THE VERDICT -- robert gardner

Compared to the old Newport Beach City Jail, the Black Hole of Calcutta

was the Ritz Carlton. Imagine, if you will, a room 20 feet by 30 feet in

size, into which 50 to 70 men were jammed every Saturday night -- all

drunk, some throwing up.

It was worse during Prohibition when everyone drank straight alcohol,

which was hard to get down and harder to keep down. If one prisoner

barfed, so did the whole bunch. Charlie Crawford, a Los Angeles Times

reporter who lived down here, was the booking officer during Prohibition.

He told me that when the vomit came under the door between the jail and

booking area, he just got a garden hose, turned it on full blast and blew

the stuff back into the jail.

In 1936, when I was the booking officer, there wasn’t quite as much vomit

but the crowded conditions were just as bad.

Getting prisoners in and out presented something of a problem.

Communication between the booking office and the jail was via a steel

door. In that door was a 3-inch by 5-inch slit. When a prisoner’s

mandatory five hours was up and his buddies had arrived with the $20 for

bail, I would yell the name of the about-to-be-released prisoner. He

would come to that little slit in the door, identify himself, the door

would be opened, and he would slip out.

Sometimes that little routine became complicated, which brings us to the

story of the old man.The old man was the private policeman who patrolled

Lido Isle. Every evening he came in and visited me. He had been a

participant in the Alaska gold rush and had some pretty hairy stories

about that experience.

One night he was just sitting there in the booking office visiting when I

ran into something of a problem at the steel door. I had just released a

prisoner and was in the process of closing the door when another prisoner

inside the jail decided he had been there long enough and charged the

door before I could get it closed.

This guy was big and mean. He looked like a professional football player,

probably a 300-pound offensive tackle. As for myself, my resemblance to

Ichabod Crane has been the subject of some comment throughout the years.

I was losing my contest with the big brute when out of the corner of my

eye I saw the old man come out of his chair. He pulled a great big Colt

.45 revolver out of its holster and start across the booking area toward

my tormentor.

My first thought was that the old man was going to shoot the guy I was

tussling with. The other prisoners who had been watching my struggle saw

the old man charging with the gun, and they all ran like hell to the back

of the jail and huddled together.

When the old man reached me and my tormentor, he just raised the gun and

brought the barrel down on the big guy’s head. The big guy sagged against

me, out like a light.

The old man looked at all the prisoners huddled against the back of the

jail, pointed the gun at them, grinned, said, “bang.” Then he walked back

to the chair in which he had been sitting when my troubles started.

“Haven’t had this much fun since the Klondike,” he said.

“Did you do things like this when you were in the Klondike?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” the old man said. “I saw some guy do this in a movie I saw a

couple of weeks ago and just thought I’d try it out.”

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

runs Tuesdays.