WELL, LIKE Marsha would have said, the summer got pretty God-damn deadly before it was over, and I was glad to get away from the old jerk town when September finally came. I went up to Pipskill University, which was just outside the city on a big hill beside the valley that a river went through, and at first I felt sort of funny being away from everyone I knew, and I wished someone had come up to school with me, someone like old Bugs, or even Tizzy Davis, but Tizzy’s old man had sent him back east to some crummy college that went in mainly for books instead of things like basketball, and old Bugs was too God-damn dumb to go to any kind of college whatever. That was the difference between Bugs and me. I was pretty ignorant myself, I mean, never having taken the trouble to crack any books except once in a great while, but old Bugs was just plain dumb, and the difference between us was the difference between being ignorant and just plain dumb, which is quite a difference. A guy who’s ignorant is a guy who could learn if he wanted to take the trouble, but a guy who’s dumb is just S.O.L.
