Mama Law and the Moonbeam Racer. Fred Yorg
ntents
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
SECTION THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
SECTION FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
SECTION FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
MAMA LAW
& THE
MOONBEAM RACER
Fred Yorg
Copyright © 2020 Fred Yorg
All rights reserved
First Edition
NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING
320 Broad Street
Red Bank, NJ 07701
First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020
Cover by: [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-64531-669-5 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-64531-670-1 (Digital)
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to the memory of Ernie, Roy and Tuck.
PROLOGUE
‘I fought against the bottle but I had to do it drunk.’
Leonard Cohen
My father was Barksdale Law, the famed and celebrated attorney from Bayou Cane, Louisiana. Any story that I may have to tell invariably starts with him. As a young man, he didn’t start out to be a big time flamboyant attorney. I’m quite sure his aspirations were far more modest, but when fate stepped in and dealt him the hand, he played it to the max.
He started his quest in the early 1950’s on a scholarship at Louisiana State University that was orchestrated by his father, an ornery old Cajun by the name of Micah Law. Micah, the lone son of illiterate dirt farmers from the southern bayou, had his own story to tell. A hard man, he struck out for Texas in his early teens, finding work as an oil rigger and roustabout. Nobody knew for sure why he abruptly left Texas and returned to the bayou. Some speculated that he had killed a man and needed to lay low. Ironically, through the help of a friend from the River Parish, he somehow made his way onto the New Orleans Police Department. Cops back in those days worked for low wages, and most of them on the NOPD supplemented their income by going on the pad. What that meant was looking the other way for important people. At the end of the month, there would be an envelope; that’s how the system worked. Nobody questioned it and everybody accepted it. Powerful people lived by their own set of rules; you do me a favor and I’ll take care of you, the biggest fringe benefit a crooked cop had. That’s how my father ended up at Louisiana State University on scholarship. Being an ordinary student, I’m sure my father knew the circumstances of his good fortune, but, nonetheless, I always gave him credit for taking full advantage of the opportunity. After graduation he worked in an after hours gaming club on Jefferson Street and paid his way through law school, graduating in 1956 in the lower third of his class. Not a very promising start for a man who was soon to be cast as a legend. When you end up in the lower third of your class and come from poor stock, you’re not exactly a hot ticket item, not even in Louisiana. But, once again, my grandfather reached out and called in a favor. He landed him a job with an ambulance chaser from New Orleans by the name of Lazarus Thibodeaux. From pictures that I’ve seen in old