The guard waved me into Dukes County Courthouse as the town clock in the Old Whaling Church struck 9 a.m. Not missing a beat he told me, “You’ll want Mr. Sollitto.” He’d noticed the parking violation clutched in my left hand.

I had never entered the courthouse in my half-century visiting the Island. I loved it immediately.

In the week since I found the parking violation on the windshield of my niece’s car after dinner in Edgartown, I went through different stages. My husband felt responsible because he’d studied the Loading Zone sign, whereas I was charmed by the address within an outline of the Island on the ticket. “It’s adorable,” I said.

“The whole ticket used to be purple,” said my mother, almost sadly. Way to burst my bubble on my first Edgartown parking ticket.

Finally I read the small print that said the ticket could be disputed by mail, or by hearings Monday through Friday 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Dukes County courthouse. Visiting the courthouse sounded like an adventure suited to my last day on the Island.

Beach Road from Oak Bluffs was stunning. A northerly had come in at sunrise; the clarity of the water off State Beach and whitecaps made my heart race a little. On NPR they were airing the usual coverage of the upcoming presidential election.

I turned off the radio and took deep breaths. On a crisp fall days like this one, 25 days before the presidential election I thought about that Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Everyone always remembers that it was such a beautiful day. People on the Island heard the scramble of F-15s from Otis Air Force Base. I always think of Pat Alley saying later: “If the world does end, this is where I want to be, right here on State Beach.”

The courthouse was humming. I followed the sign to upstairs for parking appeals, past the law library on one side, the court personnel door to the courtroom on the other. I tentatively tried double doors, the way you try a restroom to see if it’s locked, and backed away at the resistance. Was someone else appealing their relatively modest parking fine? I tried the doors again, more firmly. “Mr. Sollitto is in court this morning,” a woman outside his inner office told me. She looked over at her co-worker. “Are they just bringing in the jury?”

At a nod, she told me he probably wouldn’t be free until the mid-morning break, probably best to come back another morning earlier or put my appeal in writing.

I went out the double doors just as someone from the sheriff’s department was leading the jury in from around the corner. A woman in uniform came out of the courtroom. “Take them back,” she said and the jurors reversed, a line of dissimilar sizes, ages and skin colors. A judge in a black robe emerged, looking neither left or right. “Excuse me, Mr. Sollitto,” I heard the woman from the office say, re-entering the courtroom.

I thought, maybe there’s a delay and he’ll go back to his office. I’ll just wait a bit. Or was I really thinking, I am a spectator in a courthouse in which there is a code of conduct, there are rules, a sense of honor and dignity. There is Your Honor, and the clerk of courts of Dukes County who is Mr. Sollitto. I needed to drink this in.

I sat outside the door to the courtroom, able to see the wooden bench, a carpet with insignias, what looked like pews, oil portraits on the walls. I could feel the jury nearby, waiting in what I knew had to be a small room, no way of knowing how long before they would be led back into the courtroom. “Where’s District today?” the guard was asked repeatedly. “Is this Superior?”

As I sat looking at a doorway-wide view of the front of courtroom, I heard a sound that I realized was chains: someone from the jail being taken to “District” in the basement. That sound and shuffle unloosed something inside of me, even though I associated the sound with oppression. Was it fear of further injustices? Racism. Misogyny. Fear about the country’s divide before and after the election. Fear of the loss of values I’ve taken for granted: the right to a fair trial.

I’m not religious or outwardly patriotic. Yet, sitting on the second floor of the Dukes County courthouse, I felt absolutely blessed to be an American in a way I had never experienced. I have the privilege to appeal a parking ticket. I was waved into the courthouse without search. I was bearing witness to the American legal process, which had survived denying the rights of women and African-Americans to vote and become more just. Which had managed to unshackle humans who were unjustly enslaved, apologize to Japanese-Americans incarcerated during World War II and granted rights to same-sex couples to marry. The sound of a prisoner’s chains was at once heartbreaking and heartening. A trial. A judge. A jury of ones’ peers. Mr. Sollitto.

I left the courthouse and wrote my appeal to be mailed and stamped received by the Martha’s Vineyard parking clerk.

On the drive to Edgartown I felt like the world might end in 25 days, but after sitting on the bench outside the courtroom, driving Beach Road back to Oak Bluffs, I felt confidence that dignity would prevail, in small courthouses like ours, across the nation. I put a Forever stamp on the envelope and pushed it through the Out of Town slot at the Oak Bluffs Post Office. I may have kissed the envelope.

Peggy Sturdivant is a weekly columnist in Seattle. She’s been a seasonal visitor to her family’s cottage in the Camp Ground for well over 50 years.