By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

“You ever get spanked as a kid?” William Hinge VanAnterse III – Trey to his friends – asked out of the blue the other night. We were sitting at our favorite watering hole and he was gulping Crown and Diet Coke and seemed uncharacteristically thoughtful, which is always a sign of trouble.

“Yeah, I got my fair share of spankings. I was the oldest of five kids, the first four of us boys, so my parents were pretty frazzled. The worst was always when my old man had to come into my room at night because my brother and I decided to jump on the beds at 1 a.m. I’ll tell you, when I saw the old man in his tight whites, I knew a serious spanking was coming.”

“You ever spank little Agamemnon or whatever his name is?” Trey asked suspiciously.

“Well yes, we do occasionally spank Ulysses and Ursula, when they require a spanking to get their attention. But we don’t hit them with wire hangers or anything weird, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I replied, looking around to see if anyone from the department of human resources was hanging around taking notes or had beer shooting out of his nose in indignation.

“So generally you think spanking is OK?” Trey continued.

“Yes, in general, as long as it doesn’t become brutal or truly harmful. I mean timeout will only get you so far, especially once they learn to play the I’ve-got-to-go-to-the-bathroom card.”

“Exactly! Timeout WILL only get you so far. I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Trey said excitedly swirling his booze.

“Well, I’m glad we finally found something we can agree on. Why the sudden interest in corporal punishment. The only time I’ve ever seen you interested in spanking was that night at the Candy Store.”

“That was a misunderstanding,” he replied indignantly, “but this has nothing to do with that. I just wanted to make sure you media types are really as hypocritical as I thought. Congratulations, you are.”

“Trey, please go ahead and call a cab now because you’re obviously incoherently drunk. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“First of all, I am not incontinent and on the other hand, I don’t have the $40 for the ride or the three hours it would take the cabbie to show up here to fetch me, so until Mobile gets a real cab company, I’ll be driving home the back way, thank you very much,” he said.

“That’s very comforting to know. But it still doesn’t answer my question – what in the world are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about all you folks in the media coming down on Judge Herman Thomas because he liked to take matters into his own hands and spank an inmate from time to time. All of the sudden it’s like Judge Thomas is some kind of serial killer and needs to be strapped into ‘Yellow Mama,’” he said.

“They don’t use ‘Yellow Mama’ anymore.”

“Well they should – but not on Judge Thomas. He’s always struck me as a pretty good guy. He’s got that little bow tie he wears and those round glasses that make him look so serious and smart. I’d hate to be in his courtroom, wouldn’t you?” Trey asked.

“Well I certainly wouldn’t want to be spanked by a judge, bow tie or not,” I answered.

“Why not!” Trey exclaimed. “If you were one of these boys serving time at the county jail, you’d probably crave a fatherly spanking. Hell, that’s probably why these guys are behind bars in the first place – because nobody ever spanked them. Herman’s just doing what their daddies wouldn’t do.”

“See, that’s the biggest problem I see with this whole ridiculous thing. If Herman Thomas was in fact getting prisoners out of the jail, taking them into a secret little room in Government Plaza, making them pull their pants down and spanking them with a wooden paddle, that’s a lot different than your daddy giving you a swat on the butt. First of all, these aren’t ‘boys,’ these are grown men who have either been convicted of or arrested for a crime. Spanking a grown man just isn’t going to turn him from a life of crime. If anything, it’s going to make him want to kill someone from embarrassment.”

“The embarrassment is exactly the brilliance of what Judge Thomas is doing,” Trey said. “He’s embarrassing these kids straight.”

“I’m not so sure straight is his real goal, if you know what I mean,” I said.

“No, I don’t know what you mean. I hope you’re not insinuating some strange ulterior motives are at work here. Listen, sometimes a spanking is just a spanking.”

“Come on Trey, you can’t honestly think there’s anything remotely reasonable about Judge Thomas hitting grown men on their bare hinnies with a wooden paddle. I’ve heard of a hanging judge, but never a spanking judge. Don’t you think maybe he had another reason for doing this,” I said while making air quotes with my fingers while I said “another reason.” I’m fond of air quotes.

“Stop with the air quotes. I know what you’re getting at, and that’s just a bunch of rumors,” Trey said.

“OK, so why’d he allegedly make them pull their pants down?”

“So the smacking sound of wood hitting bare skin would get their attention,” Trey said.

“Why the locked secret room?”

“So the boys wouldn’t be worried about someone walking in.”

“What about the report that said there is a little chair that sits only about a foot off the ground in this secret office? Doesn’t that sound pretty strange?”

“Maybe some of the inmates he’s helping are little people. Actually, it’s very thoughtful.”

“I don’t know Trey, this all sounds pretty fishy…”

“So you think Judge Thomas may have been pulling men out of the jail for years now and using his position to spank their bare butts and possibly fulfill some strange erotic desire and no one ever squealed about this until now? Sounds pretty far-fetched,” Trey said. “Isn’t the simpler answer that these boys just needed a spanking and Judge Thomas gave them what they needed?”

“Sounds more like something he needed,” I said.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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