active members more pleasant. One such duty was called “wake boy.” As the name implies, this consisted of waking the older members of the fraternity based on a list that was posted each night with names, times, and any other instructions. This was normally a fairly simple matter but there was one important and ongoing warning. One of the active members was a fellow named Mike Saborse. Mike was a veteran of World War II and had been engaged in quite a bit of combat. His memories were still fresh, and, if he was awakened too abruptly, he might come up swinging. So, we all took special care to wake him up slowly and tenderly! One morning I went to the fraternity house as “wake boy.” It had snowed during the night, and as I came to Mike’s bunk I found that he had left the window open and was covered with about an inch of snow. Unconsciously, he had buried under the covers, and the snow had covered the blanket over his entire body. When I saw this I was absolutely terrified because I had no idea what might happen if I awoke him in a way that caused him to have snow descend on his warm and cozy frame. So, what I did was to pull up one edge of the covers very quietly and whisper, “Mike, it’s Charlie Mechem, don’t move. You are covered with snow and you must get up slowly and let me brush the snow off as you sit up.” Happily, this worked, and I brushed the snow off as he slowly awakened. A disaster was averted. A singular incident indeed and nothing remotely like it has happened to me since!
I need to reiterate that these years were amazing in retrospect—not just for us but for the United States itself. World War II was over, the Great Depression was over, and the Cold War had not escalated to a point where it was of great concern. General Dwight Eisenhower was elected president in 1952. He was the ultimate war hero and was immensely respected and popular, and this simply added to the healthy and robust mood of the nation. Those years now seem light-years away!
The mood of the 1950s is beautifully described in a wonderful book, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. He puts it this way:
In the 1950s, America had picked up the globe by the heels and shaken the change from its pockets. Europe had become a poor cousin—all crests and no table settings. And the indistinguishable countries of Africa, Asia, and South America had just begun skittering across our schoolroom walls like salamanders in the sun. True, the Communists were out there, somewhere, but with Joe McCarthy in the grave and no one on the Moon, for the time being the Russians just skulked across the pages of spy novels.
Our wedding, at the First Methodist Church in Marilyn’s hometown of Newark, Ohio, was wonderful. Not fancy, not huge, just the kind of ceremony that I am sure thousands of Midwest boys and girls celebrated during those years—friends and family, smiles and tears. Marilyn was beautiful in her wedding gown on her dad’s arm. I knew this was a tough day for Brownie (that is what everyone called Marilyn’s dad), because they were very close, and I knew how much he would miss her. We were told later that the day was oppressively hot—hardly uncommon for an August day in Ohio! But we were oblivious to it. For us, everything about the day was wonderful.
Immediately after the reception we set off for New Haven in an old Nash* that I had bought for four hundred dollars. That old car served us well for several years, but we finally had to get rid of it when it began to use more oil than gas and put a smoke screen out the exhaust pipe that in today’s world would contribute significantly to global warming.
CHAPTER IV
New Haven, Here We Come!
AS I MENTIONED earlier, we took off for New Haven as newlyweds and we obviously had more stars in our eyes than sense in our brains because we arrived there with no place to live and with no job for Marilyn. However, again my good-luck charm worked. We found a little spot north of New Haven that was literally a lean-to on a garage. The owner ran a beautiful tourist home next door (named Moose Manor!) and had built two lean-tos on his garage. There was only one room with a pullout bed, a little kitchenette, and a bathroom. That was our first home and it worked just fine.
There were a few adjustments that needed to be made. For example, I studied till quite late every night, and Marilyn would go to bed. In order for me to get from my desk when I was finished studying to hit the bathroom before going to bed, I had to literally walk over the bed where she was sleeping. However, we were both young in those days—she didn’t stir and I didn’t trip!
Another humorous story from these days concerns Marilyn’s experience with a gas stove. At her parents’ home they had always used an electric stove, so Marilyn had no experience with a gas stove until we moved here. Just as her family had done at home, Marilyn stored items such as cereal and bread in the lower drawer of the stove. Of course, this turned out also to be the broiler! So, the first time Marilyn turned on the broiler, not really understanding where or what it was, everything in it burned up. No harm done and a good lesson learned!
This was a disarmingly idyllic little place, close to the ocean and in a very rural area. We lived there through a glorious New England fall. Then we both began to focus on the fact that fall would turn into winter, and we had to drive into the city each day. So we decided it was time to move. So our next stop was the spot where we lived the rest of our time in New Haven, 320 Edgewood Avenue. I’ll have more to say about that later.
Our other major challenge was also successfully met when Marilyn found a terrific job as an assistant to the Dean of the School of Fine Arts. Marilyn was a great secretary (that’s what they called executive assistants in those days) and, as everyone who knows her knows, was (and is) great with people. So, this job worked out wonderfully for her and also exposed her to many top people in the School of Art, Music, and Architecture. She always laughingly said that her specialty was uncorking wine bottles for the seemingly endless stream of cocktail parties and receptions that took place at the school. This was only one of her skills, and as with everything else, she did it with great aplomb!
Our home at 320 Edgewood Avenue had three rooms—a living room, bedroom, and kitchen, but they were separate rooms connected by a central hallway. So, to go from the bedroom to the kitchen, for example, meant going out in the hall. This was really no big deal, however, because there was only one other couple living in the building in addition to the landlord and his wife. We loved this place and, as I said before, lived there for all three years in New Haven. Our landlady and landlord were delightful people and were wonderful to us, making our lives both richer and much simpler.
CHAPTER V
Yale Law School
MY THREE YEARS at Yale Law School changed my life. I know that is a strong statement, but it is true. First of all, Marilyn and I were newly married, looking for our first “home,” meeting scores of new people, and beginning our married life in a part of the country that neither one of us had ever even visited.
Beyond that, I was about to become part of the first-year class that included the smartest people I had ever known. They had all been top students at their undergraduate schools, and I quickly realized that the competition would be strong. Indeed, in my very first class, I learned that the fellow on my left had been first in his class at Yale College, and the fellow on my right had been tops in his class at Notre Dame. When I got home that night, I told Marilyn this and then said, “Don’t unpack our stuff yet! I’m not sure how long we’ll be here!” I was also exposed to a covey of professors who were national and international scholars of superb reputations and records.
Our political views also were about to be challenged. Both of us had come from small Midwestern towns and conservative families. Now we became part of a community of liberal thinkers from big-city backgrounds. At first this was a little unsettling, but it probably did more to mold our thinking and teach us respect for other people’s views than we had ever imagined. However, I never lost the fundamental ideas and influences of my upbringing. Indeed, one of the most exciting things I was involved in was the formation
