My father and I went on many a hunting trip. He invariably told stories during the pre-dawn and dusk drives. When Dad finished UT law school and passed the bar, he worked for his father who had a thriving civil law firm in downtown Houston. It would have been around 1928. They had just moved into offices, high in the new Esperson Building. At first he did research and filings only for the firm. Then one day Grandpa handed him his first court case. Dad said he was very nervous. Having studied the case extensively, he drove forty-five miles south to Angleton, Texas, the seat of Brazoria County. It was a hot day in the unairconditioned courthouse. The high windows and the transoms were open wide, and the paddle fans whirred overhead. Nonetheless, Dad sweated profusely in his linen suit.
The client was very upset and demanding justice. My father did his best, but his best wasn’t good enough, and he lost the case. He felt terrible that he had let his client and his dad down.
He went home and apologized over dinner. (He lived at home with his parents until he married.) “I’m so sorry, Papa,” he told his father. “You sent me down there to win the case, and I lost it.”
My grandfather laughed and shook his head. “I didn’t send you down there to win, son.”
Dad was dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”
“It was hopeless,” Grandpa said. “The client was out of his mind to think otherwise. I couldn’t have won it. Clarence Darrow couldn’t have either.”
“Then why…?”
“I sent you down there to lose,” my grandfather said. “You’re going to lose lots of cases, and you need to know what that feels like, so you don’t get so rattled in the future. Now you know. Let’s eat.”
It was a good story, a good lesson for me, and a way for him to let me know that he was vulnerable and sometimes unwise. Thanks, Dad.