In 1950 I was living in an oil company camp eighteen miles from the nearest town which also happened to be the county seat and one of only two towns in Coke county. The population of Robert Lee, Texas, was about 1100 if you counted all the ranchers in town on a Saturday and maybe throw in dogs, cats and rabbits. There was not only no traffic signal but not even a stop sign there. One of the most exciting things to do to relieve the everlasting ennui there was to count the number of tumbleweeds rolling down �Main� street per hour. On a summer day however, a few miles out of town, ole Billy Bob was heading south out of town in his pickup truck and got run over by a great big Lincoln. Shortly thereafter Billy Bob sued the Lincoln owner for more money than he could even count. And the trial by jury was going to be in the old courthouse that had no air conditioning and may have been christened by Robert Lee himself.
In that particular time and place the Sheriff would track down prospective jurors and present them with a jury summons and a $1 bill. I found out that I was on the list and thought it would be great fun to hide from the Sheriff when he tried to tag me. I was successful for about three days, but then one day that sly ole fox snuck up on me and suddenly I was richer by $1 and had joined the ranks of prospective jurors.
Since I was so young and na�ve I was selected for the jury immediately. I�m sure both sides took one look at me and decided I could be easily swayed. Little did they know how serious about that trial that I would become! The plaintiff was in a wheelchair with his head cocked over at about a forty-five degree angle and supposedly would be that way for the rest of his life. He had two or three ole country boys for lawyers and the defendant had about five city slicker lawyers who obviously worked for his big insurance company.
What had brought all this mess about was that Billy Bob saw someone he knew coming from the opposite direction and he had pulled off the road on the left hand side and stopped for a good ole boy chat with his friend. When they finished telling their lies to each other Billy Bob cranked up his pickup, pulled right out in front of that big Lincoln and they had a right smart head-on collision. Of course, Billy Bob�s lawyers claimed that the defendant was driving 120 miles per hour and deliberately hit Billy Bob. The defendant had his wife and two children in the car so it appeared to me that ole Billy Bob was short of one of his spark plugs.
The plaintiff�s lawyers had presented lots of pictures to show that Billy Bob could not possibly be at fault. Somehow these pictures didn�t look just right so one day during a recess a friend, also on the jury, and I decided to go out to the scene of the accident and just see for ourselves.
Now this was the very first trial we had ever seen not to speak of being on a jury. We had received absolutely no instructions regarding proper jury duties except that we were not to talk about insurance!
It took us only a few minutes to see that Billy Bob had really screwed up and he wasn�t going to get any money from us. We could see that the spot where he had parked not only was on the wrong side of the road, but was just behind a hill. When ole Billy Bob pulled out on the highway again the other driver coming over the hill had no chance to see nor expect some fool to be on his side of the road. With this expert information to present in the privacy of the jury room, my friend and I helped the jury to quickly return a verdict of Not Guilty.
About a week later we were called back before the judge and a bunch of lawyers. The judge asked us if we had gone to the scene of the accident and I proudly said, �Yes sir, and ole Billy Bob sure messed up!� Judge Sternface looked like he was gonna be sick, banged his gavel and said, �Mistrial.�
Epilog: Billy Bob�s second trial resulted in the same verdict of �no money for you Billy Bob� and he quickly had a fantastic recovery. Got right up out of his wheelchair and got under the wheel of his �new� pickup. A few days later my friend Jack was driving into town and Billy Bob pulled right out in front of him! Jack hit the ditch and avoided Billy Bob by a hair. From that time on we always kept an eye out for Billy Bob because we sure didn�t want to cause another mistrial.