BAD RAP

 What both “news” items: FBI shootout and my great grandparents’ divorce have in common is small town lawyers, and my relationship with them. I received a call Monday night from my lifelong friend (and sometimes law consultant) Milawyer. He proposed a cocktail hour on my deck and dinner later. As a true friend he was willing to bring the booze and weed. I’m broke.

 

Milawyer and I are about the same age and also grew up in Montgomery. We both knew most of the players in both small-town dramas. He was more than familiar with my ex-lawyer’s demise after opening fire on the FBI agents who had come to arrest him and some of the old timers in 1927.  As the booze flowed, we discussed the cases. This being such an insular community I also knew the lawyer’s ex-wife (she married my cousin) and his current wife (she had also married one of my good friends before marrying him). I dated her once, eons ago.

 

Gossip. This is another common thread. Let’s go back to 1927. My grandfather Wray Osterhout is 27 years-old, married to Maude Miller and has two kids, Mary Etta (Maime) and his namesake Wray. My father Dick is yet to be born. Everyone in our family knew that our grandfather's father Andrew and mother Elsie were divorced at a time when divorce was seen as a shameful, newsworthy, event. That’s all we knew. Yet, Andrew took all the blame. If his name was mentioned at all, it was with derision. Elsie, on the other hand, was portrayed as the faithful, abandoned wife with an “infant” (14 year-old Bob) two daughters (Blanche and Ruth) and Ruth’s husband Wes residing at home.

 

As my lawyer and I bounced back and forth between the two cases an historical matrix evolved. “Did you see who represented Elsie?” I asked, pouring another drink. He smiled as the ice crackled. “Houghtaling.” This name rang a bell. My first girlfriend’s “secret” boyfriend was a Houghtaling. He was a rich kid off at private school when we started dating. I wouldn’t find out about him until Thanksgiving Holiday when he showed up out of the blue. He also became a lawyer. This girl and I were going to get married, but thankfully never did. Instead, we both married (and divorced) different people. Decades later she ended up marrying her old Houghtaling boyfriend. They live happily in Pa. I doubt if you can find our unexceptional divorces anywhere online.

 

In the coming days I’ll try to unpack what led up to the FBI shootout as well as contextualize my ancestors’ divorce and how it impacted my family through the generations. Oh yeah, I hunted Tuesday. I saw two woodpeckers, a bluejay and six turkeys. No deer. It’s early.