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Do you develop a real interest in music in high school?

Not really.

It's just something you did for the fun of it?

Yes. I never studied music, per se. I learned to play the saxophone in the band, and that's why I was not a very good musician. As a matter of fact, I became more interested in music later on, but now, you know, I like music. I followed music when I was playing the saxophone. I followed Frankie Trumbauer. I'd listen to records. It was like a period.

The first two years of college sound like an extension of high school.

Extension of high school. They're a little bit more interesting because you run into professors, teachers, who are a little bit more interesting and have more to say, but it's, generally, you get through it so you can do basketball and other things and get by with as little work as you can.

You're all still living at home?

But one thing happened at that time. I begin to become interested in political things. The first year in college the English professor is Maurice Valency, later became a well-known playwright, and the first composition -- so I must have had something already to percolate, I write an essay, “Don't Throw Away Your Vote: Vote for Norman Thomas.”

In 1932.

In 1932. So something must have happened through the influence of my brothers on the Nation magazine, hanging around the house and I began I look at it and to read it and to hear them talk. So they are already interested in politics.