The Jury “lounge” was hot as blazes and crammed with about a hundred potential jurors. I had brought my scrap book of news stories from the 1977-80 Upper Great Lakes scandal to plow through. Two jurors had the latest Harry Potter book. Their reading may have been more fun but mine was an obsession.
After being sent to a gloriously air conditioned court room an hour later I had to sit through two and a half hours of jury selection in the “voir dire” process that a video had told us about. The didn’t get around to interviewing me before the magic number of sitting jurors was selected and I was excused for the day.
I had lunch with Dad and then stripped down to the lightest clothes I could get by with to finish scraping my house’s woodwork. It was over ninety degrees with seventy percent humidity. I only worked in the sun for two hours before finishing the job Dad and I started a couple days ago but I must have lost a couple pints of perspiration.
I stood under a cold shower forever and then challenged Dad to a game of cribbage. All three games were nip and tuck till the last hand and I won two-out-of-three. Dad must have had something else on his mind.
Hallelujah! My five o’clock call to the jury line got me a reprieve for tomorrow. No jury. I called my daughter to tell her that Dad and I will be driving down to see her. I’ll let Dad take her out to lunch while I visit my Mother at her alzheimer’s care unit. It’s been a couple weeks since I peaked in. I’ll tell her about my solo and then spend an hour singing Boop Boop Ditum Datum and other familiar tunes with her. I do most of the talking. I tell her about the things from her childhood that she once told me about. She still has those memories. As for me….she always takes my claim to be her son without argument.
Tonight I got several emails from Fairbault. It seems that my blog may get passed around in that “Big Nine” city. I’m sure they will be my kind of folks. I’m a Mankato High School alum back before the creation of Mankato East. Maybe others from that Fairbault will contact me.
