Jim Jones\’ Legal Blog

The very word conjures up a plethora of unpleasant scenarios, especially for lawyers. There are all kinds of powerlessness but the recent loss of electricity during Hurricane Ike was a sobering reminder of how much we take it for granted. While the weather miraculously cooled down into the high 60’s for an unseasonably pleasant week, there was no TV, no email, no computers, no DVD and WORST OF ALL – NOSTARBUCKS!  It could have been worse though if air conditioning had been necessary.

Those with generators had some respite from the dark silence but at $25.00 per day for fuel, most limited the time they ran them.  Barbeque pits and gas stoves or fireplaces make some cooking possible.  No one knows how many millions of board-feet of lumber were lost but the air was filled with the aroma of burning wood.  So I sat there in the candle-light, listening to my tiny emergency radio, hoping for news of the return of power.  It really gets dark in The Woodlands when the power is out.  I mean can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face-dark.

Looking back down the long road, there are certain crossroads which, if a different turn was taken, a radically different life would have resulted.  Recently, I’ve been reminded of some of those possible detours.  I’ve been watching this new show on FX called “Sons of Anarchy”.  It’s about an outlaw motorcycle club similar to The Mongols or Hell’s Angels and they pretty much run the small northern California town where they live.  The club owns a garage that repairs motorcycles and cars but the real source of their income is the sale of illegal weapons, like machine guns.  Presumably, the producers consider that this is more acceptable than other forms of criminal activity such as drug dealing.  There’s a fair amount of gratuitous sex and violence portrayed as one might expect.

            As I watched the show last night, I recalled a scene played out in a biker bar in 1978 between me and a guy I went to school with since junior high.  We’d hung out together in school and even got picked up by the police together on one occasion while teenagers.  We had this childish fascination with outlaw biker gangs and read everything we could get about the exploits of the Hell’s Angels.  Still, he was from the old neighborhood and like many of the others came from a good, working class family and attended Catholic school until ninth grade.  Guys like Jack, Sammy and Joe who also rose to high office in the gang came from the same background.

We were all riding Harleys way before it was cool.  Then only the police and outlaw bikers usually rode Harleys.  Nearly ten years after high school, my friend Merle who was now known as “Jackpot” (due to an unusually good streak of luck at the dog track) and I sat at the bar, drinking tequila.  Jackpot had accumulated a number of tattoos and along the way; he became national president of The Pagans. 

            These guys were nobody to fool around with and certainly not to be taken lightly.  There were persistent rumors that they had murdered a guy who was trying to get his brother away from the club.  One actually did shoot an out of towner and kill him outside a bar.  The shooter got 20 years and served every day.

So imagine my shock when Jackpot asked me if I’d like to join The Pagans.  A few years before, I probably would have jumped at the chance.  Now, at the advanced age of 27, I had acquired enough common sense to know that this was not a smart career move and I was grateful when Jackpot accepted my decision not to join, remarking ‘Yeah, well you’d have to quit your job and leave your old lady anyway so it’s cool.” 

In 1988, Jackpot was indicted by the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania , convicted under the RICO statute and was sentenced to 20 years in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.  He was released after serving 12 years of a 20 year sentence.  Others from the area were convicted of serious crimes and served time in prison. 

As I watched the show and remembered these guys, I couldn’t help but wonder how different life would be today if I had accepted the offer to descend into that dark netherworld.  I was already the parent of a young child and the conditioning that my parents instilled in me regarding getting an education mitigated against that.  Law school was a distant dream and I was still conflicted over exercising my free, if ill-advised will versus conforming. I’d always had a problem with authority whether it was my parents, school or the church.  My friends and I considered their values empty clichés and meaningless mantras.                                                                      

            In the nano-second it took me to decide to remain a “citizen”, the rest of my life was now focused in the opposite direction.  Shortly thereafter, I would sell the Harley, shave off the beard, cut my hair and trade my worn leather jacket for Izod shirts and khaki slacks.  I decided that a lawyer probably had a brighter future that outlaw bikers.  I still ride motorcycles but I always wear a helmet and my taste has gravitated to Ducati motorcycles rather than Harleys.  Others took a different road and paid a heavy toll for those choices. 

Forty-five years after its introduction, the Ford Mustang stands alone as the sole survivor of the muscle car era.  The Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird and the Dodge Challenger have all gone the way of the dodo bird.  Not that the Mustang didn’t have some narrow escapes itself.  The suits in charge of marketing at Ford wanted to kill the car back in 1992 but when word got out, the company received over two hundred thousand letters from former and current owners protesting the decision.  Instead, the car was re-designed in 1994 with an updated body style and more potent engines.  Sales increased and the car was refined over the next few years until the 2005 model.  This car was the first new-from-the ground-up re-design since 1978 and it is the best one yet.  The suspension is tauter, the engine gained thirty more horsepower resulting in a faster, better handling car while retaining the classic styling cues of the original.  It has been the most popular sports car sold in this country for the past twenty years.

            The GT model‘s 4.6, 24 valve power plant produces a respectable 300 horsepower right out of the box.  Fuel consumption averages 20 city and 27 highway, exceptional mileage for a V-8 engine.  There is a billion dollar per year industry that produces performance products strictly for this car.  Companies such as Carroll Shelby, Steeda and Saleen take that performance to a new and higher level with a variety of engine, suspension, tire and other modifications, resulting in a car that rivals some the Europe’s most illustrious names.  It is not unusual for this small engine to be modified such that it will produce over 500 horsepower.

            The first car I ever really wanted was a 1966 fastback coupe.  It was red with white interior and was sitting in a car lot along Route 30.  Imagine my dismay when it was purchased by some doting father for his son, a kid I went to school with and thoroughly disliked.  Now I really hated him. A few months later, this same wonderful father replaced the Mustang with a brand new 1969 Z-28 Camaro and sold the Mustang to another kid that I hated even more that the first.

            I went on to own other performance cars such as a Triumph TR-6, a Corvette, 1970 Chevelle and two Fiats but never forgot that Mustang.  I bought my first one in 1996 and have owned five overall, counting the 2006 GT currently sweltering in our parking lot.  For the money, it is the best buy in a performance car you can get and depending on how much you want to spend, it can be a truly world class competitor.

            A while back, one of my colleagues referred to me as his “favorite malcontent”.  It took me a minute or so to digest this comment and although I’m sure he didn’t mean it to be complimentary, I consider myself in good company.  With the recent July 4 holiday just past, it seemed to me that this country was founded by a bunch of like-minded malcontents.   John Paine, John Adams, and Ben Franklin were among the most fervent malcontents of their day.  After they lost their faith in the English system of justice, they became dedicated revolutionaries.     

            Adams defended the British soldiers accused of murder in the so-called “Boston Massacre” and won an acquittal on all counts, only to see the English invalidate the jurisdiction of American courts over Englishmen accused of a crime.

            One of the foremost malcontents of all time must be Martin Luther.  He was unhappy with certain practices of the Catholic Church so much that he took on the only real global power in existence at the time and sparked the Reformation. 

            A disproportionate number of malcontents have been lawyers. Mao Tse Tung, Gandhi and Fidel Castro are some examples of over-achieving malcontents whose discontent changed world history. 

            And all I wanted was to go some place different for lunch.

With Memorial Day upon us once again and our troops still in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought it appropriate to blog on this subject.  It is certainly proper to honor those who have fallen in the defense of our country.  Those of us who were teenagers during the Viet Nam era will remember friends and neighbors who died there.  Looking through family photographs, there are the faces of family members who served in conflicts from the Civil War up through WWII and Korea. 

I am especially proud of the photograph of my great, great uncle William Cross Bell who served in the Union Cavalry during the Civil War.  He looks to be about twenty in the picture, sitting there erect in his blue uniform holding his saber at his side.  Family lore says that he gave two good horses and one leg for the Union at battle of Second Manassas.  My grandmother who was born in 1876, used to tell stories of his recounting war time experiences on the front porch, wooden leg propped up for comfort.  My great grandfather served in the infantry and would turn his chair and harrumph when these tales began.  Apparently there was some rivalry between the cavalry and the infantry that outlasted the war.

Next is my uncle Roy Claussen, a mere boy of 15 in his WWI uniform holding his Springfield ’06 rifle at “present arms”.  He lied about his age and my great-grandmother signed for him to join the Army. He was killed in the Argonne Forest just a couple months before the Armistice on November, 11, 1918. My mother’s family was German and they even Anglicized the spelling of the family name to read “Closson”.  This was done by many German families to show their patriotism during this period.

He was the first one killed in that war from our little town and they named the local VFW post after him.  There used to be a parade down Fourth Street every Memorial Day with the usual cornball mix of junior high school bands, local politicians and horses.  My Uncle Jim used to dress up like a clown and drive his old West Stagecoach pulled by a pair of mules named Ham and Gravy in the parade.  My grandmother was one of the “Gold Star” mothers who rode in the front of the parade, usually in a Cadillac convertible.  Gold Star mothers were those who lost sons in the war.  She never spoke of it but kept his service photograph over the piano in her living room until her death in 1965.  We donated the photograph to the VFW post where it hangs today.

There’s my cousin Tommy in his spiffy WWII lieutenant’s uniform, hat cocked to one side just like the guys in the war movies.  I think he was the first Jones in the 200 years that we’ve been here to earn a college degree on the GI Bill.  He stepped on a land mine in France and carried a piece of Krupp steel in his leg until the day he died.  He never could walk right and limped along for many years after that day but never complained. 

Finally there’s Paul Rugh in his fighter jock flight suit standing in front of his F- 80 Shooting Star, grinning ear to ear.  He was married to my older sister and flew combat missions in Europe in a P-38 Lightning fighter.  He stayed in the service after the war and flew combat in Korea, one of the very first jet pilots.  He got through all of that but was killed in a training accident in Georgia.

So let us continue to observe Memorial Day and drink a toast to these brave men.  Lest we forget.