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     I went to court planning on pleading guilty with explanation. What I didn’t know going into the courthouse was the fact that in Halifax Dartmouth, because of its seventeenth century heritage, the Maritimers have a much more pragmatic and simplistic view of justice. Namely, the fact of a ticket proves the fact of your guilt else why would you have gotten it.

     So therefore, if you tried to plead not guilty or guilt with explanation, you were considered just a snively little peon trying to get out of paying the tab. So they would throw the book at you. And then of course was always the questionable matter of the cash cow revenue at stake for the state. Between the two you didn’t have much of a chance.

     Not even suspecting anything about this little clout of the culture going in of course, and standing in front of a judge who had already clearly proven he had gotten out of the wrong side of the bed in the morning by his two previous rulings, I said my piece to the judge.

      Without even responding to my explanation, the judge charged me the maximum fine for the two tickets. I said, “that’s a little steep under the circumstances isn’t it”, believing in the self evident righteousness of my situation.

      Completely missing my point, the judge pulled out a big thick book of traffic bylaws, and said, “Under bylaw number blah, blah, blah, amendment blah, blah, blah of section blah, blah, I can charge you a maximum of blah, blah, blah whenever blah, blah”. Intending to prove evidently complete justification for the fine. “Ok then”, I said, “You judge yourself by your actions”.

      Big mistake, very big ‘innie’, very very big ‘innie’. If one thing had thus been indelibly proven for all time, it’s that you never ever tell a judge the truth because they can’t handle it. It’s also most proving once and for all that you should never Judge a Judge by his cover. He slammed the book shut and sentenced me to ten days in jail for contempt of court.

      There’s no doubt about it, these uniformed Maritime penal guys really know their stuff. Once you’ve been ordered into their clutches, there’s no way in hell they’re going to let you escape or allow anyone enough time to change their mind.

      In less than half a second the bailiff had me clamped by the arms and out the door. In less than an hour I was sitting on a cot in a cellblock in the Provincial jail in Stittsville about fifteen miles from Halifax, trying to figure out what the hell had just gone wrong.

      Greydie’s turn before the Judge came up next. His was only a simple ticket. But because of the good mood I’d put the judge in on top of his already proven poorly disposed pre-disposition earlier, Greydie was now standing in the blinding white glare of a ticked off Judge’s stare. Greydie also went straight from the courtroom to the pokey and he had pleaded guilty. He just didn’t happen to have the money on him for the fine.

     Unlike me through, he was only taken to the local lockup in downtown Halifax and locked in solitary confinement over night. It seems the judge had been really pee'd at seeing the same looking guy in front of him twice, both lawbreakers by dint of traffic tickets, and one of them a loudmouth to boot. And had ordered Greydie locked away in isolation with no phone calls until the fine was paid in full.

      Please try and figure out how he was supposed to do that in a hurry if you can. Shades of America, pending or not the outcome of the aftermath of the election of two thousand and eight.

      Fortunately, the afternoon shift supervisor at the can, who both of us had driven from time to time in our swank yellow streak taxi, had time to guide Greydie from solitary confinement to the front reception area where a phone happened to be sitting mysteriously on the front of the desk while he, the supervisor, had business to attend to elsewhere for a few minutes.

      Greydie grabbed the phone and called a local Jamaican lawyer he knew. Who went through every drawer and pocket in our Keddy Inn motel room, coming up with most of the money for Greydie’s fine. It was about $3.00 dollars short which the lawyer pitched in himself.

      And by another what are the odds, our friend the lawyer turned out later to be the older brother of an Afro Canadian MP, whose name and colour were both Brown, who rose high in BC politics. Rosemary had even begun to catch national attention as a potential federal candidate until one day she abruptly decided to retire.

      When Greydie finally got out of the penstock that day he had nothing left towards my fine. So he did a rock around the clock taxi stint that whole night. By noon the next day he had enough for both my fines.

      When he went to pay it, the clerk said, “don’t worry about it for a while, the ten days of the contempt charge have to pass before the remaining twenty days start for non payment of the fine”. But Greydie’s intuition prevailed and Greydie came back the next day insisting that they take the money.

      Good thing. The judge had been so ticked at having heard me say something, that while it may not have been one the wisest things I every uttered, was at least in the fullest sense of the word true, that he had made my two sentences consecutive instead of concurrent. Something completely unheard of at that time.

      Worse, he had put the ticket sentence in front of the contempt sentence, which was even more unprecedented. That meant that every day missed not paying the fine had to be served before the ten days for the contempt charge started. Kind of gives you an uncomfortable feeling of what ‘Hanging Judges’ of yesteryear must have been like.

      Fortunately the clerk was more understanding. Because of his mistake the day before, he made the payment retroactive to only one day late. I was therefore still nonetheless in the pokey for a full eleven days and not ten because of the one day missed in paying the fines before the contempt time officially started.

      I stayed in an open dorm with about twelve other guys. Some of the guys in there must have whatever it was that got them in there in their blood. My shoes disappeared from the foot of my cot one afternoon while I napped.

      A couple of days earlier, the guy across from me had made a big secret ceremony of showing me his secret little hidey hole he had made in the wall under his bunk. I have no idea how long he had been in there. He had been in long at least long enough to at least be able to loosen the mortar around one of the concrete blocks in the wall so he could pull out the block exposing a sizeable little cavity in behind.

      By his manner, I had to believe I had been let in on the covert operation of the century. So guess where I found my missing shoes in the very first place it occurred to me to look. Having too many brains wasn’t the felony for which this particular guy had been convicted evidently.

      The thing about it is, he never said anything after I took them back. Or even indicated that he knew. To my considerable relief I might add, not been up for any kind of appropriate Macho fusings that could have just as easily occurred in the wake of my taking my shoes back.

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      The spring following my short vacation at the Sergeant at Bars resort, I received another speeding ticket. As usual, it was with one or another mitigating circumstances. So it counts as an ‘outie’.

      This time, being much more familiar with the way things worked in the ticket department around Halifax Dartmouth and therefore being much the wiser, I decided to play it safe and hired our Jamaican lawyer friend to plead the mitigating circumstances for me on my behalf.

      When he came out after the court appearance, he was beaming from ear to ear. “How’d it go”, I asked. “Fine”, he said. “So what’s next”, I asked. “Just pay the fine over there”, he said. “But didn’t you just plead not guilty”, I asked half aghast. “What!”, he yelled fully aghast, “You think I’m crazy”. Then sent me a bill for a hundred and fifty bucks for his services.

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