THE VERDICT -- Robert Gardner

He was just about the happiest drunk with whom I have ever come into

contact, and he holds a record which, insofar as I know, has never been

challenged. He managed to get himself arrested four times in 24 hours.

What makes it really astonishing is that he was kept in jail five hours

after each arrest. So, four arrests in four hours, actually.

It was my first year of practicing law after graduating from law

school and passing the bar, and I was facing starvation. Rowland

Hodgkinson, the chief of police, took pity on me and hired me to be the

booking officer at the local jail. So I wasn’t trying cases before the

U.S. Supreme Court. It was a living.

And so it was that one night the officers brought in a rather

average-looking man who, when he came into the booking room, sang out,

“The name is Coe. That’s big ‘C,’ small ‘o,’ small ‘e.’ I live in

Inglewood. That’s big ‘I,’ small ‘n,’ small ‘g”’ and so on.

I stopped him. “I can spell Inglewood.”

He smiled. “The last booking officer couldn’t.”

I booked him, then led him to the jail. He demurred. “It’s lonesome in

here, and it smells bad.”

I pushed him into the jail. He promptly went to the window and yelled,

“Help! Help! The cops are beating me.”

So I let him back into the booking cage. He then began to check

through the FBI daily log of wanted criminals, and every time an officer

came into the jail he would point to a picture of a wanted criminal and

sing out, “Officer, arrest that man. he’s wanted for murder in Spokane,

Washington.”

The officers quit coming into the jail.

He was first arrested after he checked into the Balboa Inn and

promptly put all his furniture into the hall “so he wouldn’t be bothered

by pedestrian traffic.”

When he was released, he went to Dad Workman’s gambling joint, put his

arm down on the counter and shoved all the chips out into the street.

Arrest No. 2.

Arrest No. 3: He found a temporarily unattended bread truck and threw

loaves of bread out to the multitude. His defense: “Jesus did it.”

Arrest No. 4. He stood on the top of the Pavilion and threatened to

dive off. The problem was that he was on the street side, and the dive

would have ended on the pavement.

By this time, I realized we were not dealing with an ordinary drunk.

This guy was a Class A, record-breaking drunk, but a happy one. After

each release, he would toss down a few straight shots, “just to keep the

liver alert.”

Finally, his last five hours were up. He called a cab, folded the

release receipt, and put it carefully in his wallet. “Got to keep a

record, you know.”

The cab came. It pulled up in front of the police station. Mr. Coe

dropped down to his hands and knees. “You see that woman sitting in the

car across the street? That’s my wife. Hideous woman. Enough to drive a

man to drink.”

And so Mr. Coe crawled into the cab, which took off with Mrs. Coe

following. My last glimpse of Mr. Coe: He was looking out the rear window

of the cab and wiggling his fingers at me in a farewell salute.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.