I sang to my kids at bed­time when they were lit­tle. It start­ed with my son. I tried to get home each night in time to read him a sto­ry before tuck­ing him in. After a while, our lit­tle rou­tine began to feel mechanical. 

I thought singing him a song might jazz up our bed­time rit­u­al, but I’m not much of a singer. My moth­er said I couldn’t “car­ry a tune in a buck­et.” That was gen­er­al­ly true, but in high school I dis­cov­ered I could some­times find the buck­et by singing along with a tune on the radio when I was alone in my car and no one was listening.

I nev­er told any­one about my car radio sing-alongs and I nev­er sang in pub­lic for fear I’d wan­der off key and make a fool of myself, but I con­sid­ered tak­ing the chance with my five-year-old son in the pri­va­cy of his bed­room. The prob­lem was find­ing a song I could sing that would be fun for him to lis­ten to.

I reject­ed all the slow and sap­py lul­la­bies. I was look­ing for pizazz. Where the bough breaks and the like didn’t have enough juice. Then I thought about my old radio songs. My high school senior year, Roger Miller released King of the Road. It’s about a hobo rid­ing the rails to Ban­gor, Maine, wear­ing a worn out suit and shoes and smok­ing old sto­gies. He’s a man of means by no means, but he sees him­self as a king of the road. The lyrics are fun, and the tune is catchy.

Back in the day, I could sing that song with Roger Miller’s smooth voice and gui­tar chords cov­er­ing up my mis­takes, but I didn’t know if I could sing it solo with no music. So I prac­ticed. I mem­o­rized the lyrics, locked the door to what I hoped was our sound­proof bath­room, and rehearsed. Again and again. After about twen­ty tries, I was no Roger Miller, but I wasn’t com­plete­ly buck­et­less either. 

I was ner­vous when the time came to face the music. I read the bed­time sto­ry to my son, set the book down, took a deep breath, and start­ed singing. My voice cracked here and there, but I fin­ished strong. At the end, my son was smil­ing ear to ear. He asked me to sing it again that night and the next night. And the next. For weeks.

After a while, I had to expand my reper­toire to keep him inter­est­ed. I picked out a cou­ple of The Lovin Spoonful’s songs from the 1960’s. Jug Band Music is about a guy down in Savan­nah eat­ing cream and banana on a day so hot it made him faint. He start­ed to see things as they ain’t, so his rel­a­tives called the doc­tor. “Just give him jug band music,” the doc­tor said. “It seems to make him feel just fine.”

Bald Head­ed Lena is about a girl with a cue ball head that’s hard as lead. It’s so big she can’t wear no wig, but the singer has a thing for her any­way because, well, his alter­na­tives aren’t that great: Messy Bessy, Tricky Tessy, Sil­ly Dil­ly, Lyin Lil­ly. Lizzy’s so dizzy she went and lost her mind. Ella Mae might have saved the day but she’s deaf, dumb, and blind. 

By the time my daugh­ters came along, I’d mem­o­rized enough songs to per­form a low-grade lounge act in a cheap hotel. I sang The Big Bopper’s Chan­til­ly Lace (Oh, Baby, you know what I like!), Six­teen Tons, Day­dream, and a few oth­er stray cats and dogs. They liked those songs, but the big hits were the first three I learned, and of those, King of the Road was the hands-down champ.

That song became my favorite, too. After bob­bing and weav­ing all day to sur­vive in a big high-pow­ered law firm, the stress and ten­sion would drain off as I sang about rid­ing to Ban­gor in the third box­car on the mid­night train. It seemed to anchor my soul in stormy seas. I don’t recall a sin­gle night when singing that song to my kids failed to lift my mood.

One of the grave injus­tices in life is that your chil­dren grow up. First, they won’t let you hold their hand. Then they want to play with their friends instead of you. Before you know it, you’re tour­ing a col­lege cam­pus, and they ask you to walk far enough behind so the col­lege kids won’t know they’re with you. And some­time way before that, you don’t get to tuck them into bed any more.

I was mourn­ing our emp­ty nest when a Lath­am senior part­ner died. He was a titan among lit­i­ga­tors, the lead tri­al lawyer in the biggest case our firm had ever han­dled. At his funer­al, his adult daugh­ter spoke to a packed sanc­tu­ary. “It will prob­a­bly come as a sur­prise to the lawyers at Lath­am,” she said, “but when we were chil­dren, Dad­dy sang to us when he tucked us into bed.” I talked to her after the ser­vice. “It was a spe­cial gift,” she said, “and we loved him all the more for it.” 

Her words helped me adjust to the adult­hood of my chil­dren. They’ve grown up, I told myself, but maybe those spe­cial times with them when they were kids will live on in their memories.

A few years after that funer­al, my old­er daugh­ter chose King of the Road as the song for the father-daugh­ter dance at her wed­ding.  The cer­e­mo­ny and recep­tion were out­doors on a ranch in a canyon near Mal­ibu. We danced to King of the Road at night under lights strung in Cal­i­for­nia live oaks. As we twirled, I sang a few lines to her about worn out shoes and fat sto­gies. I was out of prac­tice and off key, but as she looked up at me with sparkling eyes, her smile said she didn’t care. For a few pre­cious moments, she was my lit­tle girl again. 

My younger daugh­ter chore­o­graphed our steps for the father-daugh­ter dance at her wed­ding. We marched to the cen­ter of the dance floor, I in my tuxe­do, she in her flow­ing gown. Our faces were seri­ous and stern. I stood straight, shoul­ders square, and bowed to her. She did a low sweep­ing curt­sy to me. That was the band’s cue to launch into a brassy melody and for the lead singer to belt out, “Bald head­ed Lena/Has any­body seen her/Cute as she can be.” As we hooked arms and danced to the rag­time tune, my younger daughter’s imp­ish grin told me she was still my lit­tle girl, too.

I was con­cen­trat­ing on my steps through most of that dance, but about half-way through our rou­tine I caught a glimpse of my son at the head table, sport­ing a big grin. He’s grown up and has his own kids now, I thought, but he’ll always remem­ber those nights I sang to him when he was a lit­tle boy. 

As I’ve grown old­er, oppor­tu­ni­ties for encore per­for­mances have arisen, and I’ve learned the hard way the down­side of screw­ing them up. 

A while back, I put one of our grand­sons to bed for an after­noon nap. When I fin­ished read­ing his sto­ry, he asked me to sing him a song. Twen­ty-five years out of prac­tice, I sang a rusty ver­sion of King of the Road. The smile I expect­ed wasn’t there at the end. “You messed up the words, Papaw,” he said. “Mom­my sings it better.”

“I’m sor­ry, Bud­dy-Beau,” I said, feel­ing ambushed by my unex­pect­ed com­peti­tor. “I’ll do bet­ter next time.”

I prac­ticed and I did bet­ter next time, but I still wasn’t as good as Mom­my. It ain’t over yet, though.

The client was a liq­uid bulk stor­age ter­mi­nal in San Pedro, Cal­i­for­nia. A faulty pipe cou­pling spilled twen­ty-two gal­lons of an acetate chem­i­cal com­pound at the foot of a huge tank. Tech­ni­cians cleaned it up quick­ly but not before the wind blew nox­ious fumes into a near­by trail­er park. The res­i­dents filed com­plaints with the county’s air pol­lu­tion agency about the hor­rif­ic stench, and the agency charged the ter­mi­nal with a crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor for caus­ing a pub­lic nuisance.

I was a fresh­ly mint­ed mem­ber of the bar when the case fell on my desk. My job was to appear at the arraign­ment and plead it out. “This’ll be an easy first court appear­ance for you,” my Lath­am super­vis­ing attor­ney said. “Meet with the pros­e­cu­tor before the hear­ing. Tell him you’ll plead nolo con­tendere (no con­test). Try to nego­ti­ate a fine under a thou­sand bucks, but any­thing up to two grand is okay. The judge will rub­ber stamp what­ev­er the pros­e­cu­tor agrees to.”

“What if the pros­e­cu­tor won’t agree?”

“He’ll agree. Pros­e­cu­tors hate these piss-ant cas­es. So do the judges.”

I arrived at San Pedro Munic­i­pal Court ear­ly and found the pros­e­cu­tor in the hall­way out­side the court­room. A short guy with black hair that fell to his shoulders,

he was as inex­pe­ri­enced as I was. He sneered when I offered to plead nolo and pay 500 dol­lars. Fash­ion­ing him­self as a young Ralph Nad­er on a cru­sade to destroy cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, he refused to agree to anything.

I was in a state of semi-pan­ic when the judge took the bench. In his six­ties, port­ly with dark bags under his eyes and a reced­ing hair­line, he asked me to enter a plea.

“Nolo con­tendere, your hon­or,” I said, my stom­ach bathed in acid.

Young Ralph Nad­er object­ed, stat­ing he want­ed to try the case to a guilty verdict.

The judge looked at him like he was crazy. “I’ll accept the defendant’s plea. What fine have you agreed to?”

“We have no agree­ment,” Ralph snapped, obvi­ous­ly miffed that the judge wouldn’t go to tri­al. “The dis­trict demands a fine of twen­ty-two thou­sand dol­lars, a thou­sand dol­lars per gal­lon spilled.”

I almost fainted.

Twen­ty-two thou­sand smack­ers would con­sti­tute a world record fine for a pub­lic nui­sance mis­de­meanor. I’d nev­er live it down. “But this was an acci­dent,” I said, my voice crack­ing. “The com­pa­ny cleaned up the spill imme­di­ate­ly. Any­thing over five hun­dred dol­lars would be a travesty.”

The judge threw up his hands. “You’re miles apart. How am I sup­posed to decide this?” Frown­ing, he paged through the case file. “I have no idea what this chem­i­cal smells like.  One of these cit­i­zen com­plaints says vom­it. Anoth­er says ran­cid milk. Some cre­ative soul describes it as burned ass.” He held up one of the forms to us. “This one says human feces, using the four-let­ter word.” He slapped it down on the bench and glared at Ralph and me. “I can’t rule until I’ve smelled this chem­i­cal for myself. Col­lect a sam­ple from your client, Mr. Oder. We’ll recon­vene tomor­row morning.”

Stunned, I limped back to my office. “I didn’t think it was pos­si­ble to screw up a mis­de­meanor arraign­ment,” my Lath­am men­tor said. “You’ve proved me wrong.”

The client’s in-house coun­sel was equal­ly impressed. “When the judge gets a whiff of this stuff, he’ll give us the death penalty.”

He brought a four ounce vial of the chem­i­cal to my office. When I was a teenag­er, I went rab­bit hunt­ing with a friend. His bea­gles caught a skunk. The dogs retched. My friend and I did, too. The four ounce sam­ple of the acetate com­pound smelled worse than skunk juice. I agreed with in-house coun­sel. Death by asphyx­i­a­tion in California’s gas cham­ber seemed like a fit­ting penal­ty for spilling twen­ty-two gal­lons of this stuff.

I placed the vial inside a card­board box and jammed pack­ing mate­r­i­al around it in a vain attempt to con­tain the fumes. The next morn­ing, unsus­pect­ing vic­tims I passed as I walked down the hall to the court­room made sour faces and stopped to look at the heels of their shoes.

The judge want­ed to inspect the sam­ple in cham­bers. Ralph and I sat down across the desk from him. I unpacked the vial, pulled the stop­per, and held it out to the judge. “Be care­ful, your hon­or. It’s powerful.”

He stalled out two feet from the lip of the vial, clamped both hands over his nose and mouth, fell back in his chair, and fran­ti­cal­ly cranked open the win­dow behind him.

“Twen­ty-two thou­sand dol­lars!” Ralph crowed triumphantly.

So this is what I gave up a reward­ing career in teach­ing for, I thought, oppos­ing this jerk in a futile effort to per­suade a judge twen­ty-two gal­lons of human feces doesn’t stink to high heav­en. Wel­come to the prac­tice of law.

I put the vial back inside the card­board box and braced myself to face the judge’s wrath.

It didn’t come. Instead, he gazed out the win­dow somber­ly. A full minute passed. He didn’t move. He didn’t say any­thing. His behav­ior seemed strange, but he was the judge so I kept qui­et. Ralph did the same.

The judge final­ly turned to me. “I can’t believe your name is Oder,” he said.

That was close to the last thing I expect­ed him to say, but with a name like mine you learn to roll with the punch­es. “Yes, well, it’s a safe bet I won’t name my first child Acetate,” I said.

The judge chuck­led, then stared at me pen­sive­ly. “How long have you been with Lath­am?” he asked.

“Since June.”

“Where are you from?”

“Vir­ginia.”

He perked up. “Beau­ti­ful coun­try. I was sta­tioned at Quan­ti­co in the Marines.”

“I grew up south of there, near Charlottesville.”

“I dat­ed a girl at Mary Wash­ing­ton from Char­lottesville. She showed me around Mon­ti­cel­lo, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia.”

“I went to UVA. Under­grad­u­ate and law school.”

“Spec­tac­u­lar cam­pus. The colo­nial archi­tec­ture, the man­i­cured grounds, the moun­tains in the back­ground. You must have loved it there.”

“I did.”

“Why the hell did you move out here?”

“To join Latham.”

He nod­ded, a wist­ful look on his face. “I see.”

“Shouldn’t we be dis­cussing the amount of the fine?” Ralph said.

The judge looked at Ralph like he was the one who smelled bad. “The fine,” he said. “Yes, of course.” He gave me a sad look and sighed. “I’ll rule from the bench,” he said.

We went into the court­room. The judge took the bench and the clerk called our case. “The defen­dant will pay a fine of one hun­dred fifty dol­lars,” the judge said. He rapped the gav­el, stepped down, and exit­ed the court­room through a back door.

Ralph looked like he’d been hit in the face with a base­ball bat.

I was sur­prised, too, but on reflec­tion, I under­stood. The judge presided over noth­ing but small claims. A thought­ful man, he was bored out of his mind. Our con­ver­sa­tion took him back to his youth and Vir­ginia, a time and place he much pre­ferred over the present. I went there with him. Young Ralph resent­ed the diver­sion and dragged us back to the court­room, there­by deft­ly snatch­ing defeat from the jaws of victory.

Back at Lath­am, the reac­tion was mixed. The fine was spec­tac­u­lar­ly low, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the judge got a snoot full of skunk juice, but it took me two court appear­ances to get there so the legal fees were dou­ble. A mediocre result in a “piss-ant” case.

My first court appear­ance was noth­ing to brag about, but its lessons stayed with me for forty years: When the mer­its are com­plete­ly against you, the best argu­ment may be no argu­ment; and in every case there’s more at play than the merits.

I stood at the gate and pressed the buzzer. The speak­er crack­led, and the deep voice of the secu­ri­ty guard respond­ed. “Can I help you?”

“Mike. It’s me, Ken. Bear broke out again. I’ve got him down here with my dog.”

“Oh, Christ,” Mike said. “Be there in a minute.”

Bear was a Box­er. He was crazy about my Amer­i­can Bull­dog, Zoey. Every time I took Zoey for a walk, he made a jail break to play with her, and I had to herd him back to his house.

Mike appeared at the top of the dri­ve­way in his black uni­form, walked down the steps to the gate, and punched in the code. The gate hummed elec­tron­i­cal­ly and slid open. Built like a weightlifter, Mike grabbed Bear’s col­lar. “Don’t know how he got out this time. We fixed up all the holes he dug.”

“He jumped the fence at that low spot when we walked by,” I said, point­ing down the hill.

“I’ll tell main­te­nance. Sor­ry for the trouble.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Thanks again.” Mike dragged Bear up the hill. Roxy, his sis­ter, wait­ed for him, wag­ging her tail. She was timid and nev­er tried to get out. They dashed through the port au cochere toward the back yard, and Zoey and I con­tin­ued on our walk.

Cindy and I had moved to Hid­den Hills to be clos­er to our grand­chil­dren. Although we didn’t know it when we bought our house, a num­ber of celebri­ties lived in the neigh­bor­hood, includ­ing Jen­nifer Lopez. She lived in a state­ly white brick house two doors down from us, and Bear and Roxy belonged to her.

I’m not into the enter­tain­ment scene. When we moved here, I knew Jen­nifer Lopez was a big deal, but I couldn’t have picked her out of a line-up. One evening at twi­light a year or two before Bear and Roxy showed up in her yard, I was walk­ing Zoey around our block when I came up on a stun­ning­ly attrac­tive woman push­ing a dou­ble-seat­ed stroller car­ry­ing a lit­tle boy and girl. “See the dog­gy,” she said to the tod­dlers. “Hi, Dog­gy,” she said a cou­ple of times, smil­ing at me.

Zoey’s friend­ly, but her rough play with kids can cause prob­lems. “Hi,” I grumped and moved on quickly.

When I told my daugh­ter about the woman, she was flab­ber­gast­ed. “That was J Lo, Dad, you idiot.” The tipoff, along with the stun­ning­ly attrac­tive looks, was that J Lo had twin two-year-olds by some singer I’d nev­er heard of who she’d recent­ly divorced. Being clue­less, I had dissed the mega-star.

I hoped I’d get a sec­ond chance, but no such luck. My encounter with her was an anom­aly. Celebri­ties of her stature don’t nor­mal­ly ven­ture out­side their enclaves with­out an entourage. Sev­er­al times I saw her Rolls Royce motor through her gate, but the back win­dows were tint­ed. All I could see was her chauf­fer in the front wind­shield, glar­ing at me like he hat­ed me. In research­ing this post, I learned he and J Lo lat­er had a falling out and she fired him. He sued her and she coun­ter­sued him for black­mail­ing her, so maybe his dark scowl wasn’t about me.

After Bear and Roxy came along, my many trips to the secu­ri­ty gate didn’t pro­duce any con­tact with J Lo either, but one Sun­day morn­ing I man­aged to snare a con­so­la­tion prize. Mike must have been off duty that day because no one respond­ed to the buzzer at first. Then a young guy wear­ing swim trunks jogged through the port au cochere and shout­ed down to me, “Yeah, man? Whad­daya want?”

“Bear’s out again.”

“Oh, wow!”

High school age, short and mus­cu­lar with a buzz cut, the kid ran down to the gate and pulled Bear inside. Bear wan­dered up the hill and began root­ing around in the bush­es. My gar­den­er had found a huge rat­tlesnake in my front yard the pre­vi­ous day. Most hous­es in Hid­den Hills have rat­tlesnake fences around the back yards, but the front yards are exposed because of the dri­ve­ways. I warned the boy about the risk of a rat­tlesnake bit­ing Bear.

“Oh, man, that sucks! What can we do about it?”

“Put him in the back inside your rat­tlesnake fence.”

“What’s a rat­tlesnake fence?”

It turned out J Lo didn’t have a snake fence, so I gave the boy the name of the con­trac­tor who installed mine.

“Wow, man! I’m gonna call that guy right now. We’ve got lit­tle kids in here. God, I mean, thanks so much, man!”

“That’s okay, man. Stay safe.”

When I asked my daugh­ter if J Lo had a son in high school, she gave me the hairy eye­ball. “What did he look like?”

I told her.

“That’s Casper, Dad, you idiot!”

This idiot thing was begin­ning to get on my nerves, but she had me dead to rights again. My age esti­mate was slight­ly off. Twen­ty-sev­en years old, Casper was the lead dancer in J Lo’s troupe and he was her main squeeze. On You-Tube, I watched her pro­claim to some dit­sy inter­view­er her undy­ing love for Casper. She want­ed to have his child, she said. On anoth­er tape, they did a sexy dance rou­tine togeth­er. I was mys­ti­fied. Casper was short­er than she was, fif­teen years younger, and far from stun­ning­ly attrac­tive. Cer­tain­ly she could do bet­ter, I thought.

A few days lat­er when I walked down to the mail­box, Casper jogged up the road at a good clip with Bear and Roxy in tow. With­out break­ing stride, he waved and flashed a big smile. “Hey, man!”

I waved back. “Hey!”

“Called that snake guy! Weird dude, but we bought the fence, man!”

“That’s great, man!”

“Thanks again, man!”

“No prob­lem! Any­time, man!”

I watched him run over the hill. Well, at least he’s nice enough, I thought. And he seems to be in good phys­i­cal condition.

A few days lat­er the lady who lives next door appeared on our doorstep with a ban­dage on her hand the size of a water­mel­on. She said Bear had mauled her on her morn­ing walk. She’d heard I had trou­ble with him and want­ed to know what happened.

“He jumps the fence to play with my dog,” I said, “but he’s always been friendly.”

The next day I got a call from her lawyer. He’d filed a mil­lion dol­lar law­suit against J Lo and want­ed me to tes­ti­fy that Bear was aggres­sive. “He’s not aggres­sive,” I said. “He just likes my dog.” I argued with him for a while and then hung up.

A few hours lat­er, Cindy answered the phone. A woman said she’d heard we’d com­plained about J Lo’s vicious dog.

“Who is this?” Cindy asked.

She said she was from Enter­tain­ment Tonight, the tabloid tele­vi­sion show.

Cindy dropped the phone like it was a live rattlesnake.

The fol­low­ing week, Bear and Roxy dis­ap­peared from J Lo’s yard. My daugh­ter told me she and Casper had bro­ken up. On the inter­net, I learned Casper got cus­tody of the dogs.

A month lat­er, the lady next door told me J Lo paid her a large dam­age award to set­tle her lawsuit.

Short­ly after that, a fleet of mov­ing vans pulled up to the secu­ri­ty gate; an army of movers loaded up enough fur­ni­ture to dec­o­rate the governor’s man­sion; and the trucks con­voyed out of Hid­den Hills.

An osteo­path­ic sur­geon bought J Lo’s house and moved his fam­i­ly in. Nice peo­ple. Kind of bor­ing, though. Like us.

That all went down a cou­ple of years ago. J Lo has moved on with her life since then, hook­ing up with Alex Rodriguez, so it’s clear she’s gone for good.

I’m still bummed out about it. I miss all the excite­ment. J Lo, the twins, Mike, the Rolls Royce, Bear, Roxy, all gone from my life, and it’s real­ly hard to accept that I’ll nev­er see my good bud­dy, Casper, again.

Worst of all, I didn’t even have a chance to say, “Good­bye, man!”