A visit with my lawyer

When I bought my condo eighteen years ago, I hired a local lawyer, Jo Doig, to handle the closing. I tend to prefer female doctors and lawyers, on the theory that any woman in a male-dominated profession probably had to be twice as good as her male classmates just to graduate. So far I haven't been disappointed. Jo, for example, made the closing on my 1987 real estate purchase go like clockwork, despite all the horror stories my friends had told me about last-minute disasters.

Afterward, Jo and I were chatting, and she mentioned that she was going on vacation the following week. "Anywhere interesting?" I asked. "Yes—Paris," she replied. "Can I bring you back anything?" The twinkle in her eye told me she was kidding, but I took her at her word: "Sure...I'd love to have a French comic book, if you get a chance. I find foreign comics a good way to brush up on my language skills."

I took this conversation as a mere exchange of pleasantries...so I was surprised and delighted a few weeks later when Jo sent me a copy of "Pepito Géant," a big book of stories about a little boy and his animal friends. I was touched that she had gone to the trouble to fulfill this trivial request. (I wish I could show you a picture of the book, but it's in storage along with my other comics.)

So when the time came to sell my condo this spring, naturally I called up Jo to see whether she was still in the business and could handle my upcoming closing. She was, and she explained that she'd be able to manage the closing without my even needing to be there, as long as I gave her limited power of attorney. This was great news, because it meant I could start my travels a good three weeks sooner than I'd expected. "Come on over," said Jo. "You can sign the papers and meet my animals."

Jo had moved, but I had no trouble finding her new address. In fact, she lives only a couple of blocks away from my long-time friends Gary and Linda. I must have driven past her place scores of times in the past ten or fifteen years without giving it a second glance. The neighborhood is upscale, with expensive homes on large plots. Jo's property was even larger than average—but completely different in character. In a word, my lawyer owns a farm.

Or should I call it a zoo? Jo has cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, sheep, goats, llamas and alpacas—at least, those were the animals I saw in the course of my brief visit; there may have been more. I wandered around taking pictures, feeling as if I'd stumbled into a petting zoo in the middle of this upper-class neighborhood.

I'd read about llamas and alpacas in Mrs. Lutz's sixth grade social studies class, but this was the first time I'd seen them close up. They'd just been clipped, giving them an appearance somewhere between a poodle and a lion. The goats were all very pregnant, but that didn't stop them from being curious—they got as close to me as the fences would allow.

The turkey fascinated and repulsed me. Again, I'd never seen one of these up close...and I found myself thinking that for sheer alien ugliness, this creature's head outdid anything I'd seen from Hollywood's best makeup artists—the fleshy red wattles looked like a cross between a human brain and a sunburned scrotum.

Inside the house, Jo helped me work my way through the various papers that needed signing, as we sat at her table in a dining room decorated with art from around the world. Jo and her husband own a class C motorhome of about Gertie's size, as it turns out, so she was interested in my travel plans. We chatted for awhile, and I thanked her again for the comic book she'd brought back from Paris so many years ago.

When we finished up with our business, Jo wished me a safe journey. Then as I rose to leave, she reached into a carton in the corner of the room and handed me a calendar with a tastefully photographed female nude on the cover. "Here," she said. "Now you can say you've seen your lawyer naked."

Of course this was too good a cue to miss...so I handed Jo one of my "Andy & Gertie" business cards, called her attention to this website's URL, and told her to go to the bottom of page 12 of this narrative—"...and then you can say you've seen your client naked."

I spent ten minutes looking through the "Silhouettes of Hope" calendar with Jo. Inspired by the movie "Calendar Girls," she and her friends had put this together to raise money for breast cancer research. (Jo is a survivor, as are most of the women featured in the calendar.) As I slowly turned the pages, Jo told me each woman's story. The photos by Nancy Delaney were very good, and made each of these ordinary women—not a supermodel in the bunch—look her best. I admire their courage.

Incidentally, the portrait of Jo at the top of this page is from "Silhouettes of Hope"—but it's cropped. If you want to see the whole thing, you'll have to buy the calendar!