I can't decide if these are more or less ominous than the actual court appearance notices. The ones from the court don't say anything about the consequences, but there specifically state that

Failure to appear will result in forfeiture of your bail 

and a bench warrant will be issued for your arrest

which is pretty serious stuff. It's money out of the pocket. I'm not sure how many of these my dad actually saw, since some of them have my mother's handwriting on them and I'm sure that she "organized" him. She's actually listed as the 

Indemnitor (Need not appear, but is also responsible for appearance of defendant and forfeiture.)

It must not have been easy, getting big Tom Wingate motivated to go to the courtroom. What could she promise him? What could she bribe him with? What did she do in the summertime when she had charge of us kids, but still had to get him to the court?

Were those the days when we went over to some friend's house for the morning, only to have dad lumber back into the house later with a look of either relief (whew! no trial!) or resignation (more waiting... I'm never going to get this over with)?