Utah Bar Journal

Maybe the most obvious elder law issue is trespass. Learn to recognize the phrase "Keep Out" in Spanish. It will help avoid a lot of misunderstandings. On the other hand, if you feel truly inspired, you can pretend your language skills are a little weak and ask for help reading the sign. You can meet lots of interesting people that way. It doesnÕt work as well, though, with "Beware of Dog" signs.

A related matter is the famous Green River Ordinance. I haven't seen one of those "Green River Ordinance Enforced" signs for a long time. I assume they're still out there. Green River Ordinances prohibit door-to-door solicitation as a public nuisance, subject to criminal penalties.1 I first learned about them as a 10-year-old selling candy bars for my little league team. My Mom ended up buying all my candy bars. I know what you're thinking, elder. "That kind of ordinance only applies to salespeople. If they try to apply that to missionaries it's an unconstitutional abridgement of my free speech rights and I'll take it all the way to the Supreme Court!" You're right, but you're too late to be the hero. The Jehovah's Witnesses already slew that dragon for you (8-1, with the late Justice Rehnquist dissenting).2 So knock away with impunity, at least in this country. Things might be different in Thailand or Bolivia, but I can't give you any guidance there - the opinion committee won't let me (actually, they won't let me do anything at all, at least not unless I have an affidavit from our malpractice carrier, or approach them under an assumed name, but that's another story).

And how about the local traffic code insofar as it relates to bicycles? Can you ride on the sidewalk? Can you park on the sidewalk? (I realize these may be moot points in countries whose languages don't include a word for "sidewalk," but if we aren't going to allow the discussion of moot points in the Bar Journal, then we might as well rename it the Bar Pamphlet and cut back to a single annual issue - let's face it, moot points are the staple of our profession, by the time the client picks up that August 1997 Field and Stream in your lobby for the first time, the damage has usually already been done.) Can you use the left turn lane, or do you have to stop, use two crosswalks, and only then proceed? Do the local alcohol and drug-related traffic offenses apply equally to bicycle riders (hopefully, another moot point)? Make sure you know the required hand signals (I mean the turn signals, not the ones that mean, loosely translated, "I'd prefer not to talk to you right now").

A little practical advice might be useful, too. The two pants suit at Mr. Mac is a good idea, but don't buy the dark blue Swedish knit. It can be a little slick and you'll have trouble staying on the bike when you hit a little bump. And speaking of slippery, get off and walk if it's a rainy day and you're facing a cobblestone street - unless you're looking for a creative way to approach emergency room personnel with the Golden Questions.

Do you remember the movie Midnight Express? Neither do I. It was the '70s. And I have trouble remembering 30 year old movies I didn't see in the first place. It was about an American trying to smuggle hashish through customs in Turkey. He ends up in a prison that makes the black hole of Calcutta seem like Federal Heights on Conference weekend. I understand you can find it at Hollywood Video. It's supposed to be good. Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay so you know every word is true. I'd rent it, but after 7:00 at night, 20 minutes on the sofa puts me to sleep faster than a Sarbanes-Oxley CLE. (Is it just me, or does hearing about enhanced audit committee responsibilities have the same effect as a tap behind the ear with a monkey wrench?)

A former companion of mine once compared our missions to Midnight Express. I thought that was a little extreme. Of course, he thought it was a little extreme when I compared our missions to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Maybe a cross between the two. "Cross" isn't the right word, though - it's the wrong symbol, because we were always discouraged from being too ecumenical. Anyway, Elder B____'s comparison was based on a night we spent in a Serbian police station. (My comparison was based on me being a smart aleck.)

The night we spent in the hospitality of Serbia's finest was our own stupid fault - no surprise there. Foreign spies are supposed to register with the local police wherever they intend to spend the night and conduct surveillance of local military installations. We forgot to register. They were actually very nice to us and nothing happened worth writing a screenplay about (one of the officers encouraged us to see the frescoes in a local church, pointing out that the renaissance actually began in Serbia - we heartily agreed). But my point, and it was a long time coming, is the importance of having at least a passing familiarity with local immigration law. If you're supposed to register someplace, do it. Otherwise you might develop a more intimate familiarity with third world criminal procedure.

One of the unspoken rules of the Bar Journal is that, somewhere in the issue, you have to run a piece about alternative dispute resolution (and it's usually between those ads with the rabid dogs and the guys arm wrestling - just before the bi-monthly civility lecture). So here we go. The biggest controversy of my mission dealt with the correct plural form of The Book of Mormon. There was a small, anal-retentive, justifiably ostracized group (yes, I was in that group), who insisted that we were passing out Books of Mormon. There was a much larger group (but mostly from Idaho) who distributed Book of Mormons. The ZL's appealed to the AP's, who stopped joy-riding in their Volkswagen Golf's long enough to certify the question to the Mission President, who responded with the Solomonic "copies of The Book of Mormon." That soon became the shibboleth of a "good elder," and anyone saying anything other than "copies of The Book of Mormon" was outed as an apostate. There, now we can check off the ADR box for this issue. (I apologize for the "shibboleth" reference (Judges 12:4-6). It was pretentious and unnecessary (consistent with the rest of the article); but I can't resist Old Testament references - they sound cool when you have nothing to say, like Bob Dylan. Go listen to Visions of Johanna and just try to tell me what that's all about.)

And finally, know when to throw the rules out the window. I'm not talking about knocking over a liquor store to pay for bus tickets to the next zone conference. All I'm saying is you can't let the rules get in the way of doing the right thing. I know that sounds like heresy, but let me finish (that's a phrase I remember saying to my mission president more than once - to his eternal credit, he never did let me finish). I remember going to a district party of some kind in southern Austria.3 Maybe I should explain. A district is like an adolescent stake. It isn't quite big enough, or it's still too spread out, or it doesn't have quite enough basketball hoops to be a stake. Today it's probably a stake. But it was a district then, and the missionaries were expected to attend all district functions - even parties where we would be prohibited from enjoying ourselves. The party degenerated into a dance. You can probably see this one coming. There was an elderly Slovenian woman in the district - Sister Gruden. She was a sweet lady, probably about 85 years old, and I had visited her regularly - kind of like a home teacher, except I never tried to sell her anything. Sister Gruden walked over to me and asked me to waltz. And because I have a hyperactive conscience where my spine is supposed to be, I told her the mission rules wouldnÕt allow us to dance. Given a free ride on a time machine, some people would go back and load up on Microsoft stock; others would find out how they stacked up those rocks at Stonehenge; I have a friend who wants a do-over of the eighth grade (he's in therapy). I would go back to Klagenfurt, Austria and waltz with Sister Gruden.

And speaking of sisters, an elder law issue is all well and good, but when are we going to see the sister law issue? It's the 21st century already, let's not be Neanderthal about this.
Oh, wait a minute - just got an email from the editors. "Elder law" as in Medicare, conservatorships, trusts and estates . . .

Never mind.

1. They are named for Green River, Wyoming (sorry, not Utah), where the ordinance was adopted so the local coal miners, trona miners, and railroad workers on the swing and graveyard shifts wouldn't have their sleep constantly interrupted by Fuller Brush salespeople knocking at the door. I have a similar rule for my office, but it doesn't seem to work very well. Speaking of public nuisances that will wake the neighbors, if you go to greenriverordinance.com you'll learn that Green River Ordinance is also the name of an "alternative rock" group in Fort Worth, Texas - and you can buy some cd's.

2. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society v. Village of Stratton, 536 US 150 (2002). Justice Rehnquist noted the "very grave risks associated with canvassing" and observed that with respect to door-to-door proselytizing "the possibilities of persuasion are slight compared with the certainties of annoyance" (not his own words; he was quoting, with approval, an earlier opinion of the Court). Leaning on the bell at the Rehnquist place would not have been advisable.

3. I know, I mentioned Serbia earlier, and for those who might be paying attention - I don't blame you if you're not - but if you're not, then what are you doing in the endnotes? - in any event, it probably sounds a little irregular for an elder to be border-hopping through central Europe. I wasn't breaking any rules, though. At least, not mission rules. I always . . . well usually . . . OK often, followed the mission rules. Anyway, this was back during the Cold War days and the mission home was still using pre-World War I maps which put Yugoslavia in the Austro-Hungarian empire, so logically it was all the same mission. This will make perfect sense to anyone who has lived through the dividing of wards, or been busted for wandering outside the boundaries of his district on P-day.