My wife’s stole could have cost me my robe

ROBERT GARDNER

Many years ago, I had a friend named Alex Oser.

Oser was pretty quiet about his early years, but from certain

comments, I gathered that he’d been poor and hungry for a good part

of them. By the time I met him, he was a wealthy man with a large

fishing boat moored in front of his Lido Isle home. He also owned the

house next door, which was where he housed a few of the people who

worked for him.

After World War II, the military had a huge number of airplanes

suddenly sitting around. Alex didn’t know much about aviation, but he

did know two things -- platinum was worth a great deal, and airplanes

had platinum rivets. Either the military didn’t know those two things

or didn’t care, because they practically gave him the planes. He

knocked the rivets out, sold them and amassed a tidy fortune.

As someone who had known hunger, nothing gave Oser greater

pleasure than feeding people. Going out to dinner with Oser was quite

an experience, especially for one of modest appetite. I remember one

dinner at Reuben’s when he summoned the waiter and ordered one of

about everything on the menu -- more than a party 10 times as large

as ours could have eaten. Then he had the waiter take each of our

orders. He had ordered just hors d’oeuvres.

He also loved to give presents. He called one day and insisted

that Katy and I come over immediately. As soon as we got there, he

brought out a huge box, which he presented to her. Inside was a mink

stole. Wow. In those days, a mink stole was really something. I was a

little embarrassed, as we weren’t in the habit of exchanging gifts

with our friends -- particularly anything that expensive -- but it

gave Oser and my wife so much pleasure that I didn’t say anything.

Someone else did that for me.

I was trying the divorce case of the heir to the Spreckels’ sugar

fortune at the time. The next night, we went out to a party, Katy’s

first opportunity to wear the stole. Noticing the stole, someone

said, “Get that from Spreckels?” It was a joke, but suddenly

everything looked different.

We got home that night, and I told Katy that she had to return the

mink stole. Quite naturally, she protested -- strongly. I explained

the comment our friend had made and the perception the mink stole

might create. That wasn’t a very happy conversation, but at the end

she carefully folded the stole and placed it back in the box. Her

response was mild compared to Oser’s reaction.

He marched to the end of his pier and threatened to drop the stole

into the bay if we didn’t accept it. You should have seen Katy’s face

at that, but I stood my ground and finally persuaded him to take it

back. He had great respect for the position of a judge, and when he

finally came to understand that the gift of the stole had the

potential to damage my position, he backed down.

It was a good lesson for me. I understood after that comment, joke

though it was, that it wasn’t enough for me to know that I would do

the right thing. I had to conduct myself so that no one else would

ever have an opportunity to doubt that. Whether my experience is

relevant to any of today’s headlines, I’ll let others judge.

There was another lesson I learned -- an expensive one. A woman

doesn’t take the loss of a mink stole lightly. A week later, I

inflicted a major dent in our bank account when I went out and bought

a replacement mink stole for Katy. It was worth it, though. Things

had gotten a little chilly in our house, and there’s nothing like

mink to warm things up.

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

His column runs Tuesdays.