The pink piece of paper I had been handed made it pretty clear what I had to do. In plain English it said:

This whole thing seemed so preposterous and wrong. In my response to the attorney I had told him to go look for himself at my neighbors property and that I would be self-representing if he did proceed to sue me. But now that he had sued me, I suddenly had second thoughts. Was there anything wrong that I had done? It seemed that if there had been some sort of water problem that had occurred on my neighbor's property, he should have told me, but he never did, not until he had worked the whole area over with a bulldozer.

And looking at that piece of paper, the Original Petition, that had been served on me, I noticed that it did not say anything about what my neighbor had been concerned about, namely beaver. Instead it read, in separate neat paragraphs, as I later learned are supposed to be used, one issue per paragraph. But the whole thing seemed so screwy that I honestly at first believed this whole stuff must have come out of some kind of master document that had been used to make this Original Petition with a word processor, and that someone had forgotten to delete these paragraphs. It seemed that weird to me. Little did I recognize the evil that was approaching me. After some initial paragraphs the Petition read:

What a bunch of bull! I had not built a dam. Besides that, Jones was entirely upstream, and there is no way for sand to wash upstream. Jones was the one who had done all the bulldozing and washed everything on me, even used dynamite to blow up his dams.

And if there was one of these shyster lawyers around that courthouse, there was probably a couple of more, and I did not want any of those. In fact I had heard horror stories of people getting tangled up by attorneys, and I did not want any of that. My dad had gotten tangled up with one that had promised to sue someone, but never did, and all my dad wound up with was a lot of legal fees, and I did not want to dish out a bunch of money for "legal fees". Besides I had been taught that the burden rests on the plaintiff to prove his case, and if I did not build "The Dam", then there would be no way for him to bring evidence that I had built any such "The Dam". So I felt somewhat safe in representing myself, believing I could go up to the judge and tell him all this stuff was not so, and I would be out of there in a hurry. And even if it went to a jury, the lawyer would not be able to show I had built a dam, for there was simply no such "The Dam". Boy was I wrong!

But the immediate thing was to answer the court, just like the citation served on me had ordered. So in spite of my shyness at the time, and never having gone to the courthouse for anything other than to pay for license plates, I somehow had enough courage to go and ask around at some of the offices. I went by the District Clerk's office and asked if that was the place I was to bring my answer to, and was told it was, and that is what I did, as the citation had also instructed me. But not being an attorney, and nobody telling me, I did not know that I was also supposed to "serve" the attorney by providing him a copy. This little glitch was to have major repercussions and show how the whole court worked behind the scenes outside the rules, although I did not recognize the full extent of it for some time to come.

Looking around the Clerk's Office I found what they refer to as "Request for Setting Forms". A "setting" is just what it says, someone sets a date for a hearing or some proceeding before the judge. The form had a line "NATURE/TYPE OF HEARING:", and I entered "twelve (12) man Jury Trial". But again, I did not "serve" the request on attorney Ray, because I did not know I was supposed to do that, although I put down attorney Ray as a "party requiring notice" by the court of the date "set".

Next I receive a "Notice of Setting", dated March 16, 1995, for "Action as indicated: pre-trial" for April 4, 1995, at 9:00 A.M., but I notice that Jones is not one of the persons copied, and if we are going to have a hearing, I sure want him to be around so some light can be shed on what Mr. Ray had done. So on March 22, 1995 I write a letter to Judge Wallace that "I REQUEST THAT THE COURT INSTRUCT MR. WILLIAM B. JONES TO BE PRESENT AT HIS HEARING FOR HIS SUIT, and take it to Betty Davis, whose name had appeared as "Court Administrator" on the "Notice of Setting". Ms. Davis assured me that Jones was automatically required to be present at the first hearing.

But sure enough, on April 4, no Mr. Jones. "All Rise", and Judge Wallace comes in. Cause 95-63, of all cases, was called within five minutes, with the whole court full of people. Betty Davis is not in her usual seat to one side of Judge Wallace. I am still looking for Jones to stand up when I see Ray already up at the bench and proceeding before Judge Wallace. I cannot hear a thing but immediately object and request that a recording be made of the ongoing proceedings.

The next thing I get is a scolding from Judge Wallace, and "Who are you?" Then after Judge Wallace collecting himself, "What do you think she is for?", pointing to his court reporter, who I later learned was a Becky Malone. After some awkward pauses and glances Judge Wallace came around to asking me if I had answered the court, and I said I had. Next I get chewed out for not having "served" Ray with my answer, when I did not even know I was supposed to do that. Nobody had told me, and I am not a lawyer, and I had asked if filing is all I needed to do, and the answer had been yes. After Wallace collected himself somewhat, he said something like "proceed with discovery!", and went on to the next case. I did not know what "discovery" is, it was the first time I had heard that term, but it is the formal process by which the parties are entitled to ask each other questions to "discover" the "facts" of the case.

One thing that is noteworthy is that Wallace that day made no entry on the "docket sheet", the first page of the "file" folder for the case that is taken to him by the clerk each time a "case" is "heard". The second is that I was never able to get a "transcript" of the hearing. A "transcript" is where a court reporter takes the paper tape she makes as she documents the proceeding, and puts it down on paper so ordinary people can read it. When recording, the court reporter works her machine with both hands, sort of a mechanized shorthand, also along phonetic lines. When transcribed it frequently comes out junk, such as "peace" becoming "piece", "the motion" becoming "demotion", etc.

And I have since figured out why the transcript disappeared, although it took me some time. Ray was before Wallace to get a "default judgment" signed, and for all the chewing out I had gotten by Wallace for not notifying Ray of my answer to the court, it was Ray who had not "served" me that he was requesting a "default judgment" hearing, and had not even filed anything in the file, not even the document he was that day placing before Wallace for signature!

As it turns out, March 16 is the exact date in which Ray submitted a request for a hearing on "default judgment", but Ray did not file it, nor send me a copy. I found this document much later in the file, with a file-mark of April 17. When I found it, I asked Betty Davis if Ray was required to serve that document, and she did not give me an answer, but said that she had changed it to "pre-trial" since she knew I had answered.

The problem was that Ray never looked at the docket which had been changed to "pre-trial", but was still expecting his "default judgment". But Wallace should have been looking at "pre-trial" and should not have been surprised by my coming up there. The answer is that Wallace just lets certain lawyers do whatever they wanted to, and Ray came up for a "default judgment", and they both got caught, because this time Betty Davis was not besides Judge Wallace to help out. Therefore the transcript of the "hearing" had to disappear. All these things had not fully gelled in my head, but I knew that something was awfully wrong in that court. What was clear to me is that Ray had intended for me not to be present at his "default judgment" hearing. What was not clear is exactly what he was trying to do, or the extremes they would be going to in the future to extract "legal fees".