ermit. Justice Voelker: You'd have to make that Ziegler now, too. God help us. It was a
wonderful, wonderful time. Mr. Lane: Do you remember Hildabridle? Do you remember that case? Justice Voelker: Yeah, that...vaguely. Mr. Lane: That was the nudist camp. Justice Voelker: Was it? Yeah, I sure remember that. That was a direct...I mean,
I was...the prevailing decision, the main decision was made by my friend, John
Dethmers, the Chief Justice, and I had to...so, I was an old D.A.... Mr. Lane: You pulled out all the stops on that one. Justice Voelker: Yeah, I can remember that we...when I was D.A. and for years
before, we had this whore lady in the county...what was it? Mr. Lane: "Big Annie". Justice Voelker: Yeah, "Big Annie", and we talked about it, the sheriff and the
officers I dealt with. She was a safety valve in the community. It was better
to have "Big Annie", but then one of "Big Annie's" girls began
distributing...not syphilis...gonorrhea, and it got so that it was affecting
the mines. She was apparently a busy girl, and there were a lot of miners that
were floored by going to "Big Annie", so I called in the chief of the county
and I said, "Chief, something's got to be done here. Would you pass the word to
'Big Annie' to call this girl out? Either have her cured or get on vacation.
This has got to stop." I mean, it was affecting the mining, it was getting that
bad, and he came back in about an hour. "'Big Annie' told me to tell you to go
piss up a hemp rope." "Well, all right," I said, "that's direct talk. Here's
what I want you to do. I want you to station a man"...she had an upstairs
entrance, a long flight of wooden stairs behind a tavern downstairs..."station
a man at her...a cop, a uniformed cop at the downstairs entrance night and day.
We've got to do it, Arnie. We've got to, and have him with a notebook and every
time someone leaves or enters, have him write his own name...the officer's name
in the notebook and then close the notebook. If you notice a guy, person, you
know, 'Good Morning', 'Good Night'". In three days began, she surrendered.
Well, in fact, she quit. I forget the details, but it worked. Mr. Lane: That's the old-fashioned remedies. You know, like when the kid
would get constipated, in the olden days, there was always some pretty easy way
to fix it without going through all the doctors and... Justice Voelker: Yeah, yeah. Mr. Lane: Who was the police chief? Do you remember? Was he a good old
guy to work with? Justice Voelker: Yeah, he was a good man to work with. I was very lucky. I had
some damn good cops. I am not talking politically. The county was mixed. I
had...during the strike, during the big strike in the 1940's, the mid-1940's I
guess it was, there was a Hell of a strike. They settled it nationally, but it
kept on up here, and we met, police chief, sheriffs, deputies, State police,
and I said, "Look, pinch everybody that's around, company or union. Pinch them.
If there's a fight, or this or that, if somebody commits what appears to be a
crime, pinch them and if it is bailable, bail them out and we'll pile them
out", I said, "If we don't, we're going to have the National Guard in here".
That was the story of the Upper Peninsula for years and years. It was the way
to break strike, call the National Guard. I said, "We've got to be playing...no
company playing or union playing...pinch anybody that commits...". Well, the
pinches piled up, the cases piled up, bail bound over to the "pooh-pooh" term
of court. It was summer vacation and what happened? They settled the strike,
finally, the local strike. The State police hailed me down one day in my car. I
happened to be going fishing, of all things. What a coincidence. They said,
"Mr. Prosecutor, they settled the strike, but they want to know if you'll agree
to dismiss the cases, all the cases". Well, I said, "I can't do that. Some of
them are felonies. Some of them are damn serious. But you can bring the word
back that if Judge Bell agrees to this idea, I won't oppose it. I won't fight
it", and there are still families that are split up from that very strike.
There were company guys that were leading what they used to call "scabs", you
know, and this was really rough and tumble, so the cases weren't dismissed. Mr. Lane: Now, were those in the iron mines or was this a copper mining
strike? This is iron around here... Justice Voelker: No, this involved the big...I don't know, I think it was the
United Mine Workers, but it was bigger. It was a national strike that got
settled nationally, but hung over here for some reason, and I forget...there's
a lot of stuff that I forget. Can I give you a short reading, Sir? Mr. Lane: You bet. I'd be delighted, honored. Justice Voelker: Have you read a book called, "Laughing Whitefish"? Mr. Lane: Have not read that one, no. Justice Voelker: Well, it involved a law suit over iron ore and finally got into
the Michigan Supreme Court, and I wrote a story about it called "Laughing
Whitefish" that did not become a best-seller or a movie...once in a lifetime,
and I tried to describe the old...this was back in the 1870's or 1880's, years
ago in Lansing, and I had heard that the court that I sat in pretty much...I
don't know if it was the same court or...it had been there for years, in the
old capitol building. I guess they've moved since, have they? Mr. Lane: That's correct. On the third floor of the old capitol building,
the court took up in 1878, I think, and it sat there until 1970. Justice Voelker: On chapter 28, page 273 of this volume...I tried to describe
the court that I knew..."The ancient Supreme Court chamber on the third floor
of the domed capital building in Lansing looked more like the inside of an
eccentric old church than a court room. Worn red carpeting covered every inch
of the creaking floor. Ill-assorted chairs lined the walls on both sides
supplementing the plain, high-backed wooden benches that looked rather more
like uncomfortable pews of some austere religious sect. A faded flag hung inert
and listless from a floor stand near the court crier's wooden cubicle and huge,
dusty portraits of bearded, by-gone judges, ceiling mostly roses,staring
cataleptic eyes peering out from great thickets of whiskers and billowy yards
of black felt robing, lined the walls like the forbidding images of obscure and
vanished saints." That's one picture of the court that I remember. Mr. Lane: The surroundings are, to me, very familiar. Now you're talking
about the court room itself, right? Justice Voelker: Yeah, and I used to sit on the end, I think, of the Chief
Justices in the middle. I sat at one end and I could look out...it was a stuffy
court room and in the summer, there were elms there, and I would look out at
those elms and hear the birds and sometimes wonder if I could find a rope to
get the Hell out of there. Mr. Lane: That would have been the left end of the bench, would it
not? Justice Voelker: Yeah. I would be on the ..., the right, but... Mr. Lane: Away from the building interior and where the windows were,
over on the south exposure... Justice Voelker: I was where the judges sat which was damn close to one
end...the extreme end of the building, the back end of the room, I mean. There
is more, but that... Mr. Lane: Go ahead, read some more of it... Justice Voelker: "It was an unreasonably hot morning in mid-June and kind of
sticky antiverting heat one rarely encounters farther north. Several of the
tall windows of the court room had been cautiously raised, supported by most
unappeachable authority, bound volumes of Michigan Law Report, and some of the
reaching, leafy branches of the stately Capital elms seemed almost to nod in
our laps". Are those elms still there? Mr. Lane: There are a good many. Now, they've, you know, tied them with
steel bars and wires and they preserved as many as possible, and there are a
good number of them. Justice Voelker: "Birds twitted and squirrels scolded noisily with a fine
contempt of court and occasionally from far below, I could hear the distant
clapping of a horse's hooves along the cobbled streets"...a little historic
"poo-poo". It goes on and on. Mr. Lane: You know, the reason that I wanted to get your recollections on
the particulars of how you went about deciding these cases is that... Justice Voelker: I must interrupt. At my age, I get attacks of urinalysis. Mr. Lane: Well, I think we all do. Justice Voelker: There's one in there around the...I'll be back Interruption in tape. Justice Voelker: ...and if you had three weeks. I'll tell you something. Mr. Lane: You know, if you would pick up...you know how the books are
bound...Michigan Reports. I brought up 347 to 358 just in case there might be
some occasion that you want to look at one of those things or refresh your
memory or read some of it, and if you would look in the front of one of those
books, you know, it has the names of all the incumbent justices and the end of
their term, who is the clerk and that's about it. If you would pick up the most
recent issue of the Michigan Reports, before '40 or something like that, you'd
see the names of the members of the court and you would also discover that
there are listed maybe 15 commissioners and there are some others, assistant
clerk and that sort of stuff and the crier, and I just wondered if you realized
the enormous difference in the fabric of the Supreme Court as it is structured
today as against the time when you sat there. That's why I wanted to encourage
you to talk about what you remembered, you kn
Mr. Lane:
Do you? I was going to ask that.
Justice Voelker:
I...you'd have to check it, but anyway, I won, and of course, I
don't...can't say it was that conference. There were many other things
including the book best-seller, movies, nightshirts, and...
Mr. Lane:
That was the short campaign in 1957, right?
Justice Voelker:
I guess it was the second one, yeah.
Mr. Lane:
A short time after you had gone to court, three months or
something like that.
Justice Voelker:
And I...what most of the candidates did was go from factory to
General Motors and hand out cards, but I certainly discovered that while Soapy,
with his 6'9" and his polka-dot bow tie could pass around the cards and they
wouldn't throw them away, they were throwing my cards away almost before I
handed them, and I finally said to myself, "This is a waste of time. These
people are so God-damned tired when they come out of work, they don't know me
and they don't give a damn. This isn't a campaign". So anyway, I had two young
guys that were helping...two young lawyers.
Mr. Lane:
Who were they? Do you remember by name?
Justice Voelker:
Bill Ellman and Damann Keith.
Mr. Lane:
Two young lawyers. Well, one of them...
Justice Voelker:
They were then two young lawyers. One had a brother
called...the writer, you know...yeah, Joyce, and anyway, we went campaigning
elsewhere and especially with Damann among the Blacks...Black churches.
Mr. Lane:
Was he a judge at that time or was he just a young lawyer?
Justice Voelker:
Young lawyer.
Mr. Lane:
And Ellman was...that was Bill Ellman?
Justice Voelker:
Bill Ellman, and his brother was the writer...a well-known
writer that has since died, and I've corresponded with him. I have met Ellman's
parents during this time. They were dear, old Jewish couple, smart, lovely
people. The father was a lawyer, I guess, but he should have been a poet or
something, I mean, a dreamy lawyer. There are a lot of people that drift into
law that should be picking apples or writing poems or some damn thing. It's
like boxing. You see guys in a boxing ring. They're big, heavy, powerful guys,
but they haven't learned...they shouldn't...they're in the wrong work. They
don't fight back. If you're in the ring fighting to save yourself and your
getting sat on your kiester, you'd better fight back, and you can almost see
it. There is similarity there.
Mr. Lane:
You showed some of that feistiness, I thought, in a couple of
your opinions. Do you remember the dissent that you wrote on the Sunday sales
ordinance in Flint where the furniture companies were refused the right to open
up on Sunday by the local councilmen? In fact, you made in one footnote...you,
I think in that case, you talked about the "rule of unassailability of alter
manic decision" or something like that. Do you remember that case?
Justice Voelker:
Yeah, vaguely, I do.
Mr. Lane:
You let them have it, I'll tell you. You don't remember that
perhaps that there was an 1845 statute that preempted the whole feel, and you
said you couldn't do anything on a Sunday. You couldn't brush your teeth on a
Sunday without a permit.
Justice Voelker:
You'd have to make that Ziegler now, too. God help us. It was a
wonderful, wonderful time.
Mr. Lane:
Do you remember Hildabridle? Do you remember that case?
Justice Voelker:
Yeah, that...vaguely.
Mr. Lane:
That was the nudist camp.
Justice Voelker:
Was it? Yeah, I sure remember that. That was a direct...I mean,
I was...the prevailing decision, the main decision was made by my friend, John
Dethmers, the Chief Justice, and I had to...so, I was an old D.A....
Mr. Lane:
You pulled out all the stops on that one.
Justice Voelker:
Yeah, I can remember that we...when I was D.A. and for years
before, we had this whore lady in the county...what was it?
Mr. Lane:
"Big Annie".
Justice Voelker:
Yeah, "Big Annie", and we talked about it, the sheriff and the
officers I dealt with. She was a safety valve in the community. It was better
to have "Big Annie", but then one of "Big Annie's" girls began
distributing...not syphilis...gonorrhea, and it got so that it was affecting
the mines. She was apparently a busy girl, and there were a lot of miners that
were floored by going to "Big Annie", so I called in the chief of the county
and I said, "Chief, something's got to be done here. Would you pass the word to
'Big Annie' to call this girl out? Either have her cured or get on vacation.
This has got to stop." I mean, it was affecting the mining, it was getting that
bad, and he came back in about an hour. "'Big Annie' told me to tell you to go
piss up a hemp rope." "Well, all right," I said, "that's direct talk. Here's
what I want you to do. I want you to station a man"...she had an upstairs
entrance, a long flight of wooden stairs behind a tavern downstairs..."station
a man at her...a cop, a uniformed cop at the downstairs entrance night and day.
We've got to do it, Arnie. We've got to, and have him with a notebook and every
time someone leaves or enters, have him write his own name...the officer's name
in the notebook and then close the notebook. If you notice a guy, person, you
know, 'Good Morning', 'Good Night'". In three days began, she surrendered.
Well, in fact, she quit. I forget the details, but it worked.
Mr. Lane:
That's the old-fashioned remedies. You know, like when the kid
would get constipated, in the olden days, there was always some pretty easy way
to fix it without going through all the doctors and...
Justice Voelker:
Yeah, yeah.
Mr. Lane:
Who was the police chief? Do you remember? Was he a good old
guy to work with?
Justice Voelker:
Yeah, he was a good man to work with. I was very lucky. I had
some damn good cops. I am not talking politically. The county was mixed. I
had...during the strike, during the big strike in the 1940's, the mid-1940's I
guess it was, there was a Hell of a strike. They settled it nationally, but it
kept on up here, and we met, police chief, sheriffs, deputies, State police,
and I said, "Look, pinch everybody that's around, company or union. Pinch them.
If there's a fight, or this or that, if somebody commits what appears to be a
crime, pinch them and if it is bailable, bail them out and we'll pile them
out", I said, "If we don't, we're going to have the National Guard in here".
That was the story of the Upper Peninsula for years and years. It was the way
to break strike, call the National Guard. I said, "We've got to be playing...no
company playing or union playing...pinch anybody that commits...". Well, the
pinches piled up, the cases piled up, bail bound over to the "pooh-pooh" term
of court. It was summer vacation and what happened? They settled the strike,
finally, the local strike. The State police hailed me down one day in my car. I
happened to be going fishing, of all things. What a coincidence. They said,
"Mr. Prosecutor, they settled the strike, but they want to know if you'll agree
to dismiss the cases, all the cases". Well, I said, "I can't do that. Some of
them are felonies. Some of them are damn serious. But you can bring the word
back that if Judge Bell agrees to this idea, I won't oppose it. I won't fight
it", and there are still families that are split up from that very strike.
There were company guys that were leading what they used to call "scabs", you
know, and this was really rough and tumble, so the cases weren't dismissed.
Mr. Lane:
Now, were those in the iron mines or was this a copper mining
strike? This is iron around here...
Justice Voelker:
eq Sexy p Naked Shower
lb q FLASH%B3%C9%C8%CB%D3%CE%CF%B7%D4%DA%CF%DF%CD%E6