CHAPTER TWENTY: GOIN’ THROUGH MY MIND IN CAROLINA

CHAPTER TWENTY: GOIN’ THROUGH MY MIND IN CAROLINA

I can’t believe it’s been 5 days since our last Blog. We haven’t moved an inch, except when the waves knock us about in our slip at Casper’s Marina. We’re still tied up/tied down in Swansboro. There’s an explanation, of course. And it involves the weather partly. You wouldn’t believe the storms we’ve been through in Swansboro. We’ve had lightning, thunder and wind that surrounded us on more than one occasion. The last big thrill was on Tuesday night, when we were the only boat at the marina, all alone, with bolts of lightning shooting down on the waters around us and the wind whipping up the waves. Lordy, it was terrifying for a few minutes. Then the angry god of thunder disappeared as quickly as she arrived, leaving us with a trivial amount of rain.

Another reason for our stationary status is that Art is trying to get some difficult data base building and form creating done for a client, who visited us on Monday with a whole list of honey-do’s. I had just returned from my successful visit with Dr. Shea at the University of North Carolina Hospital in Chapel Hill, and the client, a go-getter who fixes generators and other equipment all across the country, was talking about work order forms and a dozen other items he needs – yesterday. Art’s brain is almost fried after another day of visualizing and another day of creating the data bases for the forms. Art never thought he’d personally meet this client, having been hired by him when we were still in California. But when we realized we would be traveling up the coast of North Carolina, and this guy lives in North Carolina, well, why not try to meet in person? Oh my aching head – fallout from Art’s fried brain. Everything the client wants done can be done, if you’re a genius. Slow Motion has a resident genius, fortunately. But it all takes time – and a lot of deep, deep concentration and thought.

This means that I disappear for hours, while the genius is at work. Today I rode my borrowed bicycle around Swansboro. It was only 88 degrees, but according to the Weather Station, felt like 100 degrees. I can vouch for that. I didn’t even make it out of the shower room before I started sweating again – that’s a record. Usually, I have at least 5 to 10 minutes of feeling fresh. But not today, oh no. The back of my T shirt was wet before I made it around the corner to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Still, I try to look presentable. I like all the acts of kindness, the free drinks and such from people who apparently feel sorry for me, but I still have a little pride left. I’ve foregone manicures and pedicures, massages and long bubble baths. But dammit, I still use my hair dryer and my curling iron. Art hates the curling iron. True, it’s an irrational response to a small appliance. Today he said that it would be great bait for the local fishes. He has this thing about straight, uncurled hair – goes back to our high school days. Can you believe that we have known each other for fifty years this year? Sure, there was a little hiatus of about 44 years, but the straight hair preference has spanned the decades.

Enough about us. You should meet the folks at Casper’s marina. Mr. Casper, the Man, can do everything but collect money. He’s always offering to help. Today he put a basket on the bike he lent me, so I could put my purchases inside and take them directly to the Post Office to mail them. Susan, his 72 year old wife, never runs out of stories about the people of Swansboro and the worst storms they have ever seen here. And she always ends a conversation with: “If there is anything we can do to help, please let us know.” The young fellow who works with her has picked up the same tag line, and he means it too. He went to her house to get the bikes for us, right after she offered them for Art’s 8 mile journey in search of new lines for the brand new fenders. Sure, that’s another good reason to hunker down at this marina for more than a week – that and the price.

When we’re not getting the royal treatment from the Casper family, we’re leading the life of the mind this week. Art is doing his esoteric computer work and I’m doing New York Times crossword puzzles and exchanging emails with new old friends from Jennings Street, Bethlehem, PA. My mind is the overcrowded storage area for so much trivia embodied in the answers to the Wednesday through Sunday NYT crossword puzzles for June through September, 2007. Jeopardy, here I come! Re-connecting with Jennings Street friends has been so pleasant, and it certainly jogs the memory cells and puts them to work. All I need to do is add a few good novels to my plate, and my mind will be completely sated.

I didn’t know what to expect of North Carolina. Long ago, when I was a poverty lawyer in New Haven Connecticut, I had a client, Annie Mae Maebry, who had lived in Greenville, North Carolina until her three children were removed from her custody. Then she was told to leave the area for a while, and she would have a better chance of seeing them again. So she came to New Haven, but the folks with her kids in North Carolina seemed to have forgotten about her. She asked me to get her kids back. She said that one day she had taken off all her clothes and started running down the road, and that attracted an officer’s attention (she was about 300 pounds). She was put in a mental institution, and her children were removed from her home and placed in foster care. As I recall, she had taken off all her clothes because it was very hot, and then suddenly it started to rain, and she wanted to cool off with the rain. Does that sound crazy to you? Not to me after just two months of humidity.

At any rate, I called the Social Services Department and asked about Annie Mae’s kids, and I was told that a hearing was coming up, which I could attend on her behalf, to ask for the return of her children. I was told it would not be a good idea to bring my client with me back to Greenville; that would just revive the last memory of her running naked. I knew I had to attend the hearing, but I wanted local counsel, so I wouldn’t be home-towned. I did not speak “southern”. I could not pronounce the name of the town right – it’s “Gree-vaul” to Annie May and the people who live there. I got on the phone to a civil rights attorney in Durham, NC, Jerry Paul, and asked for his help. He agreed to be co-counsel and go with me to the hearing. He said getting the kids back would be a “slam dunk”, because North Carolina could not wait to get “three little Black babies” off the welfare rolls. This sounded promising, something positive coming out of racism.

I flew to Durham and Jerry Paul picked me up. Things were looking good, until he mentioned that he had done something to his back – which already hurt from an old football injury. Then he dropped the bomb that he could not do the drive to “Gree-vaul” the next day for the hearing, because the pain was too great. He assured me that all I had to do was show up, and the court would grant my request for the return of Annie Mae's kids -- because I was doing them a favor by removing them from the welfare rolls. In fact, it was an even better deal for NC, because I would remove the kids from the entire State. Let the kids go with the Connecticut Yankee -- and everybody wins! Okay, I believed the acclaimed civil rights attorney about 50%, but in the back of my mind I knew I was a stranger in a strange land, with no local co-counsel and no back up plan. Still, this was probably the only plane trip to North Carolina that New Haven Legal Assistance was going to spring for, and Annie Mae was counting on me.

The next day I drove through the worst rural poverty I had ever seen, shacks without water or electricity, and little kids with tattered rags for clothes. I made it to the courthouse well before the start of the hearing. I introduced myself to the Social Services court worker, who had prepared the report for the judge on the progress of Annie Mae and the current status of her children. She was reserved, but helpful. She thought Annie Mae could get her kids back in about 6 months. She did not mention a desire to send them home with me or an interest in reducing their welfare numbers. Then the judge took the bench. Oh God – I still get nervous thinking about what happened. He asked for appearances, and I stated my name and announced my representation of Annie Mae Maebry. Then, in a totally surprising move, he asked to see my Bar card. I didn’t have a Bar card. I told him that. And, boy, did that make him go ballistic. He said how did he know that I was even a lawyer? I told him my credentials. He said anyone could claim to have those credentials. He was going to need more information and make some calls to find out if I was impersonating a lawyer, and if I was, I could expect some jail time.

Well, that wasn’t exactly the southern hospitality greeting I had expected from the court. Fortunately, someone in Connecticut at the Bar Association vouched for me, to the satisfaction of Judge Cranky. And he took the bench again and said that he would accept that I was a lawyer, but he didn’t have to let me participate in the hearing, because my client wasn’t there. He relented a little, and let me say my piece about Annie Mae’s strong desire to be reunited with her children. He said that the evidence was against reunion, at least for the moment, according to the social worker’s report. I asked to cross examine the social worker on her report to the court. And Judge Cranky went ballistic for the second time: “What? You are trying to shake the credibility of this fine woman, my neighbor, who has lived in this county her entire life?” Home towned. “I don’t care what you ask her, her opinion is good enough for me.” Doubling down on home towning me.

Needless to say, it was a short cross-examination. But the social worker showed an independent streak when the Judge left the bench, after ruling that Annie Mae would not get her kids back for another six months. The social worker actually said she would work with me and Annie Mae to get her kids back to her sooner than that. She told me what we needed to do, and I swear, those children were in Annie Mae’s loving arms within three months of my visit to Gree-Vaul. She had threatened to bake me a sweet potato pie, when we got her kids back, and she carried through on that threat. Yummy. So this was a gastronomical success. But what I really learned from this experience is that you can lose in court and still achieve your objective, if you just keep your eye on the prize. The Judge is against you? Then go around him and work with the other people who have the power to give you what you are seeking. Oh, yeah, I also started carrying some kind of lawyer “Bar card”.

I have a new outlook on North Carolina forty years later. But they still pronounce it “Gree-Vaul”. And I wonder what the authorities would do today if a large Black woman with kids took her clothes off and ran down the road in a rain storm. Would she be yanked away to a mental hospital? Or do they even have any mental hospitals left in NC? Would they remove her children from her for this one impetuous act? Or do they even have the money for foster care any more? These are the thoughts going through my mind in Carolina tonight. And for all the cases I had and all the goals I achieved as a poverty lawyer in New Haven in the 1970’s, and later in California in the mid-‘70’s, my mind always wanders back to Annie Mae Maebry and her joyous reunion with her three “kees”.