Chapter 11: My infant son died when I was in law school, to set me free

Dreams last night seemed to point me toward this below from  The Law and The Spirit section of the A Southern Lawyer Who Became a Mystic trilogy, lawandmysticism@blogspot.com.

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Just before my last semester at the University of Alabama School of Law started, my infant son died suddenly, it was ruled “crib death”, today known as sudden infant death syndrome. A small prestigious Birmingham corporate and trial law firm already had offered me a job. I was so upended that I did not follow through.

By then, married men and students were being drafted to fight in Vietnam. A lottery was being used. I had lost my father deferment. I drove to the Draft Board in Birmingham and applied for a student deferment, which would allow me to complete my last semester, and then I would be inducted. I hoped I would be used as a military lawyer, instead of being sent to Vietnam. Yet, I thought maybe I should join the Marine Corps, and go to Vietnam. I already was mostly dead inside.

My wife got pregnant. I drove back to the Draft Board, hoping to undo what I had recently done there.

The same older lady clerk waited on me. I told her my story. She said she was really sorry, but the student deferment was irrevocable. She pulled my file out of a green filing cabinet, to show me what I had signed. She looked in the file, said there had been some mistake. What mistake?, I asked. You signed the wrong form, she said, you will have to fill out the correct form. No thanks, I said. I will keep my father deferment. I knew God had made that miracle.

[Many years later, I would meet a woman whose husband was that Draft Board lady’s son. He had become a very good trial lawyer in Birmingham. I had gotten to know him somewhat when I practiced law. I tried one case against him and won, because the facts and sentiments were on my client’s side. His wife told me decades later, that she had heard a lot of Draft Board stories like mine. Apparently, his mother had seen to it that a number of young Birmingham men did not get sent to Vietnam.]

Freed from that terror, I was persuaded by a good law school buddy, who had graduated the year before me, and by his lawyer father and his law partner, country lawyers in south Alabama, that I should be a country lawyer myself. I would like it a lot more than being a city lawyer. And, it would be a lot easier to dove, quail and duck hunt in the country. And, to fish. And, it was a lot closer to the Gulf Coast, where I liked to fish.

They sent me to see a very respected defense trial lawyer in the south Alabama town where my father and his father were born. My father and this trial lawyer had played together when they were young, before my father’s father moved his family to Birmingham. This trial lawyer had had a son die.

I was not bright enough then to suspect my law school buddy and his father and his father’s law partner had greased the way. 

The trial lawyer in my father’s home town welcomed me with open arms. Said he was referring a lot of business to other lawyers in town. Would refer that business to me. Had an extra office I could use. His legal secretary only worked about half-time, she would do my legal secretary work.

He took me to the drugstore on the town square and introduced me to a couple of local lawyers having coffee there. They welcomed me with opened arms. I drove back to my friend’s town and told what had happened. Dang, I was gonna be a country lawyer!

I made on being a country lawyer my essay in a legal ethics course in law school. A college fraternity brother wrote to me, praising my decision and courage.

When I told my father what I had decided, he asked, Why would I want to do that?! I said, It’s a lock and key offer. The country club there already offered me a membership. My pregnant wife and I already got approved for an apartment in a new apartment building under construction. I can fish and hunt a lot, which I love. I would be happy. That’s no reason, my father said.

A Rubicon moment, I put it off.

My father’s father said I had really disappointed him. He was so counting on me causing his family to be closer than it had been.

A Rubicon moment. I put it off.

My father’s grandmother died. My wife and I drove from Tuscaloosa to the funeral in my Bashinsky family’s south Alabama home town.

Leaving our car, I saw the trial lawyer, my future law partner, standing alone in the cemetery. We walked to him and greeted him. I saw my father and his father over the way. I walked with my future law partner to say, Hello. I introduced my future law partner. He stuck out his hand. They turned their back on him. My future law partner gave me a look.

A Rubicon moment. I put if off.

My wife and I drove back to Tuscaloosa. I was in shambles.

My father called to say the senior partner of his and his father’s law firm was from a small town and he wanted to talk with me about being a country lawyer. I drove to Birmingham to see him. He said let’s go to the law library, where the other members of the firm are waiting. I knew some of them. My father and his father had paid them a whole lot of money in legal fees.

The senior partner asked me what I knew about being living in a small town? I said, Not much. The senior partner, a devout Christian and Bible scholar, said, Well, it’s like this. All you have to do is drive out to the golf course on Saturday night to see who is fucking whose wife. He looked me dead in the eye. The other lawyers burst out laughing. I did not think it was funny, because I was having such thoughts.

Much later, I would write more about that senior partner in A FEW REMARKABLE PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN, as part of my recovery from a latter-day Rubicon meltdown having nothing to do with Alabama. Self-published, several reprints, perhaps 2,000 copies given away.

Back to the fall of 1967 in Tuscaloosa.

     A law professor approached me before class and said word was a federal judge in Birmingham has lost his law clerk, who resigned to practice law with his father. Perhaps I should check that out? I wrote to the judge, reported what I had been told by a law professor. The judge wrote back, inviting me to come see him.

I drove to Birmingham and met the judge in his chambers. Mostly, we talked about hunting and fishing. He said I had the job if I wanted it. I said I wanted it. Whew! The Rubicon was dodged.

Not hardly. My wife was really upset that I abandoned being a country lawyer. I drove back to south Alabama to tell my country lawyer friends. I drove over to my family’s home town to tell my future law partner. He said he was not surprised after what had happened at the cemetery, but clerking for a federal judge was a golden opportunity for any law graduate. I should not feel bad.

The Rubicon did not die. It was chewing me up, actually.

I went to work for the federal judge. A giant among men, whose story I would tell in A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN. afewremarkablealabamapeople.blogspot.com

It went well with the federal judge for about a year. I was still undecided about being a country lawyer, or even being a lawyer. I woke up one morning, constipated. The beginning of the bowel disorder. My internist doctor was not able to fix it. Laxatives did not fix it. I was fucking terrified, because I knew it was from not of this world.

I lost my confidence. I interviewed with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which offered me an attorney job. I waffled.

I talked with Birmingham law firms. Got a job offer. I waffled.

Finally, I told my father I wanted to work for his company. Really?, he asked. Yes, I said.

My judge tried to talk me out of it. Said I could clerk another term for him. I said I had to move on.

Bataan Death march, it kinda became.

Worst decision of my life. Worst decision for my father, too.

Four years later, nearly dead, marriage in shambles, I told my father I had to move on.

Out of nowhere, I learned of a small, not prestigious law firm, looking for a new law associate. I interviewed them. They offered me a job. I accepted.

I told my father. He said that’s the law firm in which one of the partners’ father is that guy at the University of Alabama School of Medicine with the weird ideas. I said, Yes, so weird that the medical school and the surrounding University of Alabama in Birmingham grew so big that it’s your company’s biggest customer in Birmingham.

By then, my wife and I had two daughters. The older, whose birth had saved me from Vietnam, got run over on her bicycle by a Volkswagen driven by a nearly 90-year-old woman, who was not at fault. That did me in.

My senior law partner filed a lawsuit, which settled cheaply later on. A really bad idea, that lawsuit.

I figured I was the cause of what happened to my daughter. I was spending my spare time in the YMCA playing 4-wall handball. My daughter had told neighbor friends that her daddy’s name was, “Handball”.

I flagged down a passing car, which took us to the hospital where my daughter and her younger sister were born.

The hospital where I once ended up after contracting dysentery running a country route for my father’s company the summer of 1964. The regular salesman was on vacation that week. My father was out of town on business. He called me in my hospital room and said, That’s a really interesting way to get out of work. I was fighting for my life. My mother was really upset.

There is no cure for stupidity.

When THE HIGH LEGAL ROAD was ready to go to press in 1990, I added the dedication: “To my son, who died for me.” I meant it. For his death had so unhinged me, that I never again was able to fit myself into THE STATUS QUO. Oh, I certainly tried. But that Rubicon had been crossed and all that remained was for me to figure that out and accept it. That would take a while.

Now let me say my father had many good qualities. His company employees loved him and kept voting against labor unions trying to get into the company. His business customers really liked him. He gave away a lot of money to good causes. A boys and girls ranch still operates today, because of his generosity.

But it was not meant to be for me to work for his company, and he seemed to be proud of me as a practicing attorney. He seemed concerned for me over my health issues. He told me that people had told him that my books were causing trouble. I asked him how he responded to that? He said he told them that it looked to him that I had told the truth.

We fell out many years later, after my alternative reality Boulder life melted down and I returned to Birmingham in shambles. He said I should get a job digging ditches. I said I was not physically able to do that, but I had applied for a job with the Birmingham Parks Service. That seemed to jolt him. He said I should get an entry level position in a Birmingham law firm and start all over. I said my heart would not be in it.

His countenance turned mean. He said he could not believe a fifty-three-year-old man had never gotten over the death of his son. Something came over me. I said he would never criticize me again. We would see each other in the afterlife, where it would be better between us. I looked him in the eye, shook his hand, and left. He started coming to me in my dreams, and was the father that any son would want. He still sometimes comes to me in dreams, to help me.

Likewise, the federal judge started coming to me in dreams after I returned to Birmingham from Boulder. He never told me to go back into the practice of law. Perhaps because I had never left it, but was doing it in a different way.

sloanbahsinsky@yahoo.com