest brush then with nonconformity: being cited for underage drinking about the time he entered FSU and hunting without a license in 1959.
Greer, whose family moved to Dunedin when he was 4, spent 21/2 years at St. Petersburg Junior College before entering Florida State University in 1962 as a 20-year-old. He majored in marketing.
He moved to a house about a mile from the FSU campus with a friend and some students he didn't know. Greer described the house this way: "Jim Morrison and five normal people."
One Halloween, Greer recalled, Morrison greeted children out trick-or-treating at the front door completely naked. Morrison had lighter fluid in his mouth. He spit it out, touching a match to the fluid to create a roaring flame.
"The poor little kids ran screaming to their parents," Greer said.
The Morrison biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Daniel Sugerman, provides a description Greer won't contradict.
Morrison "drank their beers, ate their food, and wore their clothes without asking," the book said of Morrison's relationship with his housemates.
"He kept careful records of all his actions, and their reactions, writing in his journals as if he were an anthropologist and his housemates were his subjects. In less than three months' time, Jim had the household frantic. Everyone was living in a constant state of anxiety over what was going to happen next.
"It all blew up one night in December ... when Jim was playing Elvis too loud."
After one semester, the housemates asked Morrison to leave. He transferred to UCLA in California, where he found fame.
"He was a bright guy," Greer said. "He liked his tequila. All of us at one time or another had him on the floor with our fists raised."