When talking about the unusual cases that have come through his court over the years, Orendorff omits the names in order to protect the innocent - and the guilty.

There was the retail-theft suspect who crashed through a window and cut his arm in an attempt to escape from the courtroom, back in the days when Orendorff presided in cramped quarters in the courthouse annex at 801 Water St.

And the drunken suspect who tore his shirt off in the courtroom as Orendorff attempted to give the man a hearing on the charges against him.

"You do have the right to an immediate hearing ...," but the incident early in his tenure prompted Orendorff to start sending intoxicated people to the "drunk tank" at the county jail and bring them in for hearings when they are sober.

Once, a defendant rose in the middle of a hearing to leave the courtroom when it became clear from the testimony that he would be found guilty of a summary charge. Police officers leaped up to arrest the man before Orendorff scolded them, "What are you doing?"

"It was just a summary case," Orendorff explained. "The defendant is not required to be present for a summary hearing."

In a small-claims case, a landlord sued a tenant over a dead dogwood tree.

"There was a German shepherd tied to the tree and the chain killed the tree - it took all the bark off the tree and the tree died," Orendorff said. The landlord brought a tree expert who testified the dogwood was worth $600, so that's what Orendorff awarded.

"I wouldn't think it was worth $50," Orendorff said.

Orendorff halted a hearing to let a police officer get composed. While testifying from the stand, the cop gagged and became nauseous at the sight of a court participant ejecting a gooey wad of chewing tobacco into a cup.

"Honest to God, I forgot I wasn't 21!" he said. Orendorff made the youth repeat his explanation, then found him guilty - but cut his fine in half.

A litigant in a civil case stormed to the bench after an unfavorable ruling and barked at Orendorff, "I don't want you to hear my cases anymore!"

"Fine," Orendorff told him, "you can go to the court in Clymer."

The man stood silent a moment then said, "Nevermind," Orendorff recalled.

"But no one has ever assaulted anyone here," Orendorff said. "I'm amazed at that.

"It's not always popular to uphold the law. Sometimes I can stretch it, but I can't change it."

Having so many cops and lawyers around on a daily basis would seem to make it easy for someone to stay up to date on changes in the laws.

Sometimes, Orendorff said, it has been the opposite.

"But there always are exceptions: limousines, taxis and RVs (recreational vehicles)."

Orendorff said he dismissed a case against a suspect who didn't even show up to defend himself.

"It was an absentia hearing and the only person here was the police officer, who testified that the defendant threw a cigarette butt out the window of a car," Orendorff said. "I had just read a state Superior Court decision that ... it was not the intent of the vehicle code to punish people for throwing cigarette butts out the window. So the defendant was found not guilty. The police officer did not know that the law had changed."

"When you're new at this, it bothers you that you're doing the right thing," Orendorff said.

Despite efforts to follow the decisions of judges in higher courts, Orendorff said, a district judge can be left with no right decision.

Years ago, Orendorff said, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and Superior Court heard arguments on the same issue on the same day and handed down opposite rulings.

"There was no precedent, so who was right?" Orendorff said.

"When I read that, I started thinking for myself: Give it your best with all your knowledge. That's all you can do; you're only a human being.

"I'm not going to ever say that I haven't made mistakes, but I try to the best of my ability to do what the law says to do. I have some discretion in raising or lowering fines, but we shouldn't be making the laws - the legislature makes the laws."

When it comes to settling neighborhood squabbles, the district court truly is the people's court, where any Joe can plead his case, even without a lawyer, and prevail.

"That happens more than you might think," Orendorff said. "It's because they're right, and they gave enough evidence for me to rule that way. If they're right and they present it right, they win."

Orendorff acknowledged that the price of a lawyer easily could be higher than the amount at issue in a small-claims court case. But coming in without an attorney doesn't entitle someone to special consideration - and he strongly advises against it.

"You have to treat everybody equally. It's not fair to either side. That wouldn't be fair to the side that has the attorney, to help the person that doesn't. They had the right to get an attorney," Orendorff said. "When somebody shows up here and they don't know what they're doing, that's not on me. It's not my fault that you don't know what you're doing. And you usually lose when the attorney fights you and you can't get the evidence in."

For Orendorff, with retirement looming and a generation of experience behind him, that means sharing personal opinions that he leaves outside the courtroom door.

"There are a lot of decisions I make that I disagree with," Orendorff said. "For instance I have to fine somebody $500 for tampering with a boot that police put on a car for failing to pay parking tickets. Indiana Borough Council set it at $500. After an appeal to the county court, a judge lowered it to $300. But I could not do that; I could not change the borough ordinance."

Cautiously, Orendorff admitted having a low tolerance for driving under the influence.

"I'm surprised they allow you to drive a car with any alcohol in your system," Orendorff said. "But I don't make the laws and my decisions can't reflect my feelings."

Like it or not, Orendorff said, he has dismissed many DUI cases in which the defendants had blood-alcohol content readings below the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

"I usually give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, and I've been accused of being a little bit too soft, but that's OK. I can live with that," Orendorff conceded. But he said it bothers him to get slammed for upholding the law.

"Some of the toughest decisions are when you're going against what you believe yourself, when the law says 'that' and you cannot turn around and say, well, I think 'this.' And you get criticized for it even though you are doing what the law says."

Sometimes, Orendorff said, constraints of the district court have prevented him from making better or more effective decisions, such as the inability to rule on Constitutional issues.

"That's why I'm a firm believer in the appeal process. If you get a raw deal at the magistrate's level, anything I do can be appealed," Orendorff said.

"Any case where I find somebody guilty, there can be an appeal. Even my sentence is appealable. If I put too harsh a sentence, that can be appealed.

"You've got to put it in perspective. We're at the bottom rung of the ladder and anything we do, you can take to a higher court. And we're not deciding life and death issues. ..."

Some of the people who have appeared before Orendorff go away with more than just the wisdom of the decisions he renders in the courtroom. But the number is hard to measure, when they turn into people who don't come back again.

"I emphasize a lot when someone beats a charge on a technicality, 'I would hate to see you get arrested again for the same thing and that you didn't see that you got one heck of a break here,'" Orendorff said. "It's difficult to say 'case dismissed' when the evidence doesn't come in and you know that it shouldn't have been the way it turned out.

"But I do believe in the system. You've got to do what the law says."

Once in a while, Orendorff said, people hear about more than the law.

"I'll talk to parents of underage drinkers and they don't pay too much attention, but as soon as I mention the fact that I haven't drank for 23 years, I get their attention." Orendorff said.

"I tell them my experience with alcohol. ... I'm one of those people that just can't drink alcohol ... and they listen."

When a DUI suspect insisted at a bail hearing that he wasn't really drunk, despite having a blood-alcohol level of 0.18 percent, Orendorff said, he took the suspect aside and showed him a chart that described the stages of alcoholism - such as rationalization.

"He asked what that meant. I looked at him and bluntly said, 'That means you lie.' And he did pay attention to what I said."

About a year later, the man's grandmother visited Orendorff at his home on a weekend and said she wanted to give him a big hug.

"She gave me that credit, but I just created a spark," Orendorff said. "That was not me; that was him who sobered up, only because he understood where he was headed."

After long DAYs of sorting out scores of criminal allegations and contentious legal messes, some afternoons - especially toward the weekend - bring welcome interruptions of the court drudgery.

Orendorff easily could lay claim to being the most prolific marrying man in the county. He has performed about 2,500 weddings over the years by his estimate, meaning he has probably hitched 5,000 people.

"I'm in the county seat so I get a lot of walk-in weddings," Orendorff said. "And a wedding is one of the things I like to do, because no one is mad at me."

Well, not always - there was the couple that waited at Rustic Lodge for Orendorff to come perform their ceremony while Orendorff sat in his office looking at his watch until they phoned him.

"I had the wires crossed," Orendorff said. "I was a half-hour late and I learned not to ever be late for a wedding again.

"It got dark and they couldn't take pictures. They were so mad at me. ..."

Mostly happy affairs, Orendorff's weddings have taken all shapes and sizes. Most have been brief; some have been long. They've been performed indoors and outdoors. And not confined to Indiana County, because the authority vested in a district judge allows him or her to do a wedding anywhere in the state.

Some were well planned. One was arranged so quickly, Orendorff had to ask the couple their names in mid-vows.

"I just leaned and asked him what his first name was and I proceeded," Orendorff said "And that was filmed, so I'm sure they had some laughs over that."

Then there was the ceremony on a dock at the edge of a lake near Shelocta, where the bride and groom wanted everyone in the wedding party, including Orendorff, to jump in the water after the "I dos."

He cleared his Saturday schedule, washed his car, suited up and drove to the Pittsburgh area, only to be told the couple asked a pastor from Ohio to run the ceremony. All Orendorff was needed for was to "make it legal," they told him.

In less than two minutes, he had the couple make the contract.

"I just asked 'John' if he would take 'Mary' to be his wife, he said yes, and I asked 'Mary' to take 'John' to be her lawfully wedded husband and she said yes," Orendorff recalled. "I signed the papers and I was gone.

The common thread in all the weddings Orendorff has performed?

"I can't remember a wedding I ever performed that somebody didn't make a mistake. Including myself," Orendorff said. "But I think that's what it's all about. We're human people - we're human beings."

Testing the political waters turned into full immersion when Orendorff, a Democrat, filed his nominating papers and got his name on the Republican and Democratic ballots 30 years ago.

"I ran for this position because I knew the fellow that was in (Al Cox) might retire, so I just wanted to get my name out there. In a couple of years, I expected to possibly be appointed," Orendorff said.

Even Democratic Party leaders thought Orendorff would run a token candidacy, he said.

"People in the party thought I would not win that election," Orendorff said. "But I figured I just can't make a fool of myself, so I had to try to get elected. I knocked on a lot of doors. ..."

"I had 11 brothers and sisters, someone in every grade in school, so it wasn't just me. I had a lot of family out there that knew everybody."

After easily winning the 1975 campaign, Orendorff was re-elected to four more six-year terms with virtually no competition in 1981, 1987, 1993 and 1999.

Misconceptions about the district judge's job go both ways.

Many citizens believe the judge must be an attorney and a lot of people think the judge gets a percentage of the money collected in fines and court costs, but Orendorff said neither is true.

"We get paid a straight salary. Believe it or not, I make five times as much as I made when I started," Orendorff said. From about $15,000 in the mid-1970s, the salary has leaped to almost $75,000 - the latest increase awarded under a state law enacted in July.

"They've done that to attract attorneys. They want attorneys in here because this job is getting complicated," Orendorff said. "There are 550 district judges in the state and just a little over 100 are attorneys. And if the salary went higher, I'm sure more would be attracted."

What Orendorff finds hard to believe is the amount of the pension he'll collect after he retires. He didn't disclose the figure.

His pension is calculated on his 30 years in the court, two years with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and two years in the U.S. Marine Corps: 34 years of civil service.

"My father-in-law said go with the state, you can't go wrong," Orendorff said. "Boy, he was right."

Out of curiosity, Orendorff said, he checked on the pension he would collect if he served one more six-year term at the $75,000 salary just approved by the state legislature.

"I can't imagine my retirement with 40 years, ... but I just can't brag about it. It blows my mind."

Leaving public office may not mean the end of being a public figure.

"I don't think I've ever been able to go to the mall or shopping without running into somebody who wants to talk to me. Not that I'm complaining," Orendorff said. "I go to school once a year in Chambersburg and it's a whole different life there. You walk into the mall and nobody knows you.

"I like my privacy and that's why I'm going to like retirement, because I want to travel."

To seek a sixth term as the Indiana district judge was just one.

He has other options that would keep him from disappearing from the district courts for at least the next decade.

Orendorff, who turned 60 in September, is eligible to stay on the bench until he reaches 70, the mandatory retirement age for judges in Pennsylvania.

"I can go to school one week a year and keep up my status to be a senior judge," Orendorff said. "So I'm going to keep that going and see what happens."

As a senior judge, he could be assigned to hear cases in any Pennsylvania district court. Senior judges fill in when a local judge has a conflict of interest or when a court has a vacancy because of death or resignation.

But if Orendorff follows his plan to move back to the house he owns in southeastern White Township, which is outside the district where he now has jurisdiction, he could run for election only to the Homer City district court if he wanted to work full time again.

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