Dave Wood

Of all the fictional lawyers I’ve run across as a reader and movie goer, including Perry Mason, and interesting one-shot performances by actors like  E.G. Marshall, Andy Griffith and fat lady Kathy Bates, my favorite turns out to be the drunken lawyer in Dickens’ novel “A Tale of Two Cities,” the drunken and totally dissolute Sidney Carton, who goes to the guillotine in place of his goody-goody pal Charles Darnay and says these immortal words just before laying his head on the chopping block: “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Real life lawyer tales also abound in the folklore of our region. Attorney James Gaveney leads the pack of my hometown. The son of an Irish immigrant, he served as legal counsel to the railroad that ran through my hometown. According to Wisconsin law the railroad was responsible for any injuries that passersby suffered from a passing locomotive. 

What resulted, Gaveney wryly told an historian, is that “Whenever a farmer’s scrawny Guernsey heifer collided with Locomotive #1, the result usually turned out to be the farmer’s claim that the heifer was really a purebred Hereford bull, unregistered, of course.”   

When Gaveney was a young lawyer, he was called to represent a scullery maid who claimed she was impregnated by her employer, a leader in the little Iowa community. His counsel sneered at the allegation pointing out that his client was a man of “good conscience,” and wouldn’t lower himself to impregnate a scullery maid, at which point Gaveney interrupted the pompous local lawyer with this highfalutin Latin phrase, PENIS ERECTUS NON DIFFERANDUM.  And the Iowa jury found Squire Hankypank guilty as charged.

Lots of lawyers in our neighborhood weren’t as elegant or eloquent. I met attorney Willis Donnelly, a criminal attorney from Menomonie, on my first day as barboy in the Town Room of The Hotel Eau Claire. I served him a double scotch and he threw a dollar bill on the floor, saying “that’s for you, kid.” I bent over to pick it up and Donnelly Esq, kicked me in the butt and sent me sprawling. I picked myself up, readjusted my cummerbund and asked Jerry the head bartender what the hell was going on. “Ah,” he replied. “That’s just Willis. He’s probably celebrating. Must’ve just won a case!”

That’s not the last I heard of Donnelly Esq. Seems that one of his cases wasn’t proceeding well before longtime D.A. Victor Tronsdal, so right in the trial Donnelly collapsed in front of the bench, whispering “Heart attack!” Sirens howled, the ambulance arrived with stretcher. A prone mouthpiece was slid into the ambulance and off it headed for Luther Hospital close by, at which Donnelly stuck a fresh cigar in his maw, tapped the driver on the back and asked “Gotta match?’’ Looks like he met his in that courtroom and knew when to take a powder.

Speaking of Menomonie, it’s the town well-known for Bundy Hall, once the residence of a family of lawyers named Bundy, who made a fortune defending lumberjacks who suffered serious injuries laboring in the Stout pineries. One of their heirs was Mike Bundy who had a law office across from the aforementioned Town Room in Eau Claire. Mike was semi-retired and would leave his office for a few well-timed libations served by Yours Truly. Mike was a raconteur of the highest water, especially on the subject of his mother-in-law who lived with the Bundy’s in a fine manse in the third Ward.

Seems Mother-in-Law was a devout teetotaler, so Mike found solace in the Town Room, but Sundays were another matter when his office was closed. “Gotta go home,” he’d say, “and make my special Jell-O for Sunday dinner. First, bananas from Kroger’s. Then a bottle of Vodka from Tesanmeier’s Liquors….”

“Vodka, Mike?”

“Yes, my friend, Mrs. Bundy’s mom seems to like my version, she’s been asking for second and third helpings since I started serving it!”

When Mike was still in his heyday he hired my cousin Elsie Wood for his firm. She was one of Wisconsin’s first female lawyers, but he never let her try a case after she had done all the work on it “because I was a woman,” said Elsie. So she resigned to practice in Madison, busied herself with women’s rights, and became an officer in the National Woman’s Party where she was a friend of its President Grace Paul. Elsie was also a staunch member of The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, like her mother and grandmother before her. Her grandfather David Wood ran for senate on the Prohibitionist ticket and got two votes plus his own. When Grace Paul found out about W.C.T.U. she wrote and asked if Elsie could persuade the leadership to support equal rights. Elsie agreed to give it a shot. Guess what? The Women of W.C.T.U. turned her down flat. And guess what else? Elsie dropped her long-held membership with the teetotalers. I think her old boss at Bundy & Bundy would be proud.