Once, after an opposing team had completed the center-eligible outlet pass, I managed to break off my pursuit of their quarterback, put on a burst of speed from their backfield, and overtake the receiver before our safety men could come up. "Good play, Despain," Delby said. "There's more to you than meets the eye." I wasn't quite sure how to interpret that.

Delby tried to take advantage of my speed. He had me flank out on the wide side of the field, knowing that the offense would not send anyone out to cover me. He then had the defense cheat up and shot LeRoy or Don across the line to help Stan with the main rush. The opposing quarterback would roll out wide to avoid the pressure and see me coming up, almost from nowhere. Now and then, I would tag him for a big loss; usually, he had to put up an ineffective, off-balance throw.

The Eagles climbed in the standings.

It would be going too far to say that Delby and I became friends; we took polite notice of each other. Whereas we had passed each other by in the halls between classes, we now stopped and talked. I learned that Delby, through his mother, was an avid investor in the Salt Lake Penny Stock Exchange, specializing in highly speculative uranium stocks.

"Don't buy 'em," he advised me. "The best way to get a position is to trade directly with the company. Get a mining claim and trade a share of your rights directly for stock." Delby told me that he spent weekends prospecting with his uncle.

Delby and I had surprised each other. He had found usable athletic talent where he least expected it. I had found intelligence where I least expected it.

We found we had another thing in common -- a total lack of interest in seventh-grade arithmetic. By this time, I had progressed to logarithms and the slide rule in my father's college texts. Once I had mastered chain multiplications on the slide rule and could keep the exponents straight, I had no further need or desire to drill the facts of arithmetic. Delby, not surprisingly, was a master of arithmetic and could figure markups, discounts and the like in his head. We both, therefore, considered the arithmetic class unnecessary, though for different reasons. I was willing to tolerate seventh grade on my way to college; Delby wasn't headed for college: he took no interest in school, except, perhaps, for gym class.

For most of us gym was little more than a scheme to force us to take a daily shower, a notion that found reinforcement in