Salem Old and New

   
   A sunny Friday morning in April, in the Family and Probate Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, County of Essex, sitting in Salem.  Judge Sahagian’s session is on the second floor, in a high-ceilinged room that runs the length of the east side of the building, with tall windows on three sides.  Beneficiaries of trusts seek accountings and the appointment of new trustees.  Divorce matters of all kinds are screened for mediation.  A woman seeks to compel the disclosure of her former husband’s tax returns.  And so on.
   The lawyers have dressed for court, as lawyers do, but the parties for the most part have not.  One man has bothered to put on a sport coat and a turtleneck (a turtleneck, in April?), and a couple of women wear skirts and blazers.  But the rest appear in their jeans and sneakers, their hooded sweatshirts, their t-shirts that expose their tattoos.  At either end of the courtroom, portraits of long-dead justices stare down disapprovingly. 

I sit by an open window in the sun, looking out on a cherry tree just starting to bud and the Congregational church with its fine white steeple across the street, wishing they allowed cameras inside so that I could snap some pictures of this odd, old courtroom.  The plaster walls are pierced here and there by devices invented long after the courthouse was built.  Electric lights.  Thermostats.  Speakers that connect to some hidden audio system.  In the back of the courtroom sits a ridiculous, old television with a bent coat hanger for an antenna.  A sign on the old wooden door reminds everyone to turn off all cell-phones and beepers. 

It all feels out of balance.  A strange mix of the old and worn, the very old but timeless, the new, the relatively new but already decrepit. 

    The most enduring things are both the best of it and the worst of it:  the thick granite walls, the judge’s black robe, the endless procession of pleas.