Monday, July 22, 2019

Tales from the Old Days

From time to time, I'm reminded of a funny story from my days at the District Attorney's Office and I think that they might make for a decent blog post.  I was reminded of one of those moments this morning by former-HCDA investigator Steve Januhowski on Facebook, so I thought I'd share.

Back when I was a new-ish prosecutor, a group of prosecutors routinely got together on Wednesdays after work for Steak Night at the Little Woodrow's on W. Alabama (sadly, it has since been demolished).  I coordinated Steak Night and I was pretty religious about attendance.  We usually had anywhere between ten to thirty people show up.

I never missed.  If I didn't leave early from work, I was out the door at 5:00 sharp on Wednesdays.

During my tenure as the Chief of County Court at Law #5, my secretary was the one and only Barbara Eaglin, who was a true institution of the Office.  She had been around for decades, if not centuries and was well known for her good-natured battles with the smart ass baby prosecutors that came through the misdemeanor.  In addition, if a thought entered Barbara's mind, it immediately came right out of her mouth, and it came out loudly.

One Wednesday, my godfather, Jim Cox, called the Office looking for me.  Jim was an older attorney, who was probably in his mid-to-late-60s when this happened.  He didn't practice criminal law and he didn't know Barbara, nor did she have any clue on earth who she was talking to when she answered the phone.  As he would tell me later that the phone call went something like this.

BARBARA:  District Attorney's Office.

JIM:  May I speak to Murray Newman?

BARBARA:  No, he's gone for the day.

JIM:  Oh, that's right.  It's Wednesday.  He must have left early for steak night.

BARBARA:  No.  He left early because it's raining outside and shit floats.

She then hung up the phone.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I thought it was funny.

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