My wife was driving home after a meeting at the school where I taught, Longfellow Elementary in Pasadena. She had dropped our child off to class, I was already in my classroom teaching, and she had just finished meeting with the committee planning a cultural event for which she was the prime mover.

She drove our old Volvo up Catalina Ave., turned right onto New York Drive, approaching the intersection with Mar Vista where she would turn left up toward our house.

Out of nowhere a car driving extremely too fast passing on the left slammed into her on the driver’s side, knocking her car off the road into a palm tree in the parkway on the right. The offending car bounced left and crashed into a tree. They had to use the “jaws of life” to pull the door off and drag that driver out of his car and into an ambulance to the hospital where it was determined he had broken both legs and was put into a full body cast.

The Principal of Longfellow came to my room, took me aside and whispered, “Your wife was in an accident. She’s in the hospital. She’s alright. Don’t worry. If you need to leave, I’ll have someone cover your class.”

This was fifty years ago. The exact order of events remains confused in my memory. I was in shock. I think I went to the lounge to sit for awhile. I don’t think I went to the hospital because my only transportation was our only car which was totaled and towed away to a body shop garage on the other side of town. Or maybe someone gave me a ride to the hospital. I don’t remember. I think what happened was the doctors assessed Shirley who said “I’m alright,” and they took her home where I saw her later in the day and she told me all about it.

The car that hit her was the sheriff. It was driving too fast by a youngish officer new to the Department who came from the wide-open spaces of Wyoming where everybody drove with the pedal to the metal for hundreds of empty miles and a hundred miles per hour was slow.

Our friends said, “Get a lawyer.”

They said, “He’s clearly at fault.”

The Highway Patrol had been called in to the scene, partly because their headquarters were just at the other end of town where Woodbury meets the freeway and they can hop right down to catch speeders. In this case they came along New York Drive and were there right away. They took measurements. They saw from the tire tracks that Shirley had tried to stop and avoid collision, but the other driver had not. They determined from impact and geometry the speed involved.

Friends who had previous experience with lawsuits recommended their family lawyer who had done right by them and would take good care of us.

The lawyer came to our house to interview, take notes and a statement.

Shirley went to an office where lawyers on the other side, representing the sheriff involved, whose name I do remember, and the department which they were hired to protect from liability. They took Shirley’s deposition.

It got complicated.

People say the best defense is a strong offense. Since the gathering evidence showed more and more clearly that the sheriff was obviously at fault, he decided to sue us. Actually, his wife tried to sue Shirley for causing “loss of consortium,” that Shirley had put her husband into a body cast which made him unable to perform his required conjugal duties.

That argument would most probably have been laughed out of court, but when photos surfaced of her post-accident husband hiking and hunting back home on the plains of Wyoming, cast-less and perfectly mobile, the counter-suit evaporated and was dropped and they hoped forgotten.

The sheriff’s defense lawyers were squirming. His blood tests showed the presence of alcohol, not enough to surpass the legal limit for civilians, but enough to be causatively relevant against an officer of the law. Apparently the cowboy sheriffs back home on the Wyoming plains liked to drink and drive fast.

He tried to say he was driving fast in answer to an emergency call. There was no record of such a call.

He tried to argue that his warning lights were flashing and his siren was blaring and it was Shirley’s fault for not getting out of his way.

Witnesses in the neighborhood negated both claims. One old woman who had been sitting at her window, reading a book, saw everything and testified in preliminary hearings that there was no siren and no flashing lights. The lawyers tried to argue that she was old and you know how old people are when they get old, obviously couldn’t hear well, her eyesight was obviously failing, and besides all that, she was reading a book so she couldn’t have been paying attention. But other eye-witnesses corroborated her story, no siren, no flashing lights.

The officer tried to argue that his warning lights and siren were in perfect working order and would prove that they were turned on. Somehow, mysteriously, they were unaccountably not found amid the wreckage of his car which had been towed to the body shop garage the sheriffs employed regularly almost as a franchise sustained by their frequent use.

The same thing happened in the autopsy of our car when our brake system was mysteriously unavailable to show how vigorously Shirley had stomped on the brakes to avoid collision.

The case dragged on. Much like current cases before current courts hoping time runs out.

Shirley’s lawyer became harder and harder to reach. He was out of town. Another case was taking his attention. He had so many cases. He was working on it, be patient, don’t worry, he’ll get back to you.

Then more elaborate excuses. His health was in jeopardy, the stress of the job, and his concern about his wife, her own compromised health, then the complexities of possible divorce, the financial details of probable divorce settlement, the need to sell his boat, the struggles with depression, don’t worry, the statute of limitations hasn’t run out yet, the clock is still ticking, it’s not too late.

And then it was. Too late.

Past the deadline, like old news.

Our friends apologized. “He wasn’t like that when he worked for us.”

And then the light went on: “They got to him!”

And we learned the hard way lessons about The System and the Mechanisms of Power.

I had seen it too many times already in the Education System. The faculty mix of teachers who teach and those who only enforce the rules. The school administrators who never taught, or got out of the classroom as quickly as possible so they could enforce the status quo and stop the rocking of the boat to stop making waves.

When you see how one thing works in conjunction with a System, if you don’t close your eyes, you can see the interrelationships that keep that System in Power, hand in glove, religion and government not separate at all, a government of three branches neither separate nor equal, no longer struggling for autonomous identity against a monolith where each plays its part synonymously in support of a Single Power.

And the Legal System. What a system it is! Revealed now to us as a load of ____.

Like the systems of the human body, sub-systems designed to work in harmony, each doing its part to keep things moving perfectly, to confront and overcome each threat, each obstacle, without and within, the infections, cancers, blockages, the need to purge the evil essences and re-start fresh and clean, keep the body healthy.

Food now has an expiration date to tell you when it’s no longer safe, when you should throw it out. Employment has a retirement age after which you’re on your own. Batteries reach the age when they’re not quite dead but no longer work at strength and need to be replaced. Brains can be tested for competence with consequences.

I took the car today to get the oil changed. It was time. If left unchecked, the compromising fluids could jeopardize the whole system. The car is paid for, no warranty, it’s up to me to keep it in good running order. I know my part to play, letting others play theirs.

The system was flushed, the fluids drained and replaced, the dip stick presented for my inspection and approval, clear and fresh and ready. I’ve seen some people use their fingers to test the oil. Some very few put their oil-bearing fingers in their mouths to verify the quality. I don’t go that far. But I accept the need for vigilance to keep the system running properly.

I almost fantasize and dream about going to Washington to flush out the Body Politic and verify the clear transfusion.

The complacent would say, “One can only hope.”

I’m not complacent.