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Scales provide levity at courthouse

By: Jack Zemlicka, [email protected]//October 24, 2011//

Scales provide levity at courthouse

By: Jack Zemlicka, [email protected]//October 24, 2011//

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A Milwaukee County Courthouse visitor walks past one of the antique scales in the court’s lower level. The scales, which still work and likely date to the 1930s, provide a bit of levity in the court’s hallways. (Photos by Kevin Harnack)

Most women might not look at weighing themselves as a fun treat.

But on an October morning at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, Jennifer Cheng said she was delighted as she tried out one of the antique scales in the building’s lower level.

“I had a couple of seconds, so I thought I would hop on there,” Cheng said with a grin. “It was fun and it was accurate.”

Her moment of joyful revelry quickly faded as her attention shifted back to her boyfriend, who had been withdrawing money from an ATM next to the scale. The two were in the courthouse to attend to a child support payment issue which Cheng declined to discuss.

By all accounts, the courthouse is not a happy place, nor a destination for cheap thrills.

But the building’s six antique scales, which cost a penny to use, provide brief, and sometimes needed, injections of levity, Milwaukee County Clerk of Courts John Barrett said.

“The courthouse can be a very serious place and it can be a very tense place,” he said. “I think if this offers people a respite from the tensions of court, it’s a fine thing to have.”

Barrett estimated the scales, built by the Watling Scale Co. in Chicago, first appeared at the courthouse soon after it was built in 1928, although nobody interviewed could pinpoint their exact arrival date.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Dennis Cimpl said he remembered seeing the scales when he was 10 years old and at the courthouse with his father.

1 cent - the cost to use one of the antique scales at the Milwaukee County Courthouse

“It was the biggest treat in the world to see those things,” he said. “For all I know, my dad put a penny in there and weighed us.”

As an attorney and a judge, Cimpl has been working in the courthouse for 37 years and for him, the scales are a part of the culture, he said.

The scales date to the 1930s, said Bill Berning, owner of Berning Scales, in Genoa, Ill. Berning bought a fledgling Watling in 1972 and said relics along the lines of the ones in the Milwaukee Courthouse were worth $300 – $500.

At one point, the scales in Milwaukee might have featured a 10-cent horoscope option, which still is advertised on the face of the scale. That feature of the machine does not work anymore.

“Maybe there were too many postponements by attorneys related to the horoscopes,” Barrett said, “and they got rid of them.”

Berning said he had his own theory of how the scales landed in the courthouse.

“I think in the ’20s and ’30s, people didn’t own bathroom scales because they were far too expensive,” he said. “So people would have to go to a doctor’s office or other public buildings to get their weight.”

Now they sit amongst more modern amenities such as ATMs, stamp machines and pay phones.

But they also serve as a nostalgic contrast to the solemn litigant or frantic attorney often seen in the hallway, Barrett said.

“They do bring character to the courthouse,” he said. “It reminds me a bit of my childhood and provides a wonderful glimpse into the past.”

For Cheng, the scales offered a simple break from reality and an unexpected treat during an otherwise cumbersome visit.

“It was a little weird,” she said. “But I was glad it was there.”

Milwaukee County Clerk of Courts John Barrett stands next to one of the antique scales at the courthouse.

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