Criminal LawCopyright © 1997 Property of Deborah K. Fletcher for Florence MacLennan Brown. All rights reserved.I used to work in a large and successful New York City law office. I was the office manager, and had the typists, secretaries, and law associates under my supervision. The lawyers specialized in criminal law. Many of the clients were mobsters, and leaders of organized crime, though I don't remember any of their names anymore. They all seemed to be very respectable, though, and were gentlemen. They would come in to the office to talk to the lawyers about defending one or another of their "family" members. I wasn't afraid of the big time criminals because they lived by a code of honor, and would not hurt me without cause, unlike many petty criminals. Part of the reason that I wasn't afraid, also, was that they seldon lost a case. Once, in the law office, one of the senior partners wanted to use one of the typewriters on a weekend, when no one else was there. All of the clerks and secretaries knew how to touch-type, so they didn't look at the keys on the typewriters. In those days, all the typewriters were manual, with individual, raised keys, which required some force to operate. The keys had rubber pads on them, to make it easier to type, and the pads had letters on them, in case someone needed them. Since the pads wore out pretty quickly on the common letters, the typists replaced the vowels and common letters with whatever extra letter pads they had. A keyboard might easily have several q's, x's, k's, and so forth. The lawyer wanted to type something, but he couldn't touch-type. He had to look at the keys, and nearly had fits trying to figure out the typewriters in the office. He told me about it on Monday. After that, he always had someone else do his typing. Please View and Sign My Guestbook © 1998-2000 Debbie Fletcher, joiya@tcia.net
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