Three's Company: My Summer Living with a Baptist Minister
I swear on a stack of Bibles that I once shared a small house with a Baptist minister. I spent the summer of 1982 in New Haven, Connecticut, where I attended Yale. My friend Ted, a Classics major, had become acquainted with a bearded Divinity School student, Charles, through their mutual do-gooding in the community. When we needed a third roommate, Ted suggested we recruit Charles. And just like that, there we were, a Jew, a Roman Catholic, and an evangelical Baptist, in close quarters. Ted was easy to live with and spent most of his time smoking pot. Charles was another matter entirely. Charles’s room and mine adjoined, and we separated them with a couple of large sheets of cardboard for privacy. It was less than ideal. Charles and Ted volunteered at Dwight Hall, the hub of Yale’s volunteer efforts. They enlisted me to volunteer at something or other, and I lasted only a fraction of a morning. Community work was not my thing. Neither, at the time, was waking up in the morning. On...
