Detective Ham Smithfield

Retired Lawyer

Equipped Inventory

Be a lawyer, they said. It'll be exciting! The chance to argue in court, experience those Perry Mason moments!

Instead, I spent twenty years of filing briefs. Not that I minded so much--you have to file those briefs down, otherwise they chafe something awful--but the closest thing I got to Perry Mason was a Perry Como moment: halfway through a deposition, a witness started to sing, and put everybody in the room to sleep.

Nevertheless, I stuck to it for twenty years. I filed appeal after appeal, nobody could say I had no appeal.

Not that I had much to show for it. My clients weren't exactly among the elite. Heck, my clients usually didn't know how to spell elite. My office was a walk-in closet with pretensions, and my secretary was a half-senile old biddy with blue hair who thought a gavel was something you served on a bagel with a slice of onion.

So there I was at the local bar, drowning my sorrows--well, with my expense account, I was only really giving my sorrows a mild sponge bath--when I saw the headlines.

The lines were on the head of the barkeep as he told me it was closing time. I packed up and toddled off (or packed off and toddled up, I can't remember which), and said to myself, Self, this is no way to live.

Suddenly, I had an idea!

After I had sobered up, I realized that it was a stupid idea. But I got a better one! If I was so unhappy, why not change jobs?

So I set out to go and get my dream job! Unfortunately, Krispy Kreme wasn't hiring that day, so I went back to my office and noticed that the Private Investigator next door was moving into larger offices. Gotta be money in that racket, right?

So here I am, a freshly minted P.I. (that's spearmint, not peppermint, thanks!). I still have the walk-in closet with pretensions, but my new secretary is actually younger than I am, doesn't have blue hair, and she knows that a gavel isn't something you put on a bagel.

She thinks it's part of an automobile engine. And her hair is purple.

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