On days like yesterday, my job is a poor fit with my interests. The problem is not the court stuff. I like writing briefs and appearing in court. I like analyzing cases and issues. The problem is not the people. While some clients, judges, opponents, and others can be difficult, the rest are just people�as easy and as difficult as ordinary people get. Instead, the problem is the driving.

Driving is part of the job because most of my clients cannot come to see me. I have to go to see them. Most of them reside in prison and prison guards properly frown on them leaving the prison to see their attorney. Although telephone calls occasionally suffice, most of our state prisons make it much easier to schedule a visit than a telephone call. Besides, some discussions work better in person, especially if, like me, one is very visual. It�s hard to quietly and subtly test a client�s reading ability on the telephone. I also find it hard at first contact to judge a client�s understanding if I cannot see him. It�s amazing how many people of limited knowledge or intelligence will say they understand while their faces indicate they have no clue what�s been said. Dignity, and the poor and imprisoned have little of it, is a precious commodity not to be wasted in the quest for understanding, especially if one is not convinced that understanding will make any difference.

A decade ago, I made fewer prison trips and saw more clients on each one. I had efficiencies no longer available to me now. In the last decade our prison population has exploded and we�ve built new and farther-flung institutions. We used to send most of my clients to Green Bay or Waupun, institutions located in old-fashioned prison towns that were not ashamed to lend their names to the prisons within their borders. Now, my clients can be just about anywhere from Black River Falls to New Richmond to Boscobel, institutions located in places that happily accept the prison jobs and dollars but shrink from association and therefore are called (respectively), Jackson and St. Croix and Supermax.

(Heck, not all of my clients are in-state. My clients can be in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Minnesota, or Mississippi. I�d say I didn�t have to drive there but that�s not completely true. One very hot, muggy July, I flew into Memphis and drove three hours into Mississippi. Mississippi was like Iowa except the vegetation was a bit different, I had trouble telling if the natives were speaking English,* and the guys wearing hitchers and sitting up on the tractors had a different skin color. But I digress.)

All of which explains why I�m driving and grumbling more. If I thought I were a really good driver, my attitude toward the driving might be different. Most drivers, even some terrible drivers I know, seem to think they are good drivers. It makes me worry how bad someone like me really is. I know my parents and Mr. Philately think my driving has improved over the years. I�d ask them �Improved from what?� but my policy is not to ask questions I�m not sure I want the answer to.

I�m neither confident nor reasonably comfortable behind the wheel. My children have become accustomed to a mother who periodically says, �I can�t talk right now because I need to concentrate on my driving here.� I must have stated that with authority because they never challenged or questioned it. Nor did they continue talking at me. Yet I�ve never gotten a ticket, other than a parking ticket, and the only time I was in a somewhat serious accident, I was completely stopped at the time and the other guy barreled into me. His insurance company was sufficiently satisfied that it was all his fault that I didn�t even pay a deductible.

Suffice it to say that days like yesterday with almost six hours on the road are no ticket to happiness. They take me places I don�t want to go. They drive me crazy.

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*Yes, I know Southerners, even those living in New York, hate that stereotype but in this case it�s true. The captain at the prison and I spent twenty minutes trying to communicate on the subject of where he wanted me to meet with my client. At that point, with both of us totally frustrated by my inability to understand him, we found a clerical worker (who said she had moved down from Memphis) to translate.

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