Northampton County Loses Another Starter

The original miserable bastard

Like me, my father was an alcoholic. He'd be fine for weeks, sometimes months, and then would just disappear. He might stop at the office for a few minutes, but by the time I got to it, the only trace left of him would be the smoke from a dying Pall Mall cigarette, curling its way from the ash tray to the ceiling.

Ordinarily, my father was a beer drinker. But on one binge, he was hanging with a real lowlife - a Catholic priest - and the two of them were drinking Irish whiskey.

After getting sufficiently schnockered at some Bucks County watering hole, my father began making his way home along the lonely and winding back roads. He took a corner too fast and his car catapulted off the road and into a nearby field. Distraught neighbors summoned the constabulary and a state trooper came onto the scene.

Surveying the situation, the trooper asked, "What happened, Barnie? Were you in an accident?"

"No, I'm a fuckin' stunt driver," was my Dad's snotty reply. He was a miserable bastard.

Naturally, he was charged with drunk driving. This was before the days of ARD or other special programs for first offenders. In his lifetime, he had prosecuted them and defended them. Now he was one of them himself. A real expert.

My Dad, who fought over everything else, quietly plead guilty. The judge who accepted his plea and sentenced him to twenty years in the electric chair was Isaac Garb. He sat on the bench in Bucks County at that time.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, my Dad always liked Garb.

As a Senior Judge in Northampton County, Judge Garb was stuck with my lawsuits concerning the $111 million bond. He ruled against me in two suits, although I did manage to get him reversed on one for a pyrhhic victory.

I liked Judge Garb, too.

He was a no-nonsense bastard who still took the time to talk to anyone. Even me.

It's sad that, on the same day that District Judge Gay Elwell died, so did Isaac Garb. Though technically from Bucks County, Garb was a fixture in Easton, and he liked to work.

In one day, Northampton County's judicial system has lost two of its starters.