I attended schools in Seattle through the University of Washington, from which I was graduated in 1931. I spent the next year at Northwestern University.

My interests were aroused, and my faith in the cliches of the subject destroyed, as so often with other subjects, by the discussions with my friend, Aaron Director.

The Chicago Economics Department was in intellectual ferment, although the central issues of the 1930s were very different from those in later times. I had never before encountered minds of that quality at close quarters and they influenced me strongly.

Friedman stumbled in, late to the seminar as usual and reeking of cigar smoke and whiskey. He hadn't read the paper being presented, and halfway through he just gets up, walks up to the podium, socks the mother****er right in the face and takes a piss all over his lecture notes.

My main graduate training was received at the University of Chicago from which I received the Ph.D. in 1938.

I recall my mother asking in about 1946 what I was and I replied proudly that I was a professor. A decade later she repeated her question and I repeated my answer. "No promotion?" was her comment.

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman.