Judge Higgins

 Judge Higgins





     This may be my story but it was one Greg enjoyed and participated in immortalizing with me. It dates back to the Seminole days when I lived in a tiny back house in Lynwood. Greg was an almost nightly visitor where pot and cigarettes were smoked, beers were sipped,  tunes were played on the Morse Multiplex Solid State Electrophonic Stereo and many a yarn was spun. This is a true story with absolutely no embellishments. It starts with a trade I made with my brother at the tail end of my college days at UCLA circa 1970. I had a pale green Renault Daphine car that I drove for some months but I was late in getting in my parking fees at school and I needed a better way to get to classes. My brother had an old Kawasaki 60 motorcycle that like the car was just tranportation, However, you could ride the thing all the way up to near the student union and park for free. We traded, the swap worked pretty well and eventually I used to leave it at a friends nearby apartment, then motorcycle up to campus. One night, a thief stole the Kawasaki and I forgot about the thing since I still had a car. I graduated and reluctantly took a job at VWR as a salesman and moved into the little pad on Seminole. Many months later I recieved a notice of a warrant on my failure to register the motorcycle and I had to appear in a Torrance courtroom. I appeared and naively thought I could just tell the court that my motorcycle had been stolen and I did not need to register the thing. Unfortunately the guy in front of me found the judge very harsh with sentencing and whispered "this guy is an asshole."  The honorable Judge Higgins heard the plaintiff  curse him and bellowed  WHAT!? The enfuriated Judge then sent the scofflaw to jail for a week for contempt of court. The steaming Higgins motioned to the bailiff who called the next case which was me. Having no money for bail I threw myself on the mercy of the court. My story was rejected and I was given a 27 dollar fine. I meekly cried "I don't have any money" and Judge Higgins boomed "then you can go to jail!" The jail time is another story and I did miraculously get bailed out by my sister-in-law hours later. In rehashing the tale to Greg one stoned day in 1971 we decided to decorate one of the windows in my little house with a depiction of Judge Higgins. For the remainder of my time on Seminole one of my windows depicted a likeness of an angry Judge Higgins shouting "GO TO JAIL! I regret to this day that in my almost two years there I never took a single photo but the window is still clear in my memory






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