You Should Have Fought It, Ken

I suppose, at the time, that it seemed easier to pay the fine than to fight it, but you should have fought it anyway, just for the principle. On a college campus, there must have been some aspiring law student who would have taken the case for free, just for the experience. First of all, the chalk caused no damage to the sidewalk, so there was no destruction of government property. Then there was the matter of the warrantless search. Well, you said that you guys used to just hang out in that apartment but, if any of you actually lived there, they should have obtained a search warrant because there was no imminent danger to anybody. The only charge that they might have made stick was if you had written anything that might be construed as obscene.

Some years ago, there was an interesting obscenity case in Michigan, I think it was on the Au Sable River, a hundred miles or so south of here. The Au Sable is a popular canoeing river, it's got a nice current, but the water is only a foot or two deep in most places, which keeps the motor boats off of it. So this guy comes canoeing down the river and his boat capsizes, which can happen to anybody, but I seem to remember that alcohol was a factor as well. The guy let out a string of profanity which was overheard by some women and children that the guy didn't even know were there. It turned out that there was an old law in Michigan against using profane or obscene language in the presence of women or children, and the guy got cited for it. He could have just apologized and the cop could have let him off with a warning, but that's not the American way. I don't think it got to the state supreme court but, somewhere in the judicial process, the law was declared unconstitutional because it singled out women for special treatment. The court didn't have a problem with the part about children, but it ruled that you can't have a law that applies only to women in the State of Michigan.

My home haircuts are a team effort. I cut the front and my hypothetical wife cuts the back, and then she checks the whole thing over to see if either of us missed anything. It's just a simple buzz cut, anybody could do it if they wanted to. I can't remember why we started this, probably because the barbers raised their prices, but the fact that they were called "barbers" at the time puts it in historical perspective. Actually, I think there is still one practicing barber in Cheboygan, but I've never been to him. We only cut my hair and beard every three months or so, whenever it starts to bother me. The beard just gets buzzed off too, but shorter than the hair.