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CHAPTER 1: RECOLLECTIONS
I never finished a course in economics. | started one at the University of San
Francisco sixty years ago, and dropped it when | couldn’t see the foundations. But
the bug had bitten me. I knew that one day I would try on my own.
I always loved logic. My favorite philosophers at USF were the pre-Socratics who
liked nothing better than to confound common sense. A brilliantly vexing example
was Zeno the Eleatic and his argument that Achilles can never catch up to the
tortoise; Achilles must first reach the line where the tortoise was last, and the
tortoise has since moved on. Logic can play such tricks. But I sensed that economics
was the place to try its limits. Dropping the course didn’t mean giving up, and logic
would be the key.
Neither did I take a course in business administration or investment. My major was
English literature. As a grade schooler | had asked my father about this. Where and
what should | end up studying? He had read economics and petroleum geology at
Oxford, and I supposed he would advise something like that for me. | got a surprise.
Career-oriented majors were fine but not necessary. A grounding in the liberal arts
could be as much or more. The trick was to learn how to learn. That sounded right,
and anyhow right for me. So I chose USF, a twenty-minute walk from home until my
mother moved us to San Rafael, a half hour drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, and
followed my intuitions toward English lit and history and music and philosophy.
I graduated with a degree in English lit in 1956. This was the time of skittish peace
between the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the Reserve Forces Act meant | had to
report for six months active duty starting in the spring of 57. Meanwhile I worked
for my father. | and my brother Paul, later Sir Paul, started at the bottom pumping
gas and changing oil at separate gas stations not far from our home in San Rafael.
That left time for a few weeks at a bulk plant (oil warehouse and tank farm) in San
Francisco, still working at the bottom, before I reported. Paul had served in the
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