Colgate University

Colgate University is the college Billy Poe singles out from among several opportunities he once had to leave Buell. Although he initially told himself he was not ready for college, he later recognizes that he had been ready and resolves to contact the Colgate coach, making the university a concrete possibility in his effort to change course.

The Opportunity Poe Turned Down

Poe’s coach at Buell High, Dick Cannedy, had helped him get into three colleges. Colgate, in upstate New York, looked especially appealing to Poe. His hesitation, as he later understands it, was not a lack of readiness: he had been ready to go. Instead, with people around him urging him toward different choices, he rejected college and took a job at Turner’s Ace Hardware.

That refusal becomes part of Poe’s sense that he had made his own decision against the future others imagined for him. He remembers having given the town the finger by turning down college, and imagines doing so again by leaving suddenly to attend. Colgate thus stands for more than an institution: it marks the alternative Poe once refused and the possibility that refusal need not be permanent.

Reconsideration

After Otto Carson’s death, Poe thinks through the consequences of what happened and the future he has left aside. His thoughts return to the coach’s assurance that Poe could call whenever he changed his mind. Poe now decides that he has changed his mind and will call. The resolution is specific, but the evidence establishes an intention rather than a completed call, renewed admission, or enrollment.

Narrative Significance

Colgate enters the story through Poe’s recollection and decision, not through a campus visit or a depiction of university life. Its importance lies in the contrast between the path he once rejected and the renewed possibility of leaving Buell for college. The decision also complicates his earlier defiance: the same act of going away that once seemed like another gesture against the town can now be understood as a way to reclaim a future he had surrendered.