Page 201 - WhyAsInY

you Can taKe tHe Boy out of BrooKlyn
was very big and very likeable, had short-cropped hair, and seemed to be much older, but he became very intimidated by Amherst. He dropped out before the end of the first semester. (A person whose name is and was unknown to me set the dropout record, though; he left after the second day of orientation. Rumor had it that he was a Mormon, which at that time was a sufficient explanation.)
• Zsolt Paul Louis de Harsanyi III was from New Jersey (obviously), by way of Budapest. He spoke robotically, said little of interest to me, played the song “Midnight in Moscow” on his record player almost incessantly (occasionally interspersing his output with “Pep- permint Twist”), and actually knew how to hypnotize people. He repeatedly hypnotized Dave Denison, a nice guy from Illinois who seemed right off the farm. Harsanyi also became a fraternity brother of mine. Denison dropped out during the second semester.
• Tibor Polgar was not from New Jersey. Unlike Harsanyi, he came directly from Hungary, was good-humored, friendly, round, red- headed, and smart. He lived in a small section of the first floor of Morrow that had only four students in residence, had its own entrance, and as it was somewhat isolated from the rest of Morrow, was generally referred to as the “iso ward.” To the best of my knowl- edge, Tibor and Zsolt never spoke.
• Jerry Shimp was also in the iso ward. He was a big, broad, and mus- cular guy, who was a freshman for the second time around, having been thrown out of school during the prior year for staging a gun- fight with cap pistols during a lecture to the entire freshman class by one of the sternest of the professors, Arnold Boris Arons (about whom more in Chapter Sixteen). To the best of my knowledge, Shimp spoke to virtually no one.
• James McCashin II was Harsanyi III’s best friend and a very hand- some, redheaded graduate of Lawrenceville, whose brother was a
• 183 •