Only grades counted. In the afternoons, Harry unenthusiastically performed minor carpentry, plumbing and electrical repairs on the family properties. If he had any passion at all in those days, it was Armenian and Middle Eastern music. Harry could play the clarinet with lyric lustre. Each fall Harry would come back to school with money in his pocket and tales of amorous adventures, and each fall his friends grew to appreciate how much his poker and clarinet skills had also improved.
Childhood usually ends.
Harry's worldly ambitions could be characterized, and fairly so, as the struggle to postpone that end indefinitely. He faced the first threat, high-school graduation, forthrightly. To this end, intense and prolonged negotiations were conducted on the subject of college. Harry knew how hopelessly idealistic his father was. Harry, however, had no objection to going to college.