Steve Dimick — Law 'n' Stuff

“Is it just for the moment we live?

What’s it all about, when you sort it out, Stevie?”

I’m still looking for that answer, and these stories are stops I’ve made on my search.

ABOUT THIS SITE

Official lawyer pose

This is the personal site of Steven C. Dimick, public observer, certified curmudgeon, card-carrying crank, shit disturber, shooter from the hip and unrepentant bleeding-heart liberal, but also proud father, dog raiser, civic leader and damned fine attorney.

I’ll be adding to this site from time to time, offering old war stories about the law, about California, Oklahoma and the human comedy, and the occasional bit about myself.  Most of the posts are, I like to think, a little bit funny and written with tongue planted firmly in cheek.  Some of them, however, were written after indulging in a generous helping of grouchy pie.

All of them, however, illustrate some part of what makes us so human and so diverse.  Even the law stories – and you’ll find plenty of them, since that’s what I do – aren’t really about the law.

They’re about people.

At the first San Francisco rally against the Iraq war

There may be some politics here, eventually.  So be forewarned.  You will NOT find me supporting the death penalty or that idiot Arizona sheriff as a “true ‘Murcan hero” or gun ownership or cutting taxes or anything that Cheney, Rove and Dubya ever supported.  You will NOT find me opposing abortion or “those damned furriners taking jobs away from real ‘Murcans” or a single-payer national health plan or providing funding for education, public safety, roads, bridges and levees.

A highschool friend with whom I corresponded for quite a while couldn’t take it anymore.  Instead of providing thoughtful arguments against my views, he simply grew livid.  (That’s what I so love about places like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  So long as you think just like them, they’re the nicest people in the world.  But just watch the hackles rise and the faces turn as red as the necks if you express a contrary opinion.)

“Just leave me to my guns, my Bible and my bitterness,” he wrote, taking a Barack Obama quote completely out of context.

So, dear hearts and gentle people, I will be happy to leave you to your guns, your Bible and your bitterness if you’ll leave me to my compassion, my science and my tolerance.

But if you can tolerate my rules on my page, welcome to the party, and feel free to chime in! If not, in the words of Dorothy Parker:

But now I know the things I know,
And do the things I do;
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you!

And I mean that in the utmost friendship.

Steve

Even attorneys have to have fun sometimes

ABOUT ME

Newspaper days; with Speaker of the House Carl Albert

I was born in and grew up in and around Oklahoma City, in the area proudly referred to as “the buckle on the Bible Belt.”  Although coming of age in middle-America in the mid Twentieth Century certainly demonstrated poor planning on my part, I’ve tried to make up for it since then.

I attended the University of Oklahoma on a journalism scholarship and graduated with a tri-major in journalism, history and English.  As an incoming freshman, I was among a group of 50 top students selected for the first year of a new program called University Scholars, designed to introduce the best students to a wider variety of academic fields than they might otherwise encounter.

In the 1960s, the only thing more important at OU than football was the fraternity/sorority system, and I ran from both.  At the end of my freshman year, I was named one of the Top Ten Independent Freshman by the Independent Students’ Association.

Zoo days; with Esau

After graduation, I worked briefly for the Oklahoma Journal, a daily newspaper in Oklahoma City, until the Army beckoned and I ended up in Oakland, California, editing the post newspaper at Oakland Army Base.  My second biggest mistake in life (after my choice of the time and place of my birth) was agreeing, upon my discharge from the Army, to return to Oklahoma City to take the job of entertainment editor at the Oklahoma Journal.  It took my wife and I two and a half years to save up enough money to quit our jobs, bum around Europe for three months and then move back to California with no jobs and no prospects.

Nevertheless, my time on the newspaper served me well and prepared me for my later career as an attorney.  After spending the next two years or so doing public relations for the San Jose Zoo, I quit that job to go back to school.  I was lucky enough to be admitted to the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and have practiced law in Alameda County, California since my admission to the bar in 1979.

While in law school, I started clerking for an attorney who used to be a judge but who had recently been kicked off the bench by the Commission on Judicial Performance.  That lasted four hard years during which time I was routinely abused and taken shameless advantage of by the judge and his partner.  But still, it was a learning experience, even if most of what I learned was what NOT to do.  In 1983 I struck out on my own and have somehow managed to stay on my own ever since.

Alameda County and the little community of Castro Valley have been good to me, and I have tried to return the favor.  For more than 25 years I have donated one afternoon a month conducting free legal clinics for the local senior centers, and have lectured at many elder-law seminars.  I have frequently sat as a temporary judge in traffic and small-claims court, have been an amateur lobbyist in Sacramento and was chairman of the 2002 campaign to incorporate Castro Valley as a city.

I must be doing something right, for readers of the Daily Review named me “Best Attorney” for ten years (until the newspaper stopped sponsoring the poll.)

I am a 26-year member of the Castro Valley Chamber of Commerce and currently serve on its board of directors.  I am past president of San Leandro Community Counseling and past vice-president and chairman of the Executive Committee of Oakland Opera.  I am also a member of Mensa and of the Pro Bono Players, a group of attorneys and court commissioners who perform song parodies for a wildly appreciative family law bar around Christmastime every year.

ABOUT “MODEL CITY”

Like many memoirs, this work began as a catharsis.  I started writing it in my head maybe five years before I started writing it for real.  Where do I come from and how did I get here, I wondered.  Why am I me?  Am I just my parents layered over by my experience?  Or am I, maybe, the product of several generations?  And/or of a culture?  And/or something I already was at the moment of my birth?

As the work began to take shape, I realized that you can’t understand Steve unless you understand the self-invented, insular little community of Midwest City, and that you can’t understand Midwest City without a little knowledge of Oklahoma, and that you can’t understand Oklahoma outside of the context of the entire midwest, the 19th century closing of the frontier and the struggling dirt farmer.

I had never been interested in Oklahoma history before, even though I had to study it in the ninth grade and, as a newspaper reporter, covered many an event with civic leaders crowing about its myths, skipping over the real story and giving the occasional nod to the noble Indian.  But after realizing that I couldn’t write my story without writing its story, I dove into the research and found myself fascinated.

Don Rice, my old editor at the Oklahoma Journal, a hell of a journalist and an Oklahoma history buff himself, agreed to edit the book.  Rice is not one given to empty compliments, and when he wrote me that it was “the best book I’ve ever read about growing up Okie,” that was high praise indeed.

I still like it [he said modestly.] But I couldn’t find an agent even willing to read it.  Since I am neither a celebrity nor the child of a celebrity, my memoir could only be expected to sell in the dozens of copies.  So I finally decided to publish it myself on this site, whose readership has recently climbed solidly into the double digits.  Call it “freeware,” if you will.  If you enjoy it, feel free to send $5.95 to the author.

All rights reserved.  Not responsible for loss or theft.  No shoes, no shirt, no service.  Caution – risk of shock!  You must be this high to ride.  Objects in mirror are closer than they look.  The characters in this book are fictional.  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.  Not available in stores.  Not recommended for pregnant women or nursing mothers.  Close cover before striking.  No smoking within 15 feet of doorway.  Employees must wash their hands before returning to work.  Do not remove under penalty of law.  Don’t touch that dial.  Don’t settle for less.  Don’t walk.  Don’t even think of parking here.  Don’t go out with college boys when you’re on a spree.  Don’t play with matches.  Don’t ask why; it’s alright.  Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but Steve.