So How DO You Find a Good Lawyer?

One of the many lawyer ads off the Mobile, Alabama TV channels...

                Sometimes I wonder about the character of a city based on who you see on billboards and other ads there.

                It doesn’t hold true for all cities, but some I remember. 

                Take the Phoenix area for example.  There seemed to be billboards, ads in magazines, big-assed ads in the Yellow Pages for Plastic Surgeons.  Did that say something about the people of Phoenix or the Plastic Surgeons who lived there?

                Same thing with the Pensacola, Florida/Mobile, Alabama metro area except Lawyers were their thing there.  Lawyer ads on the billboards, lawyer ads on the TV, lawyer ads on the side of buses, lawyers with their own cable TV shows, lawyers with their own radio talk shows.  Again…did the abundance of these professionals speak of the population or that a lot of lawyers like to live by the beach?

                The TV ads were lively:  Lawyers standing on top of 18-wheelers… “Been injured by one of these?”  Another lawyer calling himself “The Alabama Hammer,” saying he’s been taking on bullies since he was a kid or showing him on a hunting foray blowing the head off a deer “to bring you the big bucks.”  Get it?  Bucks?  Deer? 

                How do you know a lawyer is all that and a bag of chips just based on an ad on TV or a billboard or the side of a bus?

                I thought back over the years about trying to find a good lawyer. 

The first time I ever needed a lawyer it was one of those things where my mom and dad called up a friend of theirs and he went to court with me and my buddy Catfish.  It was one of those teenage things where the two of us just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The case was dismissed and my folks got a bill for 200 1973 dollars.  I say 1973 dollars because I reckon that would be about $3200 in 21^st century bucks.

The next time I needed a lawyer I opted to go with the guy who took care of legal business for the county where I lived at the time…he seemed like a nice guy.

That’s where I made my mistake.

Nice guy lawyers don’t necessarily win cases.

Another time a buddy of mine recommended a lawyer in the county seat.  I even asked my buddy to come with me because I wanted to make sure I remembered things.  Lots of times when I get stressed out details escape my notice.

I wanted to see an attorney because an ex was hassling me a bit and I wanted to see if anything could be done to legally make her stop.

For 50 of my hard-earned dollars Mr. Attorney listened to my tale, sat there for a minute and basically said there was nothing to be done.

“What you need to do,” said Mr. Attorney as he leaned back in his chair, pulling his hands away from each other so there was about 12 inches between each palm, “Is introduce your ex to a dude with a THING about this big.  That’ll take her mind off you.”

Well, I reckon that was funny.  All three of us laughed.  But I still imagined 50 of my dollars easing into his wallet.

There was this one time I had no family, no friends to make a recommendation for a lawyer.  I thought I came up with a pretty good way to find one.

                It was when I was a stranger in a strange land; I had just landed in West Virginia.  I had taken a new job and didn’t know a soul in town.  Then lo and behold I needed an attorney for a small civil matter.

                I did what any media person would do…maybe:  I decided to do an on-the-street survey.

                I took to the streets of the small town and stopped folks as I walked along:  “Excuse me, could you tell me who you think is the best attorney in town?”

                I must’ve asked about 20 folks.  Some people shied away from me, others answered me with a question like, “Why do you want to know?”  But I got about 12 recommendations and of those 7 or so were the same guy.  I had my attorney.  Nice guy too, all I needed was an official looking lawyer-type letter sent off.  He didn’t charge me a thing.

                Of course nowadays I know nice guys aren’t what you want in some cases.  You want the successful ones.  How do you find the successful ones?

                What was that line I heard?  “Hire the lawyer who has the most toys.”

-30-

My Hands Ain't Soft Anymore

        I was pondering my hands as I was working some lotion into them.  That ol’ dry skin was drinking that stuff up.  I looked at the fingers with the impacted bicycle grease and rubber.  Even the sides of my hands were rough.

I looked at my thumbnail…discolored and weird looking after accidentally ramming it on the rear chain cog of a bike.  Yeah, I know what you’re probably thinking, that DID hurt a lot. 

        “Rough hands.” 

This set off a flashback to my last year in college.  I was 20 and had a crush on a tall, healthy young woman named Katy. 

        I met Katy when I was working as a desk clerk at the hotel where, 10 years in the future, Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey and a bunch of other folks would show up and film “Dirty Dancing.”  Katy was the hostler at the hotel…she took care of the horses that the guests rode around the mountaintop.

         I don’t remember how it all began, I reckon I just started calling her and shootin’ the breeze with her and before I knew it she invited me to her family’s farm just over the mountain from the university.

I drove over on a sunny Saturday afternoon.  It was one of those places with no driveway so I just drove right up to the farmhouse.  Katy came on out.

We sat on the hood of my old car and talked.

“Come on,” Katy said after a few minutes of sitting, “Let’s go for a walk.”

We walked a bit, stepping into the woods following a little trail through the trees.  We stopped by a stream.

Katy spun around and looked me right in the eyes.

         “Let me see your hands,” she said abruptly.

        Not thinking, being 20 and eager to impress, thinking that certainly this might lead to a little huggin’, kissin’ and squeezin’ I held out my hands.

        “Too soft,” she said as she ran her fingers over my hands, probing, feeling.  “You’ll never do.”  With that she turned around and started walking back to her house.

        “But,” I said, standing there, still holding out my hands.

        “You don’t believe in hard work,” she said without turning around.

        “But…”

        Katy was right.

I don’t know how she knew but she did.

I was more of a dreamer then, not a worker.  I was 20 and still had a lot to learn.  I was quite convinced I was going to hammer out The Great American Novel, make tons of money from the publishing and movie rights and get checks in the mail.

Instead I learned about hard work.

I learned it can be a drag on one hand but can be very satisfying  on the other.

I learned that when everything comes together on the job it’s a beautiful thing.

       Hey Katy, I hope you’ve had a good life.  I have. 

       And my hands ain’t soft anymore.

-30-

Women on the Radio

All-American Woman DJ Terri does her thing leading 

The Morning Show at the radio station where I work.

                I have a lot of respect for women.  My mom did most of the raising of my brother, sister and me.  While my dad was busy with his work my mom was the one who directed my young world:  She drove me to Boy Scout meetings, she took me and my buddies fishing and she even tried to teach me how to dribble a basketball until she threw up her hands in frustration, turned and went back into the house yelling, “You’re thinking about it too much!”

                So you see I have no problem with women in positions of power, management and work.  It has always seemed perfectly natural and expected to me.

                Apparently not so with some of my fellow human beings.

                Some time ago I was leaving a business and getting back into the radio station van.  A woman who looked to be about my mom’s age was hobbling into the business with the help of a cane.

                “Excuse me,” she said.  “Do you work for that radio station?  Are you a disc jockey?”

                “Yes ma’am I do and that’s what I do there,” I said.

                “I just wanted you to know that I don’t think women belong on the radio,” she said.

                I can’t make this stuff up, I wouldn’t dare.

                “Ahhhhh,” I pondered what to say as I stood there.  Then the words came, “Yes ma’am, your opinion is duly noted.”

                “A woman DJ just sounds strange to me,” she added.

                “Yes ma’am, I’ll tell the boss.” I said.  What else could I say?

                In the early days of radio women may have been singers, commercial and radio theater voices but they weren’t disc jockeys.

                I actually don’t know exactly when “The Early Days” ended.

                The Great and Powerful Wikipedia says a Minneapolis radio station had the first full-time woman DJ in the mid-60’s.

                I was well into my radio career before I first heard this.  I was amazed.  I thought women had always been on the air.  Who the hell thought they shouldn’t be DJs?

                There’s some hard evidence that radio was a male dominated profession way back when at the station where I work. 

                The station was built around 1964 in Clovis, New Mexico by the record producer Norman Petty, the fellow who had a hand in the Rock ‘n’ Roll success of Buddy Holly and some others many years ago.

                The station has a shower in the Men’s Room.

See it?  See the shower stall in the Men's Room?

                The story goes that in building the station Petty believed the DJs would like a shower after their shift, much as the musicians in his recording studio did after a session.

                There is no shower in the Women’s Room.

                In 1964 radio world women announcers were unheard of, or at least very rare.  But I reckon Norman Petty wasn’t going to have a female announcer at his radio station.  They could work in the office, I suppose, but on the air?  Nope.

Obviously that’s all changed now.

Again, I wonder who made up the rule long-ago that there shouldn’t be women DJs.  It was probably in the same meeting where they made up the rule “DO NOT PLAY MORE THAN TWO FEMALE LEAD VOCAL SONGS BACK-TO-BACK.”

                For the record, women on the air are just fine with me...always have been.

Long ago when I was a single guy I was listening to a powerful border-blaster radio station from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.  There was a woman disc jockey on the air speaking in smooth, conversational, soulful Spanish, enunciating every word.

I didn’t understand a word she was saying but I wanted to drive south, take her out to lunch, maybe even buy her a house.

-30-

TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: I See Dead Things

   Cow head.

            There was a cow head up against the chain link fence by the side of the road.

            I took a picture of it.

            It seemed surreal.

While bicycling along the country lanes of the High Plains of eastern New Mexico I’ve seen a lot of dead bovines by the side of the road.  If I was one of those high-dollar writers who authored books and attended soirees in Santa Fe and Sedona I suppose I could write florid “purple prose” about the dead calf I saw by the side of the road a few months back.  Something like, “I stared at the dried, empty husk that once held a living spirit.  The tender mouth that took sustenance from its mother’s milk now lifeless and bone dry in the New Mexico sun.”

Yeef.  Too...too...

I’m glad I don’t write “purple prose” and live in Santa Fe.

Nope.

I’m just a bicycle riding, working dude, so I’ll just tell you that the calf carcass dried up and blew away with one of our 50 mile-per-hour “spring breezes.”

That calf, and other ones like it I see from time to time, isn’t the biggest dead thing I’ve noticed while bicycling.  There was a whole cow that someone left by the side of the road a couple of years ago.  I remember it because I rode past the carcass every day for about a month-and-a-half, holding my breath for a few ticks. 

There are businesses in the area that drop by dairies, feedlots and ranches, pick up those cattle that have gone to that “Great Pasture in the Sky” and haul them away.  This one didn’t get on the truck.  I found out that the cow carcass collectors only pick them up within 48 hours after they die.  How they can tell they’ve been dead for over 48 hours I have no idea, but that’s why they work their gig and I work mine.

            I found it tough to believe that someone would dump a full-grown cow by the side of the road.  I’d seen this a few times in Mexico, I didn’t expect such a sight in my own town.  The “south of the border” bovine I remember most was this huge dead rotting bull, legs sticking straight out from the bloated carcass, this by the side of Mexican Highway 2 just outside the town of Agua Prieta, Sonora.  Folks were just walking by it as if it were a parked pickup.  And that’s about how big this bloated thing was…I mean it seemed as big as an F-150 pickup with a camper on the back.  Even inside a closed up, air-conditioned car my nose caught its wonderful fragrance.

            Anyway, back that dead cow I had to bicycle by...So I called the sheriff’s department only to find out that if the dead cow truck had no interest in the carcass by the road it would stay.  Bottom line:  No one could or would do anything about the dead cow by the side of the road.

            So day after day I rode by the thing.  The boy within me began to see it as kind of a science experiment.  While the adult in me thought how inconsiderate it was of someone to just leave this rotting hulk by the side of the road, the kid in me wanted to go over and poke it with a stick.  I imagined that its great bloatedness would deflate with a long farting noise accompanied by a nasty stench.  But I did not stop and poke it.

            I’m not going to go into great detail about how nature took care of this thing, but in the space of about 45 days it went from a decomposing mass to nothing but bones and hide.  What was left got mulched up by a passing county mower.

            While there are better places to take dead cattle, it was pretty neat to see how New Mexico’s sun and wind took care of things.  I’m sure a lot of happy, skittering, crawling critters enjoyed having the carcass around too.

            And then there’s that cow head up against the chain link fence.

            It’s still there.

            It looks like it’s not going to go away anytime soon.

Of course dead cows aren't the only dead critters one sees whilst pedaling the roads of the region.  

I see rabbits, skunks, snakes, the occasional turtle, cats and dogs.  

-30-

ADVENTURES IN MEXICO: SONORA

 Looking north toward the USA from The Republic of Mexico.

The mountain is called Picacho San Jose.  The border town of Naco, Sonora is on the other side.

  
  I found it!

  “It” is a picture looking from Mexico into the United States.  It was the fall of 1995…I pulled off Mexican Federal Highway 2 in Sonora east of the mining town of Cananea, got out of my car and took the shot…Picacho San Jose.  It’s a mountain that overlooks the border town of Naco.  The town is on the other side of the mountain from where I was standing.

  During the 1910 Revolution the revolutionaries put a cannon on that mountaintop to shell the Federales down below.  Every time they fired the thing the recoil would send the cannon down the mountain a few hundred feet.  Bunch of guys would have to run down the mountain to bring it back into firing position.

  The mayor of the Mexican side of Naco had bought a new motorcar and had it stored in a garage on the Arizona side of the border to keep it out of harm’s way.  Revolutionaries had hired a dude with a biplane to “bomb” the Federales on the Mexican side.  The bombs were leather sacks full of gunpowder and shrapnel with a long fuse.  A kid with a cigar sat in the plane’s extra seat, lit the fuse and dropped two or three of these “bombs” on Naco, Sonora.  One of the bombs was accidentally dropped on the Arizona side and hit a garage…the garage where the Mexican mayor had stored his new motorcar.

  I think of these things when I look at that picture, remember my trips south of the border…

The Pocket Translator

  I had always wanted to travel in Mexico but I didn’t know the language.

  Had I KNOWN I’d be living in The Great American Southwest in the future I would’ve taken Spanish instead of French in high school. 

  One day I saw an ad in a mail-order catalog for an electronic Spanish dictionary.  I had visions of walking through Mexico with ease, language would be no problem with my spiffy, new ELECTRONIC SPANISH DICTIONARY.

  So I sent off my $35.00 and in a week or two my electronic Spanish dictionary came in the mail.

  I had been reluctant to cross the border.  I didn’t know what I’d find over there.  I’d heard stories.

  I would listen to the radio station out of Nogales and their Saturday show of old Mariachi music from days gone by, “Sabado Ranchero” and I would think, “How could a place with such great music be dangerous?”

  So one Saturday, with my Electronic Spanish Dictionary in my pocket I walked into the small Mexican border town of Naco, Sonora.

  Nothing happened.

  There was no Mariachi band to welcome me, no street thugs running up trying to pick my pocket, no Federales grabbing me by the arm and whisking me off to prison.

  Nope.

  It was just a small Mexican town with folks going about their business.

  I walked on the main street.  There were several Farmacias where I’d heard folks would go after crossing the border to easily buy prescription drugs.  I heard talk around work that meds for migraine headaches were popular.

  It was a first landing so I just walked down the main drag taking it in.

  I walked from the border on the north side of Naco to the south edge of town where there was a bus station.  It wasn’t much more than a building put together with particle board, a wide open space that hungered for a pane of glass, a desk behind a counter where a fellow had his head on the table.

  I thought he was just resting.

  With my electronic Spanish dictionary in hand I prepared for a conversation.

  “Pardon,” I said.

  I was wrong.

  The guy didn’t have his head just resting on the tabletop. 

  Nope.

  He had been taking a nap.

  It was Siesta Time in Naco, Sonora and the bus dude told me so…loudly….sharply…and in no uncertain terms.

  I smiled and said, “Lo siento, señor.”  At least I knew how to say “sorry” in Spanish.

  Thing is Naco, Sonora really wasn’t all that much different than Naco, Arizona.  There were even bars over the windows on homes on the Mexican side just like on the American side.  It looked like break-ins were a big problem on both sides of the border.

  I put my pocket translator away.

  I had seen enough on my first foray on foot into Mexico.

  I would return to Naco a number of times over the years…to buy green coffee beans at their grocery (since that time it seems one isn’t supposed to do that anymore), buy dark rum, Bacanora (Tequila’s Sonoran distilled “friendlier cousin”) or Tequila at the liquor store there, to speak to Lupita the store’s pet javelina kept in a pen by the liquor store.

  I would also drive over into Naco to go to a seafood restaurant where 5 dollars American could buy you a plate FULL of seafood when something like that on the Arizona side would’ve cost 10 or 12 bucks.

  My mom came to visit me in Arizona in 1996 and I took her to dinner over on the Mexican side.

  Driving back she started laughing a bit.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Don’t bring me back here,” she said with a smile.

  “Why?”

  “This is so depressing to me,” said Mom.  “These people are poor.  They’re poor on the American side too.”

  “No, mom,” I said.  “They’ve got SOUL.  They’re salt-of-the-earth kind of folks.”

  “Oh I thought you’d say something like that,” said Mom.  “No dear, they’re very poor and it’s sad.”

  “They even have paved streets,” I said.  “I visited Las Palomas over to the east in Chihuahua not too long ago and the town streets are all dirt.”

  “Then they’re poorer than these people,” she said.

  “Well we’ll just have to agree to disagree, mom.”

Walking in Cananea

  The very first time I drove into Mexico it was in the company of two women from Bisbee, Arizona…Muriel* the town dance teacher and Emily* a local artist.

  Our destination was Cananea, a northern Sonora copper mining town.  I had wanted to go there ever since I arrived in southern Arizona.  The town is the subject of a song on Linda Ronstadt’s album “Canciones de mi Padre” titled “La Carcel de Cananea” (“The Cananea Jail” in English).  I was all full of an Easterner’s sense of romance with the Southwest after listening to the cassette many times.

  Seeing as Cananea was maybe 45 minutes from my house in Bisbee I thought it would make a good day trip.

  Cananea’s mining industry was expanded with American capital back in the late 1800’s.  At one point there were about 7,000 Americans living in the city at the beginning of the 20^th century.  There was once an all English newspaper and a bunch of other stuff to make Los Americanos feel at home.  Somewhere between the beginning and end of the century the American presence disappeared.

  The road trip with the two ladies was pretty uneventful.  We walked around the town, saw the famous jail…it had been converted to a pretty decent museum including a whole floor dedicated to the history of radio in Cananea.

  The city was very hilly.  We even walked up a street that I swear must’ve been at a 50 degree angle.  As we forced our way up the hill I heard a cackling laughter followed by some Spanish chatter.  I saw Emily smile.

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “Look at the stupid gringos walking up the street, no car!” translated Emily.

  I brought my electronic Spanish dictionary on this trip.

  We had made our way to the town square and we needed a bathroom.  I punched the word “bathroom” into my translator and the word “tocado” came up on the screen.

  I saw a fellow sitting on a park bench.  I walked over to him.

  “Pardon, señor…Donde estan el tocado?”

  “Tocado?” he repeated, scrunching up his face.

  “Si, tocado.”

  “Tocado?” he said, furrowing his brow.

  “BAÑO!” yelled Emily across the square, “Donde estan el baño y la baña, por favor?”

  The man’s eyes lit up.

  “Si,” he said and pointed across the town square.

  Later Emily told me I had actually asked the fellow where is the dressing table or the hairstyle, depending on his translation.

  The ladies and I passed by a panaderia…a bakery…and decided to pick up some munchies there.  Then we drove on back to Bisbee where I put the pocket translator thingamaboober away until a few years later when a friend said she hoped to go to Mexico someday and I gave it to her.

  I went back to Cananea a couple of years later, part of a group that went on a chamber of commerce kind of trip. I call it that because I have no recollection of why we went to Cananea for a weekend…Me and 5 other folks associated in one way or another with where I worked.  

Gringos in Mexico, Cananea, Sonora 1998.

Yours truly on the right...

Our guide was a Mexican fellow named Hernando* who spoke fluent English.

  

  All during our tour Hernando kept talking-up what 

wasto be the highlight of the trip: Dining on "Tacos Soto." I 

reckon he thought we'd tell our friends and people would 

flock to Cananea for "The Most Unique Taco in all of 

Mexico."

  "You will have to guess the meat that is used," he would 

say.

  This frequent statement made me a little anxious. I have 

been to get-togethers and munched on things I didn't 

know a thing about to find I'd eaten something interesting, 

like that time I went to a neighborhood barbecue in 

Phoenix hosted by some folks from the Mexican state of 

Sinaloa...I found out the braided, chewy stuff I was 

chowing down on was grilled intestines.  I didn’t catch 

whether it was pig or cow, it’s okay, I didn’t have another 

bite of it.

  Hernando took us up in the mountains west of the city to 

see an observatory.  We drove into the country east of 

town to a hacienda owned by some dude who used to be 

a U.S. Ambassador under President Reagan.  There were 

exotic animals on the property…a zebra, a buffalo, a herd 

of red deer, some African antelope…all roaming over the 

hills and hollows of the hacienda’s land.

  Soon we were at "La Cabana del Tio Tom" (Uncle Tom's 

Cabin) in downtown Cananaea with Hernando presenting a

plate of tacos with flair.

  

  "Mis amigos," he announced with a wave of his hand, 

"Tacos Soto!"

  And there they were in all of their pink meat glory.

  Pink meat.

  We chowed down.

  "Guess the meat, yet?" Hernando asked enthusiastically.

  I'm chewing and thoughts are running through my head. 

It's not tripe, tripe is chewy. Pink, hmmm, could it be 

brains? Could it be…

  "Is it SPAM?" I ask Hernando.

  "Close!" he said. "Hot dogs!"

  Hernando then regaled us with the tale of a Mr. Soto 

who, long ago, showed up at the restaurant with some hot 

dogs he had bought in Arizona.  He insisted some tacos 

be whipped up with the weenees in the package. And 

thus the Taco Soto was born.

  

  No other tacos like them in all of Mexico.

  

  Who was I to question our enthusiastic host?

-30-

*Names changed….