TELL IT TO THE JUDGE

March 8, 2007

Click here to read the latest from my jnl. Just a Hippie Gypsy


I realize that FWOb has linked to this entry rather than to my blog itself. And I understand the sentiment behind that decision, though I am the only journal that he has exercised this judgement (sentence). I am making en executive decision to add the link to the latest entry in my jnl, along with an apology about the content of Tell it to the Judge. I was very upset, and had a drink or two too many. I could easily erase the entry...but that is too cowardly...like some of the people who left comments, not having the guts to comment with an email address. Ah, well....

MY MOTHERS HANDS (written November 28, 2006)


I looked across the table at my Mother stirring her coffee. Around and around, the spoon clinking against the sides of the mug. She had a dreamy look on her face as she was drifting into the past, telling me about her mother who was an astute investor. We were talking about things that are sad, yet inevitable. Probate, inheritance tax, estates, selling rare books on the Internet.

I squeeze the prospect that she is preparing to leave this earth and arrive in heaven (where God will meet her along with St. Peter at the pearly Gates) out of my mind, my thoughts, my reality.

I know she will live forever. I live in denial. I like it here.

In her hands I see my own. My own hands foreign, hers so familiar. Those hands that first held me, cleaned up the messes, chased me around with a paddle, soothed an illness with jello and chicken noodle soup, rags soaked in alcohol ice water and applied to a feverish forehead, grip the steering wheel at 10 and 2, hold a rosary, hand out the dollar bills to the grandchildren, moped up the blood from a head gash my brother so proudly presented to her, "LOOK MOM!! BLOOD!!!".

Those hands that were the center of attention right before her by-pass surgery of several years ago. My brother and I stood over her as she lay moments from the operating room, pleading with her to allow the orderly to cut off her rings, her wedding band and engagement ring, the irish claddagh ring. So long she had kept them on, they could not slide over her knuckles. She shed a tear as they took them off and handed them to us.

I held them though out that excruciating day. A day of 14 hours that seemed like 14 million hours.

Until the doctor came and escorted us into a room and told us she was okay.

I burst into tears of relief, so afraid that he was going to deliver bad news.

Those hands, laid out on the table on either side of the coffee mug, rings in their rightful place, are looking so much like mine anymore that it scares me and soothes me at the same time.

I reach out and squeeze them.


TELL IT TO THE JUDGE (written after receiving a $300 traffic violation at a trap)

A life time ago..maybe not that long ago...when I was in Business School at UofL I took a class called LOGIC that has been the back bone of most everything in my life since.

Why? Because the lessons I learned I use almost every day since.

For example, in writing and thinking things through...

A hypothesis...

Three supportive statements

A summary and conclusion.

When that damn police trap snared me in their insidious trap I was so F****** angry that I made the police officer follow me until I was calmed down enough to stop. I wondered about "resisting arrest".

When he examined my license and asked if the address was correct all I could think of was that it was an Indiana issue and I began to see red. I could only spit out through clenched teeth was the answer "Yes", followed by " ...and I HATE INDIANA."

Hypothesis....I HATE INDIANA

Supportive statements...

1) Last week I answered a call from a customer that demanded my company deliver some product that we "claimed" to be out of stock on. It was Friday afternoon. My drivers are union. I contacted the warehouse and found that we had three of the so called seven he ordered. I went and had it loaded into my vehicle and I delivered it. When I arrived at the account, two men who where painting the front area watched me carry in not once, not twice, but three times carry 30 pound packages of dead weight into the bar.

Never would that have happened in the South. Those men would have immediately asked if they could help and relieve me of the burden instead of just...watching me.

What is up with Indiana men? What is wrong with this picture?

Has women's lib taken hold so violently that real men can not even hold open a door. Which they did not....I propped it open with a chair.

Damn I was so bent out of shape if they had even asked to help I would have just given them the death ray glare.

Rudeness and reverse male chauvinism is alive and well in North East Indiana.

2) It is so flat and nondescript that the words have not yet been invented to describe it's ugliness. This being my second summer here, I have realized what a peril it is to actually live in the "corn belt". Everything from the stink of fertilizer to the scary realization that the water table is so poisoned by insecticides and nitrogen that I am forced to examine everything I eat and drink in this area.

And I am paying about 10 to 20 percent higher (for everything) to be silently and violently harmed. The food is priced so much higher than in the South....certainly housing is lower and I know why.... No one wants to live here!! They can give the real estate away for all I care!!

Every where I go the streets are torn up in the area I live.

I received a water bill. It was a tick under $70. The water part? 14 dollars. (I pay for garbage collection separately). I called the city to ask WTF. I was told that I had received a 66% increase because the city had to install new sewer lines because "some houses" were experiencing sewer back ups.

Wouldn't it be cheaper for our community as a whole to buy them out and relocate them????????

This is the corn belt for God's Sake, why is produce so F****** high???

Why is gas 20 cents higher than Columbus and (what I discovered while in TN) 50 cents higher than Knoxville??

Because our housing is so much lower "they" ( those F****** who make and keep all the money) think they can charge us higher prices than the rest of the nation?

3) There is a lack of culture here that makes me insane. If I want to see Shakespeare in the Park, I must go to South Bend. If I want to see a good concert I must travel to Chicago or Detroit or Indianapolis. Art gallery...forget about it. There is no Bravo station on cable. Nor IFC. How I miss Dinner for Five.

For a city that is about two hours away from everything heavenly, it certainly lacks any sort of sophistication that could possibly seep into town via the "rivers" (they look like creeks to this country girl)

So in a nutshell, that Cop pushed me over the edge and made me realize that I hate this place and I have been keeping a brave front because that is what one must do to survive.

Conclusion.

...If you want to live in a nondescript,overpriced, dangerous and uncultured hell hole, Ft Wayne is the place for you!

The Cop....when I told him I was pushed through that light which turned yellow and then red because those in front of me slowed down....and if I had stopped the vehicle behind me would have rear ended me....

"Tell it to the Judge" he instructed me.

I have much sympathy for Mel Gibson. Thank God I was not drinking.