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to pee. I’d had nothing to eat or drink for about 36 hours; I knew I didn’t dare to eat or drink anything — I knew I
couldn’t
pee. Larry Palmer remembers eating “that fatal piece of toast.”
    Just the other day, we were remembering it together. “It was plain toast,” Larry said. “No butter, no jam — I didn’t even finish it.”
    â€œAnd nothing to drink?” I asked him.
    â€œNot a drop,” Larry said.
    (Lately, we’re in the habit of getting together at least once a year. Larry Palmer is Professor of Law at Cornell Law School; one of his kids has just started wrestling.)
    On the scales at East Providence, Palmer was a quarter-pound over 121. He’d been a sure bet to get as far as the semifinals, and maybe farther; his disqualification cost us valuable team points — as did my loss to East Providence’s Pieranunzi, who was tougher at home than he was in the pit. In two years, Pieranunzi and I had wrestled four matches. I beat him once, we tied once, he beat me twice — both times in the tournament, where it counted most. All our matches were close, but that last time (in East Providence) Pieranunzi pinned me. Thus, the two times I was pinned at Exeter — my first match and my last — I was pinned by a New England Champion from Rhode Island. (Exeter failed to defend its New England team title in ‘61 — our ‘60 team was arguably the best in Exeter history.)
    Larry Palmer was stunned. He
couldn’t
have eaten a half-pound piece of toast!
    Coach Seabrooke was, as always, philosophic. “Don’t blame yourself — you’re probably just growing,” Ted told him. Indeed, this proved to be the case. Larry Palmer was the Exeter team captain the following year, 1962, when he won the New England Class A title at 147 pounds. More significant than his 26-pound jump from his former 121-pound class, Palmer had also grown six inches.
    It’s clear to me now that Larry Palmer’s famous piece of toast at Howard Johnson’s didn’t weigh half a pound. Larry’s growth spurt doubtless began on the bus. We were so sorry for him when he didn’t make weight that none of us looked closely enough at him; in addition to gaining a half-pound, Larry was probably two inches taller by the time he got to East Providence — we might have seen the difference, had we looked.
The Books I Read
    In schools — even in good schools, like Exeter — they tend to teach the shorter books by the great authors; at least they begin with those. Thus it was
Billy Budd, Sailor
that introduced me to Melville, which led me to the library, where I discovered
Moby Dick
on my own. It was
Great Expectations
and
A Christmas Carol
that introduced me to Dickens, and (also in English classes) I read
Oliver Twist
and
Hard Times
and
A Tale of Two Cities
, which led me (out of class) to read
Dombey and Son
and
Bleak House
and
Nicholas Nickleby
and
David Copperfield
and
Martin Chuzzlewit
and
Little Dorrit
and
The Pickwick Papers.
I couldn’t get enough of Dickens, although he presented a challenge to my dyslexia — to the degree that my schoolwork certainly suffered. It was usually the shorter books by the authors I loved that drew me to their longer books, which I loved more. Loving long novels plays havoc with going to school.
    In an Exeter English class, I was “started” on George Eliot with
Silas Marner
, but it was
Middle-march
that would keep me from finishing my math and Latin assignments. My father, the Russian scholar, wisely started me on Dostoyevsky with
The Gambler
, but it was
The Brothers Karamazov
that I read and reread with an all-consuming excitement. (My father started me on Tolstoy and Turgenev, too.)
    George Bennett was the first person in my life to introduce me to contemporary literature; in addition to his duties as Chairman of the Exeter English Department, George was simply a great reader