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students, was four blocks from the campus and charged eight dollars a week for room and board. Joe
     did everything, including dish washing (“It’s okay. Just think about something else”), construction work, and janitorial duties
     (“I’m going to be nice to janitors for the rest of my life”). He sold flypaper and did short-order cooking in a beanery (“I
     have become a
very
good cook,” he wrote to his mother. And he would volunteer to do the cooking when he visited his girlfriends). Every few
     months he sold blood, his blood. After a while he fastened on two service stations to which he gave as much as eighty hours
     of his time during the week (“In a perfect world, everybody would run out of gas once a day”).
    He paid his way and became something of a money broker. He continued, as ever, to be a gift giver, and anyone who needed a
     dollar went to Joe, who gave the loan without any regard to whether he would be repaid. As regularly, he borrowed money. At
     one point heborrowed from his father and brothers. What seemed moments after, he bought another car.
    He had a very early disappointment. Applying to the football coach, he was asked, Had he played football in high school?
    To the astonishment of his friend Charles Curran (“I’d have expected Joe to say he was captain of the school team”), he admitted
     that he had not. In that case, the coach said, he could not apply. Joe talked back. “So I haven’t played before, how do you
     know I won’t be the best football player in Wisconsin after a couple of months?” The coach told him he’d run that risk, and
     turned to the next applicant.
    He decided to box. He worked at it diligently, and the great day came: He saw his name in print in the
Marquette Tribune,
which recorded that “McCarthy is a husky, hard-hitting middleweight who promises an evening’s work for any foe.” He worked
     hard at the sport, and in his second year, when he learned that Marquette’s coach had resigned, he applied for the job and
     held it down for a few weeks, in charge of seventy student boxers. Joe was much taken with his new responsibility and befriended
     a boxing instructor at a Milwaukee gymnasium. He would stand by at coaching sessions and learn from the points stressed by
     Coach Fred Saddy. He took these lessons to heart, and toward the end of the year faced a rematch with a heavier competitor
     who had trounced him the first time out. Joe practiced determinedly, stressing the points Saddy had taught him. He fought
     now hard as ever, but with finesse, winning the fight. He was so transported by his success that he went early the next day
     to the gym to find Saddy.
    “I want to talk to you about becoming a professional boxer.”
    The deflation was quick. Saddy sat him down and ended his little lecture by telling him he, Saddy, would rather have a college
     degree than be heavyweight champion.
    Joe signed up to join the Delta Theta Phi fraternity. He was warned by his sponsor that when examined by the admissions board
     he would be expected to give a five-minute speech. “I’ve never given a speech,” Joe said deferentially to the senior. “Could
     we just skip that one? I’ll do a boxing exhibition if you want. Or maybe milk a cow?”
    Dutifully, Joe reported to the debate coach, Hank Razzoli. His first experience was humiliating. When his turn came, Joe stood,
     looked down at the other dozen applicants, seated, and over at Razzoli,at his desk at the end of the room. Joe stood there, mouth open, but no word was framed.
    After a half minute the coach snapped, “Say something, McCarthy.
Anything.
But don’t just
stand
there.”
    Joe stepped away. “Sorry, coach. I’ll be back.”
    Day after day he practiced. He memorized (always easy for Joe McCarthy) Brutus’s oration over the dead Caesar and spoke it
     in whispers when on the bus, and in a loud, declamatory voice in the park at night. He would imagine huge crowds listening
     to him.
    “Is he