Opelousas

At one time, Opelousas, Louisiana in St. Landry Parish was the largest producer of sweet potatoes in the country. Maybe the whole world.

You would be wise not to question me on this important farming fact for I was born in that town, smack-dab in the middle of The Yambilee Festival during Ike’s first term. Folks in Opelousas wore this “top producer” label like a mantle of honor and repeated it as a simple reality that any fool could plainly see. The celebration of the lowly yam had evolved over time into an annual festival around which the society of the town revolved.

Momma used to tell me how she attended the Yambilee Parade the October afternoon before she went into labor with me, stepping carefully off of curbs and supporting my weight with her hands as my 9-month hitch “in country” ran its course. I often imagine I can see her standing in the crowd on the courthouse square, accompanied by my grandmother and her younger sister, my beautiful Aunt Lizzy; nestled along the parade route, waving at a crowned Yambilee Queen splayed across the back of a teal and white ‘55 Impala convertible.

She looks happy when I see her. The world was all ahead of her then.

The courthouse dominates the center of town, a squat, smooth concrete structure built in 1939 to replace the original 1802 facility. That courthouse forms the backdrop to so many of my childhood memories. Folks were executed there, I remember hearing the grown-ups tell me. Several were hung in what was casually referred to as “The Hanging Room,” where a sturdy hook and trap door remain to this day. There are 13 steps up to The Hanging Room and the last one is painted black. It was said that, once you crossed that 13th step, there was no going back. One condemned guy was electrocuted in that room, with the powerful generators humming on the courthouse lawn and the cables run into The Hanging Room through open windows to power the portable electric chair brought to the place so as to administer extreme justice.

I don’t know why they never changed the name after that. It’s still called The Hanging Room even now, although the Clerk has stored the marriage and probate records in there since the first Nixon Administration.

The courthouse exudes mystery and paranormal activities are said to prevail in the old structure at night. Ladies working late for the Clerk of Court have said that footsteps are heard in the area of the 13 steps to The Hanging Room and the long defunct back elevator will grind into life even though all of the motors are useless, burned beyond repair and without electric power. So, there ain’t much night work done there, I’m told.

That old courthouse was posed regally in the center of town in those halcyon Yambilee days, just east across from the Delta Theater where---years later---my brother and I would hump our Schwinns from my grandparents’ house on Dunbar Avenue, shell out the princely sum of 35 cents to get a movie ticket, part with another quarter for a coke and some popcorn and settle in with all the other white kids for a Saturday Double Feature. The black kids went in through a rear entrance down an alley alongside the theater and trudged up the wooden back stairs to sit in the balcony. I never knew if they got popcorn and cokes.

South of the courthouse square on Landry Street sat The Jim Bowie Museum, which harbored sacred relics and other information on The Hero of the Alamo. Opelousas billed itself as the original home of Jim Bowie and the signs leading into town wouldn’t let you forget it either, just in case you were deranged enough to think Bowie was a Texan. He wasn’t. He was a St. Landry Parish man. If you timed it right, you could zip downtown on your bike, make a practiced swing through the Jim Bowie Museum to gawk at the many huge knives and old pistols and buckskin outfits and still sprint to The Delta for show-time. An elderly lady would follow you around as you pored through the glass cases and her voice would provide commentary: “Mr. Bowie lived on property out on Union Street, where the Planter’s Bank branch office is now. They claim he made those knives by hand out there before he went off to Texas….”

Bellevue Street ran along the north side of the courthouse square and housed what was known as Lawyers Row. A Vanderbilt man (by way of the University of Virginia and Tulane), my grandfather shared his law office there with Momma’s brother, my Uncle Boody. “C. F. Boagni, Jr. Attorney at Law – Notary In Office” his weathered black sign with gold letters announced.

Much like the Yambilee memory of Momma, that sign serves as one of the tangible connections between the man and I am today and the boy who, as the years slide by, becomes harder to recollect. I see those gold letters every day in my own law office as the sign was left to me after PaPa died in 1983, the year I started practice. He lived to see me graduate from LSU Law School, but I lost him a few months after that. I carefully cleaned that old sign, which predates Pearl Harbor, and hung it.

A few months after I was born, Daddy took us to Baton Rouge so he could finish his engineering studies at LSU. For me, therefore, Baton Rouge has been home ever since. But, as regular as clockwork when we were young, Momma wanted to go back home to see her family. That was an immutable given in our house. Such pilgrimages were fine with my brother and me, because we had 2 sets of grandparents in Opelousas and were thus treated to the unending, abiding, understanding love that only grandparents can give. Consequently, almost every month and certainly every holiday, we would load up in the family wheels and head west on U.S. 190 to Opelousas, where –in due course-- Daddy and PaPa teamed up to impart the mysteries of bicycle operation to me. My Dad could sit on the handlebars, facing backwards, and pedal himself up and down the long driveway, calling out: “See, J.R.? There’s nothin’ to it!”

I considered this advice, weighed my options, and decided to ride in the regular old way, facing forward. After I had soldiered through a couple of spectacular wipe-outs, one involving a stone garden gnome, I finally got the hang of it.

Thus, new worlds opened.

As a boy, you could get wherever you needed to be in Opelousas on a bike. You could leave Dunbar Street, head through City Park, and be downtown in 10 minutes, tops. Pedaling through the Park, I would scoot by the roller skating area, where I would hear echoing in my mind the words my mother would tell me every time we passed that concrete expanse:

“And, James Ronald,” She would tell me, pointing and smiling. “That’s where I met your Daddy. He came to my 12th birthday roller skating party right there.”

Apparently, among my old man’s many talents, he was also a boffo roller skater as a young chap. I’ll have to ask him if he ever rode a bicycle backwards for Momma. If you were searching for a skill set that would capture the heart of 12-year-old Sally, I would think the one-two punch of daredevil roller skating and backwards bike-riding would do the trick. I have a picture in my bedroom of my Pop when he was about 12 or 13, taken in front of the old Opelousas High School, clowning for the camera with a chum. Anyone can take one look at that picture and see that he was bad news from the wrong side of the tracks. Nonetheless, from that 12th birthday party on, Sally loved Jimmy until the Yambilee October day she died 50 years later.

Of course, there was some parental resistance to this match between the first daughter of a prominent family and Jimmy Clary, who was…well…Jimmy Clary. My grandparents even sent Momma off to Vanderbilt just to see if geography could cool the longstanding romance, but it was no dice. After a single semester--before finals even-- Momma called long distance, said she missed Jimmy and wanted to come back to Opelousas. There were tears and no amount of cajoling could keep her in Nashville. So, Babee and PaPa resignedly struck out in the Buick and fetched their oldest child home.

Shortly thereafter, they set about planning a wedding.

When we would arrive in Opelousas on these family visits, and after a perfunctory raid on the outside icebox for a small bottle of coke and an ice cream sandwich, I would hop on a blue Schwinn and head downtown. Zipping through the Park and past the roller skating circle, I would shortly come into the orbit of the courthouse, the Jim Bowie Museum, the Delta Theater and Lawyers Row. You had to get up some speed to hop the Lawyers Row curb but—once you had swung that—you could accelerate down the raised sidewalk paralleling the front of the law offices and really make some time. Of course, if someone had walked out of one of those law offices at this moment (perhaps after they had just executed their Will), there would have been a colossal “incident” necessitating either battlefield first aid or the opening of a succession. Timing is everything in life, as we all know, and I marvel that no such infamy ever occurred. Whenever I get on a bike now and feel the wind in my face, I think about those days and the miracle of timing.

About halfway down the Row, I would see the sign: “C. F. Boagni, Jr. Attorney at Law – Notary In Office.” Braking to a stop, I would casually dismount, run a hand over my crew-cut and flip down the kickstand with my Chuck Taylors. There were no bicycle locks to contend with. To my knowledge, they had not even been invented. They were certainly not needed.

I would pull open the big chrome door with reflective glass to PaPa’s office and saunter in. As the door slowly shut behind me, I would perceive Miss Velma hammering away on an Olivetti, the keys striking the paper at what seemed an impossible pace.

Years later, I would read the diary of a Confederate soldier serving in Company H of a regiment assigned to Pickett’s Division, who wrote of the long slogging trot from Seminary Ridge toward Cemetery Hill on the third day at Gettysburg. He was one of the few who survived unscathed. As the company crossed the Emmitsburg Road, they had to then traverse a wooden slat-board fence to continue the charge toward the entrenched Federals. Union rounds hit the boards of the fence with such regularity that—to this soldier—it sounded like “somebody pourin’ peas on a rawhide.” I thought to myself, as I read the entry: “I bet it sounded like Miss Velma’s Olivetti.”

Finishing her typist’s thought, Velma, my grandfather’s secretary, would stop and then turn to see who had come in the office door. Seeing me, she would smile beautifully and just glow.

“Well, Mr. James Ronald!” She would exclaim, always the same.

“Hello Miss Velma.”

“Your Momma and Daddy come for a visit?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I would reply, jamming my hands into my jeans pockets.

“And how is everybody?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good. You here to see your PaPa?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Inclining her head toward the rear of the long, narrow office, Velma’s eyes would twinkle and she would say: “He’s back there, honey. He’ll be glad to see you.”

“Thank you, Miss Velma.”

And with that, I would begin the long walk through the front office and into the corridor that connected the rear. A few steps in I would hear the Olivetti crank up again, the sound ever fading as I moved down the hall.

There was deep red carpeting on the corridor floor, atop a thick pad that seemed to deaden all sound and envelop my tennis shoes. Important certificates, photographs and mineral production maps lined the walls. Dark brown ceiling fans moved slowly above me, stirring the cool air-conditioned interior. The smell of important books was heavy in the circulating air. On every trip down that hall, I was struck by the feeling that business of majestic gravity was occurring in this place.

Halfway down, I passed Uncle Boody’s office on the left and we would exchange waves while he continued his conversation on the phone. He would point down the hall, knowing I was there to see PaPa. Then, passing my grandfather’s empty office, I would head to the end of the hall, where a dark wooden door with a fogged glass panel was situated. On the fogged glass it said in an ornate script: Library. And, that is where I knew I would find PaPa, as he always practiced out of that large room. In all the years I visited, I never saw him in his office. Always the Library.

Born in 1903 to one of the wealthy families of Opelousas, Charles F. Boagni, Jr. was a handsome and imposing 6-footer, whose thick white hair had been with him since his 50’s. In his salad days, he was an athlete and a ladies man. My maternal grandmother, who we called Babee, told me the girls all called him “Cameo,” because his profile resembled the classic ivory silhouettes seen on the stylish women’s broaches of the time. She would tell me that, on the day after an Opelousas dance, the girls would gather and talk about who had had the opportunity to dance with Cameo.

To everyone in Opelousas even a few years younger than himself, he was known as “Mister Charlie,” not to be confused with Dr. Boagni, his physician father and namesake. I remembered my great-grandfather well, who – according to the family lore – had performed the first caesarian section in Louisiana before the dawn of the 20th Century. (I have noticed that our 21st Century internet seems oblivious to that milestone.)

PaPa visited on a regular basis until his father died in 1962 at 92.

When in Opelousas, Dad and I would often accompany my grandfather on those visits to the large home he had known as a boy. PaPa would take a chair next to his declining father and they would talk. At a certain frightening moment, I would be trotted out and presented to “Poppa,” who was invalided by age and ensconced in a recliner. After being loudly identified as “Sally’s oldest boy, James Ronald,” Poppa would ask me questions from his recumbent position in a weak and indistinct voice, his chin quivering, questions repetitive of information fed to him. As I could not understand anything Poppa said, I would look to my grandfather helplessly. PaPa would translate and I would respond as completely as a scared 5-year-old could, which means with quiet “Yes sirs” and “No sirs.”

It would go like this:

PaPa: Poppa, this is Sally’s oldest boy, James Ronald.

Poppa: (A mumbled interrogatory.)

PaPa: (To me) Poppa wants to know if you’re Sally’s oldest boy.

J.R.: (A little confused as to how this signal bit of information had not yet been cleared up) Yes, sir.

And we would go on in this vein until I was allowed to escape. In many ways it was much like visiting The Pope, I imagine.

After Poppa passed away, the home was moved and the property sold to the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise to open shop in Opelousas, a blue-ribbon distinction oft repeated as if it added to the family pedigree.

PaPa’s mane of white set off the black horn-rimmed glasses he wore while reading and made him look senatorial. In truth, though, he had constant mischief and percolating devilment in him. Always in a suit while in the office –coat on-- he was invariably seated at the huge Library table. Books were shelved from floor to ceiling on almost every wall and the chairs were of dark maroon leather which squeaked and groaned when you sidled into them.

I stepped into the Library without knocking and PaPa would look up from what he was reading, smile and—without missing a beat—begin a conversation based upon whatever topic occupied him at that moment. Although I was only 9 or so, his deep voice would roll across the room and he would commence what struck me as a serious and fascinating legal discussion.

“J.R.,” he might say, taking off his glasses and tapping them against the file in his lap, “I’m glad you’re here. You can help me with this case. I call it The Tricky Wife Case. Come over here and sit with me.”

There was no hugging or banal pleasantry. It was right to work. He would lean into me with a bemused smile and make serious eye contact as I took my seat at his side. The table running almost the full length of the room was covered with documents. The horned-rims would slap against his labeled manila folder.

“Mr. Phelan Dubisson had a 1/6th working interest on the oil and gas production coming from acreage he owned outright in Evangeline Parish, which he got from his Daddy, Maurice.” PaPa would begin in his stentorian voice. “Now he received that payment from the Sun Oil Company for years. Not royalty payments, mind you, but a working interest. And then, J.R., he met a lady and got married. But Mr. Dubisson, he didn’t know he had married a tricky woman. She sent a paper to Sun Oil and told them to start sending those payments to her sister, who lived outside of Port Barre almost to Krotz Springs. And, do you know what Sun Oil did? They just started sending those monthly interest checks to Port Barre without so much as a how do you do to Phelan. And now, we have us a lawsuit here (glasses tapping the file) because I don’t think the Sun Oil Company should send Mr. Dubisson’s separate property to some lady in Port Barre just because The Tricky Wife says it’s OK. Do you?”

Well, my eyes were as big as pie plates. I couldn’t quite get the technicalities absorbed, but I knew enough to know that someone was in big trouble alright.

“No, PaPa.” was about the best I could muster under the circumstances. “Is the tricky wife gonna go to jail?”

Hmmm….now, she’s tricky remember -- maybe even too tricky for jail. But, J.R., what about the Sun Oil Company? Shouldn’t they talk to Mr. Dubisson before they just redirect his working interest to some lady Mr. Dubisson hardly knows all the way out past Port Barre?”

That sounded like a reasonable question to me and suddenly my perception of the Sun Oil Company would darken as the tale expanded with mendacity. And, off we would go, discussing the concept of separate property, the need for written contracts and God knows what all. I knew the difference between a royalty interest, a lease payment and a working interest before I was 10. I also knew the value of accepting legal fees paid by royalty interests on undeveloped mineral fields. PaPa would unfurl topographic maps on the gigantic library table and trace with his finger the interests he had accepted in payment for his professional services. Tapping the map with a pencil, he would spin suspenseful tales of oil wells yet to be drilled, laying out the proposition as if I was a business partner instead of a 9-year-old kid on a Schwinn. Snuggling close to him, poring over the maps, I could smell his British Sterling cologne tinged with the earthy aroma of Keep Moving cigars.

I knew that whatever answer I provided to my grandfather during these conversations would never be rejected. I knew whatever pithy comment I might offer would result in PaPa’s chuckle, only to be followed by another probing inquiry or another comment offered up for my penetrating evaluation.

And another thing I knew was this: I was not 100% sure what exactly my grandfather did to make a living, but—whatever it was—I wanted to do that too. He was a champion who helped repair grave injustices, whether caused by the callous Sun Oil Company or some tricky wife and her sister who lived out past Port Barre almost to Krotz Springs.

We would continue our adventurous discussions, as if he had no time for anything in the world except me, until the afternoon had disappeared. Then, bidding Velma adieu, he would pile my Schwinn into the trunk of his Electra 225 and we’d drive back to Dunbar Avenue together, concluding our ruminations on the vast legal challenges which absorbed us as we pulled into the driveway.

As I grew older, I would continue to travel to Opelousas over the years, often with a pal from high school or college. We would always stop by PaPa’s office, check in with Miss Velma and make the trek down the hall to the Library, where we would simply enter without any notice whatsoever. PaPa would look up and you had no idea what he might say before we got down to discussing cases. My friend, Darrell Talley, remembers to this day the first time he met Mister Charlie. We walked in to see him after driving over from Baton Rouge in Darrell’s ‘66 Ford Falcon and PaPa, looking up to see us entering the Library, said –apropos of nothing:

“Well, well…who do we have here? Is it Thomas Edison?”

There was a quiet pause as Darrell and I looked around to see if The Wizard of Menlo Park had somehow followed us into the office. But, no – it was just us.

“Uhhh, no PaPa. This is Darrell Talley, a friend of mine.”

“Oh,” Papa said, with no trace of irony “I assumed it was Thomas Edison.”

As there was really no cogent response one could make to that observation, and as poor Darrell stood there wondering if this white-haired country lawyer out of Hollywood Central Casting had gone ‘round the bend, PaPa would appear bemused and allow the pause to linger. Then, before the moment could evolve further, the glasses would come off to tap the documentary material in his lap and off he would go: “Now, here’s a case you might be able to help me with. Alcide Fontenot was trying to have a peaceful dinner at Toby’s Little Lodge out on the Arnaudville Highway when he got into a scuffle with a fella named Plaisance from Sunset over who shot Huey. Alcide ended up with a black eye but the district attorney is saying that Alcide is the one who got a little salt in his battery, not Plaisance. What do you think about that?”

First of all, I regard it as amazing in hindsight that neither Darrell nor I had to ask who Huey was. Even though it was 1972, we both knew that fistfights could still erupt over whether Dr. Carl A. Weiss shot and killed The Kingfish back in 1935 or whether that charge was a frame-up, with Senator Huey Long actually being killed by his own over-reacting bodyguards, who opened up on Weiss with Thompsons. St. Landry Parish had been a bastion of Anti-Longism back in the day and thus any conversation remotely supportive of Huey in that venue could turn ugly at the drop of a hat. Moreover, an accusation that Dr. Weiss, who had married an Opelousas girl, might be an assassin could earn someone a quick poke in the eye, if not worse. It had all festered throughout the years, stoked by Louisiana hardball politics. Long had coveted the District Court seat in Opelousas, which was held by Judge Pavy, an Anti-Long man. In order to sway the St. Landry Parish electorate toward the Long ticket, The Kingfish authorized the dissemination of information intimating that Judge Pavy had Negro blood ancestry.

This is the way things were done in the Louisiana politics of the day.

Dr. Weiss had married Judge Pavy’s daughter. Thus, Opelousas folks were willing to concede that Dr. Weiss, as a matter of honor, confronted Huey on the day the senator took a round in the gut in the Baton Rouge State Capitol. Opelousas folks could even concede that Dr. Weiss may have even slapped the lying bastard for his perfidy.

There was no problem admitting that Huey deserved killing. But, conceding that mild-mannered Carl Weiss, an ophthalmologist, slipped a Fabrique Nationale Browning .32 pistol into the waistband of his suit and drove over from his Baton Rouge home to slink into the Capitol building and lie in wait for Huey so he could step out from behind a corridor column and shoot the low-down sonofabitch?

NEVER.

You took the opposing view at your peril in St. Landry Parish. The history written in the rest of the world has long branded Carl Weiss as Huey’s killer. The senator’s bodyguards, trailing slightly behind the fast moving Kingfish, had to play catch-up after the Long-Weiss confrontation. What is known is that they turned their tommy-guns on Dr. Weiss. Bullets flew and ricocheted throughout the marble corridor of the State Capitol. Senator Long was promptly taken to the Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge to die some days later. Dr. Weiss, though, was ---as they say--- DRT: Dead Right There.

As a public service, however, I will supply this warning: Even today in St. Landry Parish, if you start publicly declaiming some defense of Huey or painting Dr. Weiss as an assassin, some 108 year old guy will clatter over on his walker and punch you in the nose.

Secondly, I remember well how, squeaking into our leather seats, we would began to venture opinions on the facts of the Alcide Fontenot case with no further information than is related here. Our observations would be met with a quiet chuckle from PaPa and more questions and more answers and soon –before you knew it, really—2 or 3 hours would evaporate into the mists of time. During these visits, PaPa never saw a client or took a call or proofed anything Miss Velma typed. Instead, all of his attention was devoted singularly to his unscheduled visitors.

As I grow older, the memories of those old Opelousas days frequently come in stacked bunches, like hay bales. Once you start to unstack those bales, it’s hard to stop.

Last week, frigid weather in Baton Rouge had closed the schools, so William and Steven Sherman, my sister’s boys, came to work with her. I had an appearance in New Orleans scheduled for late that morning. As I trundled downstairs and made ready to head south, William and Steven were gathered around my sister’s desk. Although always glad to see the lads, I greeted them perfunctorily and then checked in with sister Liz to make sure the day’s tasks would be addressed in my absence. William, now almost 12, asked me whether or not Rome commenced its presence on the ancient global stage as an empire or a republic. Although I guessed quickly and wrong, I saw that my young nephew was interested in the subject.

Riffling through my briefcase to make sure I had everything I needed for the appearance, I listened distractedly as he ventured observations about Julius Caesar’s ascendancy to status and the price he paid for it.

Assassinated.

Like Huey.

I shortly perceived a hay bale spinning around inside me.

I shut my briefcase and looked at William bemusedly.

“Julius Caesar, huh?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” I started loudly—as if from a stage, doing my best from memory.

“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interréd with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest—
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men—…”

I sort of petered out at that point, unable to remember the rest, but I held the boy’s gaze.

His eyes were as big as pie plates. His soon to be 10-year-old brother, Steven, stared at me too.

It was quiet in the office. No Olivettis. No smell of important books. The internet has no odor. I let the silence linger.

“William Shakespeare.” I said finally, snapping my briefcase shut. “From Marc Antony’s funeral oration for Julius Caesar. Have you read it, pal?”

“No, sir.”

And, here was my chance. Here, I had the opportunity to explore a subject in which the boy was interested through the prism of a magnificent work of literature. Here, I had the chance to explore the concept of rhetorical irony with young William in the context of perhaps the most striking employment of the device ever written. Here, I had a chance to explain how such rhetorical irony can be used in the art of persuasion – both in life and in the law. Here, I had the opportunity to allow time to melt away as I watched a young mind wrestle with concepts experienced from a world that was new.Here, I had a chance to share some of that Opelousas magic.

Instead, I looked at my watch.

Reaching out, I tousled his blonde hair and bundled my topcoat.

“Well, look it up.” I said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Driving to New Orleans, I had to fight a surging need to cry.

Magnolia and Josephine

I’m reading The Help by Katherine Stockett, A New York Times best-seller which depicts white society in early 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi from the perspective of the African-American women who worked in those white homes. Those black women helped raise white children and manage white households; all while being treated as if they were an inferior but required appendage to the effort.

If you have not yet read the book, capturing southern life at the dawn of the civil rights era, you should. Ms. Stockett tells a moving story which awakens within me echoes of my own past. My boyhood spanned the late 1950’s and 1960’s and I well remember “The Help” we had in our own home during those years. There were a steady progression of quiet, stalwart African American women ever-present within my own family of origin and, as I close my eyes, I can remember them all: Lena…Lucille…Marjorie…Leatrice…Marva…and then, ultimately, Magnolia.

Redoubtable, tough-as-nails, Magnolia.

She was “tough,” sure --- but Mag could also loose the most infectious laugh when something tickled her. Quiet in a dignified way, Magnolia would seamlessly engage you in conversation at any time. But, you had to start it. Once you did, you would invariably find her insightful and supportive. Even now, she is that way as she still works for my Dad.

I see her differently now, of course. “Sweet Magnolia,” I call her.

Back in the day, however, she would come and go on a schedule dependent on “her ride,” as ---to my knowledge--- Mag never got behind the wheel of any vehicle to drive. She had people who handled that part of her life. Arriving at our home with a handbag about the size of a respectable fireplace, she would enter with no notice or fanfare, hang up her bag and coat and go to work addressing whatever evolving calamity was underway. In a home where we raised 3 boys and a little sister, SOMETHING was always afoot. Whatever it was, she would step into it with poise, like a fearless shortstop.

Dark as a briquette, Mag’s eyes were bright and brown. Never a tall lady, she carried her weight in a stolid but graceful way – like Gleason. And pal, when she locked those brown eyes on you and moved her hands slowly to her hips, whatever situation had advanced to a point where ---in Mag’s silent opinion--- a halt was warranted, you halted.

She and Momma saw eye-to-eye on everything. They seemed in symbiotic partnership on issues big and small. I cannot count the times Momma would ruminate on some change she was contemplating within our home. She would say: “Magnolia comes on Tuesday. She and I will see about it.”

Mag was the same way about Momma. When the kids would float an idea in Mag’s presence about anything, she would counter: “Now, what Miss Sally gone think about that?” We would allow as how we didn’t know what Momma might think…..which was why we were sorta tryin’ to sneak one over the plate on Mag. We knew if we could get Magnolia to approve of the course being pitched, then we were in like Flynn with Mom. “Ummm-hmmmm,” Mag would say, slow and drawn out. “I’ll see what Miss Sally say.”

And that would end that.

We knew then that a summit meeting above our pay grade would be convened outside of our presence. There, Momma and Mag would decide on policy.

The policy would be revealed in due course.

And, ever true to my mother, Mag was The Enforcer of Policy. The thing about Magnolia’s “enforcing” style was interesting, though. I have never figured out how she engendered it, but I do know this: You wanted Magnolia to be pleased with you. Thus, if Mag indicated that a certain course of conduct was unacceptable, you did not do it. With a few regrettable exceptions to be expected in a tumultuous house, this understanding was not violated. It still is not violated. If you asked my brothers or my kid sister, they would tell you the same thing.

All of this happened as a routine matter in our home, day in and day out.

I knew my mother had her own deep bonding experience when she was a child in Opelousas, Louisiana. The “help” they had in their home back in the 1930’s and ‘40’s was a lady named Josephine Davis. Momma called her “Jo.” As a small boy, I was taught to call her “Aunt Jo,” which I did. This was important because, on every visit we would make from Baton Rouge to Opelousas to see our grandparents, who still lived there---and I mean EVERY SINGLE visit---a certain moment would come when my mother would say: “I want to go see Jo. Come on, James Ronald, we’re gonna go see Aunt Jo.”

Momma would scoop me up and we’d pile into our car, drive north on Union Street past the train tracks and into a section of town that looked different to me, although I could not then put my finger on exactly why. On the way, Momma would stop and buy some groceries and a few packs of Camels. Then, we’d turn east along the train tracks, where a certain weathered, wooden house was located alongside others which looked similar.

Unloading the car, we weren’t 3 steps toward Jo’s house when an old voice would come through the screen door on the front of the porch: “Lawd God, is that Sally? Come in here child and see Old Jo.”

Momma would fairly trot up those concrete steps into Josephine Davis’ home, with me in tow, and she would embrace Jo as she sat. Apparently age had made it difficult for Josephine to rise. What I remember about those meetings was that, once to her side, Momma and Jo’s hands never came apart. Holding and patting each other’s hand, they would fall to chatting immediately and effortlessly, as I stood and watched. Shortly sensing I was somehow “out-of-the-loop,” Josephine would say to me: “James Ronald, come here, honey. Come give Aunt Jo a hug.”

I would dutifully advance and she would envelope me in those big arms. I never recall wondering how she knew me. I just recall that she did.

I also recall that, as she and Momma talked and laughed, black kids my own age would congregate near Josephine’s screen porch door. Soon, Jo would yell through the door: “Y’all take James Ronald outside and play now.” And, the door would creak open as screen doors do and I would zip outside to tag along with the troops, the door banging shut behind us. I’ve forgotten the names of my periodic friends after all these years, but I remember where I learned how to put a penny on a track and get it mashed just so by the passing trains. I remember where I learned that you can’t walk comfortably on the crossties of a train track – they aren’t spaced for that. I remember where I learned that if people treat other folks like people, color or race never really comes up. I learned that with those kids at Aunt Jo’s house.

After an hour or so, Momma would come out and we would head to the car, all while she and Aunt Jo held an ongoing, extended conversation through the screen door – as if neither wanted to shut it down. With a final good-bye, Momma would make sure I was standing properly on the front seat (that’s the way we did things back then), close the car door and we would head back south on Union Street. Maybe it’s just my memory after all these years, but I recollect Momma as being quiet and reflective during that drive home, a drive that took us back toward the gentrified suburbs.

Until the day my mother died, there was a picture of Josephine Davis on her dresser.

Which brings me back to Sweet Magnolia.

Momma died of lymphoma on October 9, 1996. She had wanted to stay at home, but a scary inability to catch her breath impelled us to the hospital, where IV morphine could be given to make her comfortable and to aid her breathing. We celebrated my birthday at home on the 6th and Magnolia was there, of course. That was the day my mother asked to see me at her bedside and, after a lifetime of making ever sure in 100 different ways that I knew she loved me, Sally Clary told me the last thing she wanted me to know before she left this world. Holding my hands in hers she smiled and said to me: “James Ronald, I just want you to know...you were never any trouble to me as a baby.”

The day after, we went to the hospital and shortly thereafter Momma became harder and harder to rouse. Within a day or so, she was basically comatose. Although Dad and I would try and talk with her, by the late morning of the 9th, she was unresponsive. Soon, the only sound in the room was the pings, shushes and beeps of the medical machinery. Amid those sounds, the immediate family waited in the room, not knowing what to do – each of us facing the prospect of Momma’s death and hoping that some miracle might yet intervene.

When we spoke at all, we communicated in hushed tones.

It was at that moment we saw Magnolia standing at the hospital room door, quietly waiting, her handbag before her like a centurion’s shield. Daddy immediately went to her and hugged her into the room, where she asked: “How Miss Sally doin’?”

Dad and I explained in very quiet voices that she was not doing well. We whispered to Mag that the die seemed to be cast and that we expected the worst at any moment. We further related quietly that she had been unconscious since early morning and, although we had tried, we could no longer get her to speak with us.

“Ummm-hmmmm,” Mag said, slow and drawn out. And, with that, she walked past Dad and me to the foot of Momma’s hospital bed, put her handbag down and said in a voice that was her normal tone – a tone that could carry across seven subdivision yards on a windy day with no trouble whatsoever: “Miss Sally, how you doin’?”

Before we could even react to the question or its jarring presence in the room, we heard my mother reply from the depths of her coma the last words I would ever hear her say:

“I’m fine.”

Magnolia nodded, backed away a step and looked at Dad and me with those bright brown eyes welling with tears.

“She fine,” Mag told us.

After a pause, the room quiet again, Mag repeated, softer now…“She fine.”

----J.R.

The Bengal Group

I gathered again with my Bengal Group buddies last night.

The Bengal Group was formed in 1986 and consists of me and many of my old high school pals, along with other friends we’ve met along the way. As we emerged from college years ago and began concentrating on our families and professional careers, we noticed that we were seeing each other less frequently. An inexorable drift had commenced, distancing us from the close bonds of friendship which had sustained us throughout early formative adulthood. We shared what seemed at the time to be monumental trial and tribulations throughout high school and college, weathering those waters together – always having each others’ backs. By Reagan’s 2nd term, those ties were oddly strained by life and, without noticing how or why, we found ourselves seeing each other less and less frequently.

What could we do that would halt that drift, we found ourselves wondering?

We all remembered what it was like to be in college and broke – sometimes unsure of how we could see our education through to the end. Flitting around that memory, we decided that we would form a scholarship group that would fund annual cash grants to students at Louisiana State University. We would gather once per month, kick some dough into a collective “kitty” and then solicit applications from LSU students who could demonstrate financial need. Thereafter, we would select students from that application pool and award them the money we’d saved or raised over the previous year, gathering at a dinner banquet with the students and their families to confer the grants.

Maybe a common effort would halt or reverse the peculiar drift pulling us away from each other.

At first, the end-goal of our noble effort was eclipsed by the knowledge that---come what may---we would see always each other on the 3rd Friday of every month, as we met to guide The Bengal Group’s mission. We looked forward to the gathering each month, where old tales would be burnished, new stories fashioned and bonds of abiding friendship strengthened. As years went by, though, our Group coalesced into a more focused concentration upon our actual mission --- helping LSU students financially.

In the beginning, our meetings were about escaping from our homes for a “Guys’ Night Out.” Poker and beer and BBQ formed the lion’s share of the agenda. After the “business portion” of those early meetings was concluded, we would often wander from our meeting venue and patronize old college haunts and juke joints.

Over the years, though, we bought less beer and more ice cream.

We also gradually increased our contributions over those early years. We initiated and now maintain an annual golf tournament to raise additional funds. Last night, as I again gathered yet again with my old friends, I marveled at how, after almost 25 years, our focus was now comfortably resting upon both goals.

I’ve lost count over the years of the dough we have given away, but it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars now – far beyond what we ever thought we might accomplish when we sat down that fall evening so many years ago and hatched this plan over beer and memories.

Our regiment is “one short” this year, having lost Paul Jennings to cancer last July. Pursuant to Paul’s request, his obituary asked those attending his funeral to forego flowers and direct donations to The Bengal Group. At the service, there was not enough room in the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Baton Rouge to house the friends Paul had touched over the years, so many of whom responded with testimonial contributions in “P.J.’s” name. As the years will come and go, we are left as loving shepherds of Paul’s memory and the monetary gifts made to The Bengal Group, as “P.J.” had asked. It is an assignment all of us hold so close to our hearts that we cannot speak of it without emotion. Thus, we do not speak of it much.

And so anyway, there we all were last night – guys I’ve known since junior high school and some even before that---sitting together in the LSU condo one of the sons of our members, who is now himself a student at LSU and doing well. The drive to last evening’s university-area meeting venue took each of us by the dorms and apartments in which we used to live when we were students at LSU so many years ago. I drove past the old Morris Apartments on Janet Street, where Mitch Wall and I shared a one-bedroom apartment. Mitch had a steady girlfriend (Sweet Eileen, to whom he has been happily married now for a little over 100 years, it seems), so he got the bedroom. I lived on the fold-out sofa in the living room.

Motoring across Nicholson Drive and over the parallel train tracks forming the entrance to Tigerland, there was Tiger Plaza apartments, still standing after 36 years. Dr. Bill Lovell and Ken Howard and I shared a two bedroom apartment in that large development for $375 per month, utilities paid. Billy had a steady girlfriend, so he got a bedroom alone, although I seem to recall we may have played a hand of poker for the privilege. I mean, of course, the privilege of the bedroom alone, not Billy’s girlfriend. In any event, I bunked with Howard in the other bedroom. (Does anyone else see a depressing continuity here?) As I motored by that large conglomeration of buildings, I wondered if they ever got all the sheetrock holes patched in Apartment # 222.

You know what’s cool? As President Joe Copus attempted to call our meeting to order last evening, after he’d fed us boiled shrimp, smoked sausage and exquisite baked tenderloin, I noticed that all of us old line Bengal Groupers were in the living room of his son’s condo, while Kevin Copus and his LSU pals and girlfriends migrated to another room…where they watched us conduct our formal business…interrupted by the sort of monkey business which erupts regularly among old friends about whom all is known. The circuity of that type of gathering is cool, although I wonder what the younger folks made of us and all our old, oft-told tales.

Here is one of the tales:

Allen Darden, now a brilliant partner at a respected law firm in Baton Rouge, used his voice to trump the ambient tumult. Apropos of nothing, really, he says to me, but addresses the Group:

“Hey, Clary……remember the time we went relic hunting? Guys, Clary calls me for lunch. (NOTE FROM MANAGEMENT: This happened almost 20 years ago, but Allen tells it as if it was yesterday.) We’re eating lunch and Clary asks me to identify something I’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t yet attempted. After a few false starts, I say to Jim that I’d always wanted to use a metal detector to find some Civil War bullets. Jim says to me: ‘OK, Allen. Then, a year from this lunch, you will be able to say you’ve done that because we’re gonna do it together.’ I agree and—within days—Jim calls me and says we’re the proud owners of 2 metal detectors and we’re gonna strike out and find Civil War relics. Man, I get books and maps about our area and where the troops had traveled and fought. Clary comes and gets me in his truck. We have an ice chest loaded with beer, right? We each pop us a brew and we have those between our legs as we head north from Baton Rouge, up towards the battlefields around Port Hudson. He’s got his .357 magnum pistol under the seat. We have 2 metal detectors slung in the truck bed. We’re drinkin’ beer and all fired up. So, we pass the Port Hudson Battlefield State Park and Clary says: “Hey, let’s go look in here, Allen.” I say OK and we swerve off of U.S. 61 and into the State Park. The FIRST thing we see is a HUGE sign that says: NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES --- NO FIREARMS --- NO METAL DETECTORS --- NO PETS. We cruise past that red-lettered sign in silence as we take in the words. Then, Jim takes a pull of his beer and looks at me and says: ‘Dude, we need us a DOG.’”

The lads cackle and hoot, although the story’s been told umpteen times over the years. The laughter serves as a catalyst for another story and then another and I begin to note that I figure prominently as dumbass-in-chief in most of these tales. No matter, I laugh with my old pals.

Copus gavels for order, but the tide is hard to stem.

Kevin and his young friends watch us from other rooms.

Gradually, we come back to order and tend to our business. We have almost $35,000 in our treasury and we must be solemn guardians of how we give it all away. But, soon we start to chuckle and meander away from the mission yet again. Story after old story effervesces throughout the meeting. Thus, it is only by the hardest that we are able to muscle through our agenda. But, we finally do.

This morning I feel happy.

------J.R.

Midnight, Elvis, Rain and Insight

It’s a cold, wet midnight in Baton Rouge and all is still. The rhythmic patter of gentle, steady south Louisiana rain on the metal roof is soothing, especially when the sound is further softened by the background hum of the heaters. Even my 5 dogs have drifted off to their beds, warm and dry, no doubt dreaming of adventures yet to come.

I cannot sleep, so some of my favorite old tunes are playing…and they strike chords within me, as old songs often do. And, within the refrain, when it’s late and quiet, you often hear just what you need to hear.

Like tonight, for example:

We're caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Why can't you see
What you're doing to me
When you don't believe a word I say?

We can't go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds

So, if an old friend I know
Drops by to say hello
Would I still see suspicion in your eyes?

Here we go again
Asking where I've been
You can't see these tears are real
I'm crying

We can't go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds

Oh let our love survive
Or dry the tears from your eyes
Let's don't let a good thing die

When honey, you know
I've never lied to you
Mmm yeah, yeah…

Hmmmm…Elvis.

Elvis?

The King doesn’t make my late night play-list very often, because I can often only see the caricature into which he later evolved. But, he wasn’t always that way. There’s the young gun Elvis --- the slim, leather clad rebel from 1969, takin’ a chance on a song that had already failed for Mark James, the fella who originally wrote it.

Elvis recorded that which appeared failed and it took life anew.

It is with us yet. And so is Elvis, for that matter.

We can’t build our dreams upon foundations of suspicion, young, hot Elvis is singing to me now, amid swells of background vocals and rich orchestration from 40 years ago.

Give it a listen.....cut & paste this into your browser....see if YOU hear anything in it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcmmI3MgJqA

Elvis.

Who knew?

---J.R.

Anonymous Comment Policy Revised --- No More Free Lunch

When I started this Blog, I opted for a policy of allowing anyone to leave any sort of comment they might desire to any of my posts. This policy worked well for many months.

Lately, however, I have been inundated with a series of incomprehensible “comments” from a single individual. This person has posted numerous comments which---to the extent they could be understood at all--- were nothing more than irrelevant and unfair personal invective directed toward another person.

Of course, this venomous “lurker” only posts his attacks anonymously because he is a coward.

He has taken to making up names with which to “sign” his comments. He has also falsely indicated he is part of certain Trial Lawyers College (TLC) Classes, using fictitious names not part of the verifiable rolls for the years cited. He uses proxy I.D.'s and revolving proxy email addresses. Thus, he is a rather pathetic liar to boot.

Given the actions of this person, comments to this Blog will be henceforward subject to my review prior to posting. Posts from this person will not be published. Instead, they will be deleted. I will not facilitate spiteful personal attacks against others. There has been ENOUGH of THAT.

I will continue to post all comments relevant to the subject matter, even if they are critical of me. I do not require that folks identify themselves in their comments but ---frankly--- it is preferred. I can live with criticism of Clary. I can live with critical disagreement upon issues. I guess I can even live with anonymous on-point criticism posted by people who do not have the courage to publicly own their opinions. In truth, though, such anonymous commentary has no real value. If people seek to be part of positive change or candid discourse or hope to be involved in honest solutions, then they should step out like the rest of us and join the discussion.

Anything supposedly substantive but posted anonymously just causes people to roll their eyes.

Perhaps this decision will impel the anonymous comment-posters to either stop hiding like timid mice or start their own Blogs, where they can fulminate until the cows come home. Instead, I’m betting they will continue to practice what appears to be their forte’: Cowardly bitching and name-calling from behind their anonymous security blanket.

Well, to those folks: Please crawl elsewhere to hang. You’re all done here.

--- J.R.

Katie's Wedding....and Change.

I am Katie’s parrain, which, in Cajun French, means “godfather.” Her Dad and I attended the police academy together a lifetime ago, when the world was new. There we commenced a friendship that has never flagged or faltered, even after 32 years. I was there when Katie was born and I stood at her christening. During the ensuing years, I watched her grow from a rambunctious toddler into a beautiful, singular, soulful woman.

Tonight, in the small, quaint Louisiana town of Washington (astride LA 71 between Opelousas and LeBeau), I went to Katie’s wedding. As I watched her dance with her husband, Gabe, I marveled at the changes occurring over the years in this small slice of my life, changes which seemingly passed in a twinkling. Seeing me in the crowd after her dance, Katie angled over to me, beaming that marvelous smile and gave me her special hug.

“I’m so glad you came,” she whispered.

“Wouldn’t have missed it, kiddo.” I answered, feeling barely contained emotion vibrating just beneath my skin.

In the quiet of the late evening, I am home alone now. The temperature has dropped into the upper 40’s, a perfect excuse for starting the first fire since last winter.

There’s nothing like an evening wedding and a late night fire to get one thinking about life and change.

The one immutable rule of life, never subject to change, appears to be this: Things change. Robert Frost articulated the corollary to this rule: “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”

Tonight was about change. So was yesterday. I’m betting tomorrow will not be much different in that department either. Most of us do not care much for change, inexplicably preferring to dance with the devil we know. When change comes nonetheless, as it inevitably will, it is often jarring and unexpected. Other times, it happens so slowly that---when you finally notice that something is different—you are captured for a time within a bubble of reminiscent wonderment.

The fire chuffs within my big brick hearth. I stare into the sparkling heat with my laptop on my knees and chew on these random thoughts. There was a time when a tumbler of good Irish Whiskey would have been in my hand, but my life changed in that regard on April 19, 1993. That was a life-change that seemed so radical when it occurred. I recall wondering if my world could survive a life without alcohol. (The low odds of my surviving WITH alcohol in my life did not seem to even enter my mind at the time. Funny.....)

Of course, I did survive it, although viewing that transformative miracle in "survival" terms seems silly now almost 17 years down the road. I did not merely "survive" the change. Instead, the change saved me and ---at 37 years of age---I was lifted into a more evolved place where honest personal exploration could finally commence. And then the hits just kept on coming, as they used to say on AM Radio. The subsequent changes marching into my life ---even the ones seeming tragic or frightening at the time---look quite different now as I gaze at them in the rear-view mirror.

Significant changes are present again in my life –-- unexpected changes involving friends for whom I feel abiding warmth, affection and respect. It also involves an institution which has touched my heart so deeply that the experience is totally unparalleled and I will search ever in vain for words to explain what it means to me.

It was not change I sought. The truth is I did not even idly wish for it. (Those who speculate otherwise have no idea what they're talking about.) Instead, the change came briskly on the wind, like the down of a thistle. But, here it is and I find myself uncharacteristically serene about what has come on the wind. I have no fear or anxiety. I feel no weight of pessimism. Tonight, reflecting on the changes in my own life, the strident pessimism of others seems counter-productive and dramatically contrived. Plus, having more facts at my fingertips now, I know that their sturm und drang is either misplaced or parochial. Thus, "issues" identified by misplaced critics are entitled to no priority of thought or action. They are entitled only to an honest audience.

I will do my very best with this most recently arrived change...something I'm better at as I've gotten older. I marvel that Darwin was more on-the-mark than even he could ever know when he wrote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Sinatra is on the CD player, singing Dream……the young Sinatra, the wildly popular bow-tied crooner who recorded for Columbia Records, before the Decca years and before HIS life changed. No one can sing a Johnny Mercer chart like Frank:

Get in touch with that sundown fellow
As he tiptoes across the sand.
He's got a million kinds of stardust
Pick your fav'rite brand, and

Dream, when you're feeling blue.
Dream, that's the thing to do.
Just watch the smoke rings rise in the air.
You'll find your share of memories there.

So, dream when the day is through.
Dream, and they might come true;
Things never are as bad as they seem
So dream, dream, dream…

Katie, I’m thinking about your wedding tonight. I’m also thinking about the arc of my life – that portion behind me and the part yet ahead. I say, as change has come in the past, let it come again. Let us change and evolve. The changes before have made me a better person and delivered a life more wondrous than any I could have ordered up on the front end. I am confident the changes yet to come will be no different.

Let us all change in positive, loving ways. Let us do it honestly and with true hearts. Let us make amends where they're needed and be quicker to forgive than to joust.

And, let us dream.

J.R.

On Horseshit and Transitory Relevance

I’ve been “in irons” lately – my bow so close upon the wind that all headway ceases. As even the novice sailor knows, “irons” await when sailing into the wind without tacking. The illusion of motion remains, of course. One can feel the wind. There may be waves roundabout and the motion of the living sea surges beneath your hull. But, in truth, you are not moving at all. You are dead in the water – your boom loose, your sail listless and unfilled.

Until very recently, my irons went unnoticed, I imagine because the mere illusion of motion was inexplicably enough for me. However, recent postings about Trial Lawyers College (TLC) in a variety of venues have caused me to consult my internal GPS. Confirming a troubling lack of headway, I’ve reached for my boom and tiller – pushed them away from me – a counter-intuitive sailing move designed to reverse and turn your bow. Once the bow moves along the compass slightly, the sailor can pull in the mainsheet sharply, confidently draw in the tiller and off he will go.

I think I just heard my sail pop as it filled with wind.

The search for a word perfect for the situation at hand prompted my personal GPS consult. I needed a word to properly assess and describe a variety of recent postings about Trial Lawyers College – postings which mimic what used to be called “investigative journalism” but which are really just shallow imitations of Westbrook Pegler – a gentleman of the press once properly characterized as “the shrill, stuck whistle of American Journalism.”

Anyway, I found the word.

The word is: “Horseshit.”

There is a shrill, stuck whistle reverberating through the TLC firmament. The whistle poses as an investigative alarm and directs its focus toward people and personalities and TLC Boards and tax returns and leases and other such matters. These points are "investigated" with such erudition that one could be forgiven for assuming there was some palpable substance to the sound. That is the very nature of sound and fury, of course. This faux alarm whips up the ambient wind and leads people to conclude that SOMETHING must be up in light of all the hubbub. Amid such sound and fury, people bemoan the status quo, resign from Boards, decry materialism or the corrosive nature of “ TLC politics” – all while wringing their hands about thongs and such.

As a civil plaintiff trial lawyer, I have no trouble with alarms as a concept. How many products liability cases have I won wearing the fragrant garland of DESIGN – GUARD – WARN? Alarms are critical when a manufacturer can neither “design out” an identifiable danger nor adequately guard a consumer against that danger. In those situations, an “alarm” of some type is imperative. So, I get that.

Moreover, I have nothing but admiration in my heart for a free and unfettered press. America needs persistent watchdogs in the press asking the hard questions and irritating the power structure. Such overview, scrutiny and revelation keeps folks responsible for the Public Fisc honest…..or, in Louisiana, close enough to what might reasonably pass for honest. I secured a Journalism degree at LSU long before I somehow crowbarred my way into law school. Thus, the press has no greater champion than me – even when they sometimes get it wrong. If motives are pure, I’ll opt for revelation every time. Honest mistakes keep those in power with their hands on the Pepto-Bismol.

What’s true for alarms and journalism in general is probably also true for TLC, specifically. I get that too.

Of course, as Glenn Beck has so sagely taught us, there’s a difference between purely motivated revelation and old-fashioned horseshit.

So, how does one counter persistent, shrill horseshit anyway – particularly when presented eloquently? You cannot simply squelch it, for that tramples the right of every citizen to insert his two cents of horseshit into the American marketplace of ideas, even when it’s worth considerably less than that sum. You cannot intellectually counter it without descending into an abyss pre-defined by horseshit-spreader. This is why celebrities rarely sue The Globe or The Examiner or The National Enquirer. I mean….is there really any point to Brad Pitt suing over a story about how he is in cahoots with alien Scientologists seeking to impregnate teenage orphans?

Instead, I guess we simply have to think for ourselves and tune in to our own intuitive feelings on the points raised – feelings based upon our own experience. That might be a start.

Insofar as TLC is concerned, I am blessed to have had personal interaction with all of the folks named recently in blog-postings finding wide dissemination these days -- including Gerry. Some are dear friends. Some were TLC ’02 classmates. Some are on the TLC Board. I have been close to these TLC people over a considerable period of time. Thus, I have seen them at their best and I have seen them coast occasionally and I have seen them make the occasional misstep – just as I sometimes coast and just as I make my own daily missteps.

However, I will tell you what I have never seen. I have never seen ANY of them engage in wantonly selfish conduct with the goal of “using” TLC to secure personal enrichment. To anyone who says otherwise, I say: SHOW ME. The stuff I have seen written recently doesn’t demonstrate a damn thing, except that some people yearn to become transitorily relevant by shitting in their hands and throwing it, like chimps at the zoo.

Anyone who thinks that Gerry Spence is “using” TLC as a personal profit center is an imbecile. Any inference of this type is simply foolish. This is my considered opinion based upon personal observations cataloged over an extended period of time and in situations not open to all. Gerry Spence is human and has made mistakes -- just like you and me. His words and his record over the long haul, though, reveal an honest devotion to TLC's mission --- a life path in which much more has been GIVEN to The College and its Alumni over 15 years than has ever been TAKEN. So, please......save the "Spence-self-interest" conspiracy theories for the nuts with tin foil on their heads (to prevent the satellites from invading their thoughts) who love to "explain" how the CIA blew up the Twin Towers in New York on 9-11-01.

Anyone who concludes that the owners of the Thunderhead should just give The Ranch to TLC “and be done with it” are as selfish as toddlers and about as deep. When was the last time THEY gave anything possessing such immense value to anyone or anything? Here’s the answer: Never. But, it’s so easy to suggest that others do what they have never accomplished or considered. Too bad Huey Long isn’t still around as he could have recruited them to join his Share Our Wealth Party. Then, they could sit around and divide up the patrimony of others -- a delightful pastime if you have the stomach for such as that. (Do they like reeling in fish that others have hooked too?)

Anyone who thinks that TLC could secure another facility like Thunderhead for anything remotely approaching the lease terms currently in place is so ignorant of the market in this area that further discourse on the point would be wasted on such a rube. Look around and see what 250 acre (+ or -) Wyoming ranches with abundant water surrounded by non-developable Wildlife Preserve acreage are leasing for – IF you can find one. Then, take a gander at what they SELL for – remembering that, after you purchase the place, you STILL have to maintain the whole shebang. Assuming you did not have the do-re-mi to BUY such a joint – which the College does not – what would you have to borrow to make the purchase (assuming you could find a lender) and what would the attendant debt service costs be? Does any thinking person truly believe -- but for the provisions made for TLC by The Spence Foundation – our College would have access to anything like the facilities currently enjoyed? Please. We'd be in a Strip Mall in Lander.

Anyone who thinks ---just because Gerry’s attaches his name to TLC—that Spence should therefore be obligated to reach for his wallet and un-ass the full sum required to run the College is as stupid as he is short-sighted. Gerry’s contributions to TLC are immense. Nonetheless, some are apparently able to keep a straight face and state that---in addition to all that’s been done thus far—Spence should now part with millions he sweated to earn to either support or endow TLC. Such a vapid assessment ignores the manifest truth, which is this: Trial Lawyers College must learn to support itself. And, we will either embrace our responsibilities in that regard or we will perish. I am betting we will “cowboy up” and do what needs to be done, although we will do it carrying the horseshit-spreaders on our muscled backs.

Anyone who thinks that a foundation owning a Wyoming Ranch worth many millions of dollars should lease that facility to some entity (ANY entity) without a mechanism of prompt lease revocation is a piteous simpleton. It would be completely irresponsible to effect a lease on a property such as Thunderhead without a codicil of that type. Including language of that character is good lawyering, which fairly protects the owner of an immensely valuable property. The shrill skeptics say that such a clause allows the owning coalition to give TLC the boot once Gerry dies and is no longer the moving force behind that Foundation. Uhhhh....OK. So? Quit whining. When you've been given a lease-venue like Thunderhead in which to operate for the artificially depressed price assessed to TLC, this is a chance you take. Is it a realistic, looming possibility -- one that will pull the rug from beneath the College at any moment? The record of those involved in the ownership of Thunderhead shows it is NOT. But, it does give those who wish to become transitorily TLC-relevant a platform to sew cynicism and discord for their own purposes.

Anyone who bemoans the raising of funds from our own ranks to support TLC—even though it calls upon Warrior-volunteers to perennially pinch their own pocketbooks—does not understand what it takes for TLC to remain independent. Instead, they want “Daddy” to simply buy them the shiny new convertible. Similarly, anyone who spends time gazing upon lists of TLC donors so as to pronounce judgment on their true level of commitment to the College is engaging in a form of ignorant stone-throwing usually reserved to the sole province of 9th grade girls.

And, now that I mention it…..what are the horseshit-spreaders doing to suggest pragmatic mechanisms through which money might be raised to support the College?

Not a thing.

They actuate nothing.

They innovate nothing.

They plan nothing.

They brainstorm nothing.

They solve nothing.

Instead, they do the only thing people can do when they are bereft of true ideas: They embrace their transitory relevance through the ancient art of unremitting criticism. So, hooray for the criticizing horseshit-spreaders! They are as valuable as parasitic deer ticks.

But, I digress.

Anyone who succumbs to the vapors because TLC merchandise includes a thong carrying the College logo needs to have a sense-of-humor transplant, for cryin’ out loud. Anyone who thinks that such an item of merchandise somehow denigrates women is just spoiling for an argument over nothing.

Anyone who would pound their soap box because the TLC Board of Directors is not “elected” by the Alumni so misunderstands the basic methodology through which Non-Profits staff their Boards that illuminating the reality for them would begin much as Vince Lombardi commenced each one of his Packer Training Camps: “Gentlemen,” Lombardi would say, holding up a pigskin before his rookies. “THIS is a football.” TLC is not a traditional for-profit corporation, with a Board selected by shareholders, who are thus pledged to act in a manner designed to increase corporate stock prices and spur dividends. Non-Profit Board Members are routinely recruited and INVITED to join – usually by other members of the Board or the Executive Director or by other corporate officers. Anyone having rudimentary experience with non-profits knows this. That being so, any person who would intimate there is something dark and malignant in what is—in truth—wholly routine is….well…he’s Glenn Beck is who he is.

One could go on, of course. But, what is the point of arguing with The National Enquirer and the claim that a photo of Elvis cured the cancer in Jack Kennedy’s brain, which is alive in a jar somewhere?

My ongoing experience at Trial Lawyers College has evolved into one of the most important phases of my life. I know that any experience so thoroughly touching my heart cannot be run by pretenders and charlatans. My personal observations and friendships with the folks who run the joint bear that out. Where horseshit-spreaders see hypocrisy, I see human beings---with all their faults and failings---doing their level best to make an astonishing place better and more accessible to other trial lawyers. Where the horseshit-spreader sews cynicism and opts for criticism or the spinning of base conspiracy theories, I choose to roll up my sleeves and work to help a special place survive and prosper.

Of course, this will mean to the horseshit spreaders that I am brainwashed -- that I am adrift in cultish TLC Kool-Aid and thus incapable of objective assessments. Such an assertion just makes me chuckle. It cannot be countered and I will instead rely on those who know me to judge who and what I am......although the potential charge DOES remind me of one of the greatest exchanges in American politics. The exchange took place in 1968, when candidates were coming out of the woodwork to oppose Lyndon Johnson's anticipated re-election bid. Eugene McCarthy was mounting a stinging challenge within the Democratic Party to his sitting President and George Romney, previously the governor of Michigan, was one of the Republican hopefuls. Romney had been a POW in Korea and the issue of whether or not he had been "brainwashed" while in the hands of his Korean captors came to the forefront of political debate. Romney denied being "brainwashed", of course -- engendering predictable skepticism. McCarthy, on the other hand, skewered Romney's campaign forever when asked if he believed Governor Romney had been "brainwashed" in Korea. In response, McCarthy paused briefly and then replied with great solemnity: "Well....a light rinse would have been sufficient."

Instead of trying to defend against a lack of objectivity --an unwinnable battle because I am obviously NOT objective -- maybe what’s best to say to the horseshit-spreaders is what Nicholson’s character, Melvin Udall, says in the 1997 movie As Good As It Gets: “Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some Panama City "Sailor wanna hump-hump" bar, or is it getaway day and your last shot at his whiskey? Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.”

Now….enough is enough. Let’s move our bow along the compass, draw in our mainsail, pull the tiller firmly toward our chest and get this damn boat out of irons and movin’.


----J.R.