The Win and Trim Precedent

When youngsters, Old Baguettes and Crusty Rolls didn't waste time plunked before their computers.   They didn't have computers of their own.  Many of them had never heard of computers.   Perhaps computers hadn't even been invented.  Still, many of them did waste time successfully.  They played the addictive card game, Contract Bridge, which was invented by one of Anderson Cooper's ancestors to while away the hours that were idle when he was sailing around on his yacht.  Before anyone could say, "Ship Ahoy!," the game was created and became a world wide sensation.  Contract Bridge was as popular as pet rocks, as cabbage patch dolls.   Really good players played for blood;  average players  played for fun.  Then, with the passage of time came an unexpected and almost unimaginable occurrence.   Bridge players became fewer and fewer like the pet rocks and cabbage patch dolls of yesteryear.  Getting up the essential foursome to play a game became almost impossible.  Old Baguettes and Crusty Rolls were forced to follow the example of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.  Like the billionaires, they head for the nearest Bridge Center, find a partner, and play for blood.  (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, of course, found each other and have been playing together ever since.)

The Old Baguette was living in D.C.  One Sunday afternoon she felt like a game of bridge, so she headed for the nearest Bridge Center and found a partner.  They played for blood.  After they had defeated a charming gentleman and his sort of charming wife, the Old Baguette's partner and the wife excused themselves, leaving the charming gentleman and the Old Baguette free to talk.  That seldom happens at Bridge Centers.
The usual questions were asked, the "Where are you from questions" we bandy about so mindlessly.  We both were from Hyde Park, not the Roosevelt Hyde Park in New York, or the stand-on-cardboard-boxes- and-give-speeches Hyde Park in London, but the University of Chicago Hyde Park in, yes, Chicago.  He had been a Law School Professor, and my father had gone to that very Law School.  The charming man and I chatted, and for some reason I told him a story my mother used to tell about my father's nefarious ways as a student.  He played poker, generally for money, but once for a moth-eaten, ankle length raccoon skin coat. The original owner was the tallest of the regulars, about 6"5" with his shoes off.  The next tallest, who was about 6'3" tall, won the coat and trimmed two inches off the bottom, so he could be "in fashion."  The next winner was 6'2" tall.  He trimmed one inch off the bottom.  The "win and trim" precedent was established.  My father at 5'10" was the wee lad of the debauched group.  After he became the winner and trimmer, he was stuck with the relic.  Mother said the coat was dirty, that it smelled.  My father loved that coat.  Pictures of my father wearing it  make one wonder about how fads are created.  Who, after all, swallowed the first goldfish? 

Mysteriously, that mangy coat of the proper, fashionable length disappeared.  What happened to it?  Although  Mother never admitted guilt, all were convinced she'd junked it, but she was never convicted.  Because no one ever found a ratty raccoon coat that clearly had been "won and trummed" to reach the ankles of a 5'10" tall male, the case never went to court.  No evidence.


The charming Law School professor liked the story, thought the "win and trim" precedent sounded like the creation of a University of Chicago Law School student.  In fact, the professor guffawed. 

Our partners returned.  We moved to other tables.  At one, an opponent said, "I see we have a Supreme Court Justice here this evening?"  "Oh, where?," I asked.  "There," said the opponent.  Sure enough.  There was our Court's newest appointee, John Paul Stevens, former professor of law.  I had just lectured him on the "win and trim" precedent.  Did he ever cite if in any of his opinions?  Probably not,