THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 8, 1994 TAG: 9408060013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A07 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: GEORGE HEBERT
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
Old saws - old sayings, if you will - may still have some pretty sharp teeth despite long and heavy usage.
That thought struck me when I was reading a provocative collection of familiar adages that appeared in a customer periodical circulated not long ago by Life Savings Bank. Moreover, one thought led to another and a chain of remembered things when my eye lit on one particular example of folk wisdom that the leaflet included:
``You can't get blood out of a turnip.''
How true, still! And how bluntly useful for dealing with the would-be squeezers of today who try to get more from us than we have or can afford.
But I also think of the role this maxim played - not so usefully, however - in a court case described to me some years ago, with great relish and a straight face, by the late Joseph A. Leslie Jr., then my boss in the editorial department.
For some delinquency or other, a man standing before a country judge had been ordered to pay a fine of more dollars than were readily come by in those days and in those parts. The accused pleaded poverty and oozed defiance.
``Judge, you can't get blood out of a turnip.''
``Maybe not,'' smiled the judge. ``But I can put the turnip in jail.''
When this bit of courthouse drollery story popped into my mind, so did two others.
One was an anecdote passed along by my father - though I think I may also have read it somewhere - about the aftermath of a hog-pen raid. It turned out that the individual who had been haled into court for the crime was a little fuzzy on legal terminology and pro-ce-dure.
As the hearing began, the judge asked, looking straight at him, ``Who is the defendant in this case?''
``Not me,'' came the reply. ``I'm the one that stole the pig.''
My third jurisprudential recollection is of another back-country incident recounted solemnly by that same former boss at the paper. Maybe, even, it was about the same judge who had that exchange of hard words with the turnip.
At any rate, this other offender, charged with a serious offense and getting along in years, had been told by the judge that his sentence would be 40 years.
``Your honor,'' he protested, ``I'm not going to live another 40 years!''
The unflustered answer from the bench:
``Well, you can try.'' MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star.
by CNB