1 man, 4 arrests, 24 hours

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 ast- onishing 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 Ingle- wood. 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 de- murred. “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, Wash.” 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.