The Rainbow Room
5/29,2006
I’m back at Queen bean coffee House, a gay friendly coffee house who’s theme is "WHERE I BELONG”. I like the broad red and yellow striped walls of the interior. It’s open Monday, Memorial Day.
Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” plays here now.
Jim’s driving me nuts, so, I flee, secretly here and then, publicly, to the jail.
I can’t find my fucking file! So, I’m going to see the client in the jail file free. Joe’s got it!
Espresso here is 81 cents. It’s $1.25 at Deva’s.
The espresso here at Queen Bean is pretty good.
So, I grabbed my jail pass, this estate sale pad, 2 pens and quick, delicious shower and I split . Jim’s dopey on his meds back home.
What a way to celebrate 25 years of lawyering. May 29, 1981-May 29, 2006.
I mentioned it to Jim and he futzed around. He is needy, grasspy but, too, pushes away. We thrash and thrive. And try. And move and accomplish.
A private anniversary. Private’s nice.
So, what of the past. Passed. Twenty Five Years?
Wow! Hard to even be with.
9:15am. Stanislaus County Jail
It’s Memorial Day. 5/29/2006
I’m waiting in the Rainbow Room. I hope that the jail guards bring the right guy.
Sure enough, a rainbow, through the glass blocks!
From some were nearby in the jail I hear
“1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10…over and over. Breathy voice an inmate workout echos.
So, back to my 25 year anniversary of lawyering.
25 years of:
Clients,
jailing
Trials
judges
, money woes.
Ive opened to practicing criminal law as I’ve opened to self’and
To other things
Mutual expansion.
Intense.
Harsh.
Law
Mean.
Teacher
End of entry
Notes: Jim was my partner Jim. We bought a house together In Modesto, California in 1998. He died in 2009.
Queen Bean was a coffee house located about a mile from our house.
The jail was located downtown then. It has since moved way out in the country. But, during the days of the old jail, I would often counsel clients in an interview room that had a block glass wall that faced east. It would cast rainbows on the adjacent wall in the interview room when hit by the sun. Thun sun’s way of casting eternity into the dark hell of the jail. Thus, my name for that interview room “The Rainbow Room."
That interview room was very close to jail cells where the inmates were housed. The jail environment was cacophony of loud, blaring TVs, and men shouting and screaming. There was a constant den and roar to it. The rain bows appeared in sharp contrast to this.
Deva’s was restaurant in Modesto.
I passed the February 1981 bar and was sworn in as a lawyer in Fresno California on 5/29/1981.
My partner Jim was suffering from liver problems in May of 2006. Thus, the medications he was on and his grumpiness.
Joe, who had the file that I needed, was my case investigator.
