THE VERDICT -- robert gardner

The first time I saw Humpy Golter, he was fighting Jackie Pierce in front

of the Rendezvous Ballroom. They continued to fight every Saturday night

all summer long. Each had played high school football -- Humpy at Anaheim

and Jackie at Pasadena -- but whether that somehow triggered these weekly

fights, I don’t know.

It must have been the third year of the Rendezvous’ existence because the

English-Gibson band was playing. The first two years, the Carol

Loughner-Phil Harris band played.

The English of the English-Gibson band was Brick English, an inspired

piano player. The Gibson was Hoot Gibson, a violin player of no

particular talent, whose sole bid to fame was that he had written

“Mexicali Rose,” a highly forgettable ballad.

Hoot really shouldn’t have been there at all. A violin has no part in a

swing band. Actually, Hoot would have looked more comfortable playing his

fiddle in a Texas roadhouse before a bunch of good old boys and good old

girls. But at the Rendezvous, he had to play his fiddle madly as he tried

to keep up when the orchestra played “Tiger Rag.”

Somehow that summer, Humpy wormed his way into the English-Gibson duo by

becoming their houseboy or cook. In that latter category, Humpy would

bring Brick to the Green Dragon Cafe, where I worked, for his Sunday

morning breakfast.

Now Brick was a drinking man, and Sunday mornings were a bit ticklish. So

Humpy had invented a breakfast that would help Brick face a new day.

Humpy would fill a glass with Lea & Perrin’s sauce, add a healthy dollop

of Tabasco, break a raw egg in the concoction and slide the glass down to

Brick, saying, “Down the hatch, old buddy.”

Brick would look at the glass as though it was a coiled rattlesnake, then

grab it and toss the mixture down. Then he would lean forward, eyes

closed, and beat the counter five times very slowly. Then he would raise

his head, eyes streaming, and say, “Humpy, I don’t know what I’d do

without you.”

At the end of the summer season, the band went back to Hollywood, and

Humpy had made himself so invaluable that he went along as the band’s

manager. Unfortunately for him, the band broke up, leaving Humpy without

a job.

However, by this time Humpy had become enamored of the bright lights of

the entertainment world. He secured a job as a joke writer for a

hillbilly comedian, who really needed a joke writer because as far as I

could see, he was the most unfunny thing on radio.

Since Humpy now lived in Hollywood, it wasn’t until World War II that our

paths crossed again. I was an officer in the Navy -- a lieutenant, junior

grade. I was with a Navy captain. We approached a shore boat in which a

grease-stained enlisted man was hunched over the motor.

The greasy enlisted man looked up. It was Humpy. He jumped to his feet,

threw his arms around me and we stood hugging each other and patting each

other on the back until I felt a decided cooling of the atmosphere.

I looked up. The captain was about to explode. He was literally trembling

with rage as he snarled at me, “Lieutenant, officers do not embrace

enlisted men.”

I let go of Humpy as though he had suddenly developed a highly contagious

disease.

“Well,” Humpy said to the captain, “If an officer can’t embrace an

enlisted man, how about an enlisted man? Can he embrace an officer?”

The captain turned from pink to purple and snarled, “Lieutenant, come

with me,” and we went off in search of a shore boat with a crew more to

his taste.

That was Humpy.

After the war, Humpy went into real estate and did quite well. But it is

my abiding sorrow that although I knew him for 60 years, I never did

learn why he fought Jackie Pierce every Saturday night for one whole

summer in Balboa.

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

column runs Tuesdays.