Defendants Belly Up to the Bar

--Justice of the Peace Agapito Gonzalez might be described as a hangout judge. When defendants before him approach the bar, they’re already inside one. Gonzalez, 75, has been holding court at the G & G bar, a family business in Palito Blanco, Tex., since 1966. He sits with the docket at an aging chrome dinette set and deals mostly with speeding tickets, poaching and disputes between landlords and tenants. Constable Bartolo Guajardo said he can’t remember the last time someone was murdered in the precinct. Inside the barroom, drinking cowboys listen to Mexican tunes on the jukebox, near trophies, antlers and posters of women in bikinis. “He’s the law west of Highway 281,” said a joking Arnoldo Gonzalez, who is county clerk and a nephew of the justice. If a jury trial is necessary, it doesn’t mean a lot of 12-packs are sold. The rare events--the last was two years ago--take place in the school of the small town of 300, about 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. But after justice is dispensed to defendants who appear at the G & G, they are welcome to stay for the dispensing of some beer, chips and free barbecue. “They stick around, they drink beer and all that,” Agapito Gonzalez said. He is known for mercy, favoring light fines over the slammer.

--Canadian Dino Frisella is selling packs of trading cards that he says are a hit with collectors. They contain no gum. And instead of baseball heroes like Orel Hershiser, they picture presidents, places and events from the Vietnam War. Frisella said he hoped the cards would be used to teach children about Vietnam. Richard M. Nixon shares a card with Henry A. Kissinger. John F. Kennedy has his own, as does Lyndon B. Johnson. Other cards depict such things as the battle of Xuan Loc and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The “stats” on the back explain the importance of the picture on the front. Frisella, of Quebec, said he and partner Stewart Sergeant have printed more than 45,000 of the 66-card sets. The 2-by-4-inch cards can be purchased as sets or in packs of six each, wrapped like baseball cards.

--Irene Stevenson, a student from the University of Texas, will be the first American to work in the Moscow headquarters of the Soviet news agency Tass. She plans to move in September after finishing her master’s thesis in comparative literature. Stevenson, 28, told the Austin American-Statesman that she was hired to edit English translations of Tass stories. She said she had several interviews and a long tryout for the job after she heard about it during a study trip to Moscow in 1987.