"Don't Shoot Me, I'm a Lawyer!": The Lyrics

God bless the intertubes.  Five years ago I put up a post recounting the story of a vengeance killing in the lobby of a hotel in Shelbyville, Kentucky, in 1937, preserved in legend only by the response of bystander who got his moment in history by coining the immortal response:

Don't Shoot Me, I'm a Lawyer!

I learned the story along about 1961 in the most agreeable possible manner: in the form of a ballad scratched out almost on the spot by a memorialist with an eye to posterity.  Better, I heard about it from the most agreeable possible source: the author himself, George Hendon, a gentleman of the old school. witty and learned, the best possible company (actually a lawyer himself, at least by the time I met him, though he wore his professional identity lightly).  

Anyway, I lamented five years ago that I couldn't find the ballad anywhere on the web.  Ah, but a couple of weeks ago when I got a message from a certain "Uncledoc," who said that he remembered the song and would be happy to share.  An exchange of emails disclosed that "Uncledoc" was in fact a real doctor, practicing in Calhoun, Kentucky, on the Green River just a hop, skip and a jump from Madisonville.  Uncledoc let slip that he doesn't mind being confused with "Uncle Dave" Macon, last of the pre-radio country vocalists. He said that why yes, he would indeed be glad to share, and that if we could get together on a phone like, he would be happy to sing it to me.

We did, and he did: "just let me put the phone down here," he said.  Whereupon he not only sang the song but accompanied himself on the banjo.  It is my great disappointment that I can't provide an audio version here, but I do offer this transcription of the lyrics:

The harvest moon was shining on the streets of Shelbyville
The night that General Denhardt met his fate.
The Garr boys was a-gunnin', they were out to shoot to kill
And death and General Henry had a date.

Sad the end of soldier Henry, His military records clean
Now he lies beneath the sod, his soul has flown to God
But his body's in Bowling Green.

Pretty Verna Garr was lying, a-mouldering in her grave
in LaGrange 16 miles away,
And folks for miles around thought the general shot her down
Because she would not let him have his way.

Little did the general fear as he sipped his foaming beer
with lawyer Otte up from Louisville
That before the night had fled he'd be lying cold and dead
with Verna's secret locked within him still.

As the general reached the doorway of the old Armstrong Hotel
He stumbled and fell upon his face.
Roy Garr strode up beside him, smokin' pistol in his hand
And with one shot passed on to God the case.

“Don't shoot me I'm a lawyer!” cried attorney Rodes K. Myers
Down on his knees a-beggin' for his life.
His earnest words were heeded by doctor E.J. Garr
Who spared him for his kiddies and his wife

Now ladies don't you fear: if you've got a brother dear
That someday you may meet poor Verna's fate.
With lovin' ones around you to protect your womanhood
And the laws are what they are in this here state.

Seems to me there is a line missing in the second verse but Uncledoc says he thinks not (he says it is a chorus, not bound by the format for verses).  I told him it was a rotten shame that this wasn't on Youtube.  He said yes, well, he didn't know how to do that sort of thing, but that others have in fact posted some of his other stuff.  So to get a sense of what the lawyer song might sound like, listen here:

Here's a memorial plaque for the shooting, and for the old Armstrong Hotel.  FWIW, I've read a coule of summaries of the case and the general sure as hell sounds guilty to me.

A Further Offering on Parental Advice

Now that Father's Day recedes safely in the rear view mirror, it's a good moment to remember one of the most extraordinary books I've ever encountered--the Handbook for William, subtitled "A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son," written by one "Dhuoda" in the middle of the century and ably translated from its original Latin by Carol Neel.

"Dhuoda" was the wife of Bernard, count of Septimania, whom Neel identifies as "one of the most prominent Frankish magnates of the generation after Charlemagne."  William, there elder son, was born in 826; a second son, unnamed, was born in 1841.  During most of the intervening years, Bernard was away from home--not, strictly speaking, on a frolic, but rather attempting to maintain or secure his position in the lethally unstable milieu of the children of the great emperor.  At last Bernard accepted the authority of Charles the Bald, Charlemagne, but (for Dhuoda, at least) at a terrible price: Bernard delivered William up to Charles as hostage against the possibility of betrayal.  The second son was taken also, although his story is less clear: Dhuoda refers to him in her manuscript as the one "whose name I still do not know."

Dhuoda prepared her manuscript, then, in a vain effort to provide guidance to these two absent children.  Her purpose is not earthly practical advise; rather, she seeks (in Neel's words) "to teach her children how they might flourish in God's eyes as well as men's."  She says:

Read the words I address to you, understand them and fulfill them in action.  And when your little brother, whose name I still do not know, has received the grace of baptism in Christ, do not hesitate to teach him, to educate him, to love him, and to call him to progress from good to better.  When the time has come that he has learned to speak and to read, show him this little volume gathered together into a handbook by me and written down in your name.  Urge him to read it, for he is your flesh and your brother.  I, your mother Dhuoda, urge you, as if I even now spoke to both of you, that you "hold up your heart" from time to time when you are oppressed by the troubles of this world, and "look upon him who reigns in heaven" and is called God.  May that all-powerful one whom I mention frequently even in my unworthiness make both of you, my sons--along with my lord and master Bernard, your father--happy and joyful in the present world.   May he make you successful in all your undertakings, and after the end of this life may he bring you rejoicing to heaven among the saints.  Amen.

Dhuoda apparently never saw either of her sons again,  and may have known nothing of their fate.  In the event, Bernard was executed by Charles the Bald and William died in trying to avenge his father's death.  The unnamed second son "probably was" (Neel's judgment) the child who becomes Bernard Plantevelue-Hairyfeet--and founds the duchy of Aquitaine.  His son, her (probable?) grandson became William the Pious, who endowed the great Benedictine abbey at Cluny.

Paths to Enlightenment

Here's a story I don't think I've told before but only because it happened not to come to mind until just lately. Anyway, the time is late 1958 and I am finishing my Army "training" (oh hoh hoh) at Fort Leonard Wood, MO.  One night I drew telephone-answering duty at company HQ (what if President Eisenhower called?). To kill time I was fiddling with my newly-acquired Greek-language textbook, when a couple of MPs showed up with another young man in charge. They instructed me to furnish him with a cot and a corner to sleep in, explaining only that "he would be going home in the morning." The MPs left and we fell to chatting, my new charge and I. He was a tall black youth with medium-light skin, a bit fattish for a basic trainee, and with a ladylike manner. It didn't take long to surmise why he was on his way home but he I was glad for some diversion and we fell into an amiable chat.

At one point idly he flipped open my Greek book and straightway began to read:

ἐv ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. 

Okay, so it is easy Greek (this was, after all, a beginner book);   But so far as I could tell, his rendition was letter perfect.  I reflected then and there on the bewildering truth that the world was a more complicated place than I had anticipated.

Followup:  Now that I think of it, here's another.  This one takes place nearly three years earlier, Spring of 1955, while I am working as a general gopher for the Associated Press in the reporter's lobby at the House of Representatives in DC.  One day I was lounging in the viewer's gallery gazing down into the well of the House when my co-gopher slipped in beside me.  This young man was, in a word, a yokel: amiable enough and probably more competent at gophering than I, but so green he squeaked--green enough that even I, in the full wisdom of my 19 years, could hear the squeaking.  After a moment, he tipped his head towards a particular corner of the chanber. 

"Look at that," he whispered.  I thought I knew what he meant but I stayed noncommittal.  "Mm?"  I replied.

"It's a --" (and he used a word not currently deployed in polite company).

No words could convey his astonishment.  But he was right  By my memory it was William L. Dawson, of the Illinois First, only the third black to serve in Congress since reconstruction.  "That's right," I said and could think of no safe continuance. So I left my colleague in his stunned reverie.  So what have we learned today, children?  We have learned that enlightenment comes in many forms.

Class Master Class

 I was recounting our trip to Spain to our bud Sean.  Somehow I felt it apposite to explain how he guys sat in the front seat, the ladies in back.  Sean, who thinks and talks in paragraphs, explained (I paraphrase from memory)::

It's definitely lower class.  Were you middle class, the couples would have stayed together, each with his own.  And upper class, anything goes.

 Oddly enough, this sounds right o me, I have no idea why.  But it does remind me to write a letter to the GPS maker, with whom I have an unpicked crow.  Dear Mr. Tom;  may I call you Tom...

What I Learned This Week: Shakespearean One-Liners

Over dinner the other night, our friend Becky dismissed an absent presence as "fit to be sent on errands."

Cute, said I.  Where'd you get it.

Oh, Shakespeare, said Becky.

I don't believe you, said I, and I am pretty good at my Shakespeare one-liners.  

But a brief house call from Dr. Google demonstrated that she was correct. It is indeed Shakespeare, and not just Shakespeare--it is Marc Antony, colluding with his co-triumvir Octavian to determine who shall live, who shall die in the maelstrom that follows Caesar's assassination.  And not just Antony but Antony completely in character, with his jokey cruelty and his preening contempt for a supposed ally. For it is this Antony who has just dispatched Lepidus, the supposed third of the triumvirs, to fetch Caesar's will:

This is a slight unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands.

Link.

The WinCo Demographic

I don't think we are part of the target audience but Mrs. B is a careful manager and take my word for it: WinCo actually has a lot of perfectly decent stuff at attractive prices.  Perhaps more intriguing is how little the crowed here resembles the folks at Wal-Mart just down the road.  Not nearly as many tattoos nor as much flab.  This is clearly a downmarket cohort, but they look mostly like serious people striving to make a go of a limited budget.  And, sad to say, not a lot of happy faces.  Particularly among the older portion of the human inventory: lots of  them grey and impassive, as if just getting through the day was a challenge in its own right.

The only discordant note: the array of cheap tschatschkes arrayed in the entryway, like prizes at the shooting gallery at the county fair.  Got to keep the kids mollified somehow, I guess.

Damn, I Forgot to Tell Them That ...

Lifehacker has up a piece of feelgood nostalgia about advice from dads.  But it could just as well  serve as a checklist of advice to dads as to just exactly what they should pass on.  Children, did I remember to tell you that "Highways going N/S are odd numbered and E/W are even numbered"--?  Or that "If you want a pair of diamond earrings, win them in a poker game!"  Or the best so far:

...to kill silently, and without any evidence, stab the kidney with a large ice sickle. The pain is so intense that normally the victim cannot scream and bleeds-out quickly, and the weapon eventually melts and evaporates!

And the beauty part is that apparently you do not need to be in the Arctic to, ahem, execute the execution.  Turns out that a good thermos will keep the weapon in order for several hours.

Have I overlooked anything important?

Not Good for the Tourist Trade

  καὶ ἀνδρός ἐστιν ἰδίᾳ μνῆμα Μιλτιάδου τοῦ Κίμωνος, συμβάσης ὕστερόν οἱ τῆς τελευτῆς Πάρου τε ἁμαρτόντι καὶ δι᾽ αὐτὸ ἐς κρίσιν Ἀθηναίοις καταστάντι. ἐνταῦθα ἀνὰ πᾶσαν νύκτα καὶ ἵππων χρεμετιζόντων καὶ ἀνδρῶν μαχομένων ἔστιν αἰσθέσθαι: καταστῆναι δὲ ἐς ἐναργῆ θέαν ἐπίτηδες μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτῳ συνήνεγκεν, ἀνηκόῳ δὲ ὄντι καὶ ἄλλως συμβὰν οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τῶν δαιμόνων ὀργή.

 So Pausanias,Guide to Greece, 1.32.3,  link.   W.H. Jones translates:

Here is also a separate monument to one man, Miltiades, the son of Cimon, although his end came later, after he had failed to take Paros and for this reason had been brought to trial by the Athenians. At Marathon every night you can hear horses neighing and men fighting. No one who has expressly set himself to behold this vision has ever got any good from it, but the spirits are not wroth with such as in ignorance chance to be spectators.

Link.  No, wait, maybe that is exactly what the tourist trade wants.

The Strouse Morgan

Note to self: quit reading all those hot-off-the-press must reads.  A few of them are good and original: a lot of them just recycle stuff you've been reading on the blogs, etc.  A lot re good 35-paage longreads tucked inside 180 pages of hard cover.Stick to stuff a few years, maybe a few centuries, old. 

Case in point: Jean Strouse's biography of JP Morgan.  I read Ron Chernow's doorstopper about the House of Morgan a few years ago and figured I could skip Strouse.  Not sure what changed my mind: perhaps Chernow had faded enough in my memory that I was ready for refresher.  Anyway, the takeaway: I'm not sorry to have read Chernow but I am delighted to have read Strouse.  For understanding how 19th Century finance worked, it's one of the best things I've run across so far.  Some critics complain that it is too thick with detail and that might be true.  But the details are still the natural venue of the devil and I don't know anybody (including Chernow) who walks you through so many individual deals in a way that makes you understand what the players were trying to accomplish and how they did it.   

That' last is particularly true of what I suppose you'd have to say is a hobbyhorse: railroad reorganization: the salvaging and refinancing of rail projects in boom years from the end of the Civil War to the end of the Century.   Among many other virtues, Strouse does an admirable job of putting the rail problem in context: vastly excessive overbuilding, "ruinous competition," (as they so loved to call it) and the exquisite challenge of nurturing investors, particularly foreign investors who still saw America as a cowboys-and-injuns show.  Strouse shows that not the least of Morgan's achievements is how he made the American market plausible: a place where you could put your money knowing that a deal was a deal.  And that may be the core point of the Morgan story: difficult, irascible, self-absorbed, unreflective though he have been, still Morgan was a man who wanted things to work.  He saw every project as an occasion, not just to make money (though he made plenty) but to put together a project with a result: a railroad, a power company, a sovereign government, whatever.

 Another reason Strouse is so good at her job is that she seems to understand the complexities and ambiguities of a competitive market place, together with the problem of (as the 19C liked to call it) "the trusts."  She makes it clear (how could she not?) that concentrated power may confer unimaginable wealth on the lucky holder of the winning ticket.  But she just as well shows how colossally wasteful the 19th-Century investment casino might be.

A bit of more general reflection: I suspect one reason why there isn't more good business-financial history is that most people who tackle these projects really don't have much of a feel for their task.  I liked Chernow because I felt he did seem to know what he was doing. I like Strouse better.  That might be partly a matter of coverage: Chernow was trying to cover the whole history of the firm, not just a single lifetime--and in fewer pages--so naturally he was a bit thinner on the ground.  But here;s the thing: much as I liked the Chernow Morgan book, I felt his later effort on Alexander Hamilton was far better (I haven't read his others).  Could it be that he learned from experience?

More on the Lottery and Taxes [Hint: Dying is Not a Good Strategy]

The Wichita Bureau reminds us of what we overlooked in the lottery/tax inquiry:

The real reason an 84 year old takes the lump sum payment is that if she took the ‘annuity’, on her pending demise (what’s her life expectancy, 90?), her estate will have to pay federal estate tax on the present value of the annuity – which can be huge and more than she’s collected in annuity. As it is, she can give away as much as possible (although no where near the whole amount) and what’s left will be available to pay the fed estate tax. 

...[A]s it is, the fed taxes the lump sum at about 35% (Florida has a wealth tax but no income tax) - and then lies in wait for the real hit: the estate tax ... .*  So the lottery is a real tax break for the feds – who end up in this case with more than the family. 

 And an undocumented extra:

Have you ever wondered what you would do with the net? Say $300 million? At my age, my imagination runs the gamut from A to C ... [A] wheelchair van isn’t terribly sexy or speedy. Hmm, maybe the gamut runs from A to B.

---
*Which is not what it used to be.  See link, and HT Joel.