How to Fight The Winter Blues With a Black Robe

This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 1, 2009

I know how you feel. It’s finally March, but it still feels like February. You’ve been stuck inside since the last days of 2008 and the cabin fever is outdone only by the expansive boredom you and the spouse feel. The only words that come to mind during the weekly game of Scrabble are ennui, torpor and doldrums. The bi-weekly game of Monopoly has turned into a monotony. The movies offer only “Doubt,” “The Uninvited,” and “Paul Bart: Mall Cop.”

Even the high-strung Collie your neighbors asked you to walk while they vacation in Ibizia shows decided signs of dispiritedness. She’s more lassitude than Lassie. When your teenage son and daughter sigh that they have nothing to do, you sigh and say: “The line forms to the rear.”

Yo. Do what I do. Stop by Judge Thomas G. Gavin’s courtroom on the 7th floor of the county Justice Center for a taste of His Honor’s unique brand of wit and wisdom. Let’s join in while the program is already in session.

“You can walk this off if you complete the first year of probation without any problems, with the understanding that we won’t see each other again,” Gavin, the one time Marine, was telling a criminal defendant who has promised, essentially, “not to do it again" last Tuesday. “If we do, bring some reading material.”

In Gavin-ese, “bring some reading material” means don’t make any plans for the weekend: you are going to jail.

A Philadelphia sportswriter once wondered if he could get an entire column out of asking Pete Rose a single question about hitting. Two hours later, he’d filled an entire notebook. That’s the way I approach a day with Judge Gavin; sooner or later he’s going to say something worth writing down.

Like this advice to a West Chester University students who got arrested for underage drinking: “Part of being in college is that it is the last opportunity to see how stupid you can be.” Had I known that back in 1977 at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., I’d certainly have afforded myself the opportunity to get in a lot more trouble than I did.

Judge Gavin has been on the bench for 23 years, and he’s slowly but surely approaching the mandatory retirement age of 70 that judges in Pennsylvania face. But although I heard one bright-eyed prosecutor who practices in front of Judge Gavin on occasion describe Judge Gavin as “world weary,” he still strides onto the bench every morning with a brisk, determined gait. He will bluntly tell you, if you have cause to appear in front of him, that he’s seen, if not all of it, then the vast majority of whatever “it” is. But he does not seem jaded or indifferent to what is happening in front of him.

“We’re going to be a little bit creative here because your client has been trying to make a new life for himself,” Judge Gavin told a defense attorney one day last week. “We’re going to make life easy for him. Bt the first thing we have to do is see the whites of his eyes.”

Unlike some who wear black robes to work, Judge Gavin isn’t tied to the strict formality of taking each case on the docket in order. He’s more of a “whaddaya got?” type of jurist, ready for whatever comes his way. I’ve also found that he’s not afraid to mix up his metaphors a bit as he tries to get the message across with as little ambiguity as possible when talking to a defendant.

“Hopefully the light will go on between your ears at some point,” he told a man who was one step away from a trip to the confines of a government-run hotel upstate. “But you’re the only one who can answer that.”

Some of those who appear before Judge Gavin consider him lenient on some criminals, and I am certain that there are enough examples of that to go around. But he is also capable of slamming the door shut and wiping his hands of someone who just doesn’t seem to get the message the first time.

“Your probation officer did everything she could for you. She bent over backwards and all you did was kick her,” the judge told one serial violator last week. “You didn’t take advantage of her help, and now you’re going to pay your dues. Hopefully, you won’t spend too much time in state prison. Have a nice day.”

Thanks, judge. I always do, and I’m never bored.