Like most of the students who had lived a bit of life between high school and grad school, rather than going straight through, he was there for the non-mainstream economics ... in his case, to study under the Post Keynesian Paul Davidson. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
He went to college after he lost part of his foot, and then decided he wanted to become an economist.
One story I recall:
An ole' boy in Texas was working as a roughneck on an oil rig when an accident occured. One finger was mashed and another was totally lost. He was taken to the hospital and after the ER had finished and the opiates had taken hold he called his wife.
Roughneck: "Honey, I have bad news. I lost a finger."
Wife: "The whole finger?!"
Roughneck: "Naw, the one next to it." As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
