THE VERDICT -- robert gardner

For the city of Newport Beach, 1928 was a banner year.

Before 1928, Balboa was a kind of hokey Sin City. Oh, we had Tony Cornero

landing illegal liquor at the city dock. We had Ted the Bootlegger

distributing his wares rather publicly. And, of course, we had our

gamblers running gambling joints, which were strictly illegal (except

that our City Council said they were legal).

But that was all rather small potatoes before 1928.

Then the new Rendezvous was built and crowds of hundreds became crowds of

thousands. Because there was no public parking, dancers parked from

McFadden Place to the Wedge and from there walked to the Rendezvous and

thought nothing of it.

But with that big crowd of dancers came a small crowd that always follows

a big crowd, a group I shall call the hell raisers.

And who did we have to handle the hell raisers? Our new chief of police,

Rowland Hodgkinson, whose background in law enforcement left something to

be desired.

When appointed, he and his mother ran a hamburger joint on Main Street.

And who did this hamburger merchant cum chief of police hire as the new

police department? He hired three middle-aged men whose experience in law

enforcement equaled his own -- nada.

They were George Callihan, who ran some rental cottages named Callihan’s

Court; Frank Naylor, whose wife was the postmistress on Balboa Island;

and Ken Gorton, whose only outside activity I could see was playing golf

at the Santa Ana Country Club regularly with Phil Harris and Dick

Whitson, the postmaster and manager of the Rendezvous, plus being my

brother-in-law.

He was a very patient brother-in-law. I moved in with him and my sister

in 1921 and stayed until I married in 1941. But enough of personal

history.

Back to the saga of the three middle-aged policemen whose job it was to

control the mini-mob on Main Street on Saturday night. I saw them in

action from a worm’s view.

I was walking along Main Street, minding my own business, when someone

hit me on the back of the head with enough force to knock me down.

Actually, I spun around and landed on my rear end, sitting against Bill

Ireland’s hamburger joint.

I wasn’t hurt; the blow probably hurt the guy’s fist more than my head. I

wasn’t mad at anyone, so I just sat there and watched the action.

The fight that had produced the blow to my head was swirling around right

over my head. Another one, a spinoff, was starting.

Just then, Ken Gorton, Frank Naylor and George Callihan arrived. They

lined up behind the fighters and slowly pushed them toward the beach.

They just went along, not trying to break up any of the fights, which had

escalated into five separate fights by the time they reached the

boardwalk.

The three officers pushed the combatants out onto the sand and just stood

there, punching them back onto the sand when they tried to get back up.

Pretty soon all the fights died out. I guess it’s pretty hard to fight in

the darkness in soft sand.

One by one, the former combatants straggled off the beach, all the fight

gone out of them.

When the last had left, Callihan walked by and said, “Bob, you can come

out now.”Years later, Chief Hodgkinson explained to me that his constant

worry was that one of those fights would spill out of that one block of

Main Street and spread through the rest of town. It never happened,

thanks to three rather elderly and somewhat pudgy police officers whose

names were George Callihan, Frank Naylor and Kenny Gorton.

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

runs Tuesdays.