THE VERDICT -- robert gardner

One of the real characters of Orange County history was Tiny Vaughn,

constable of the Newport Beach township. Tiny’s real name was Frank, but

somewhere along the way, he had acquired the nickname “Tiny.”

The nickname was peculiar because he was anything but tiny. His son, Don,

a character in his own right, stood 6 feet 7 inches tall. Tiny was

larger. Picture two, or perhaps three 50-gallon oil drums placed one on

top of the other. That was Tiny Vaughn.

Theoretically, the constable simply acts as an agent of the justice of

the peace in serving papers. Not Tiny. He was a retired cop and believed

in enforcing the law in his township. That township included the city of

Newport Beach and the then-unincorporated area of the county known as

Costa Mesa.

After a couple of head-to-head confrontations with Chief of Police

Hodgkinson, himself a pretty tough guy, Tiny agreed to stay out of

Newport Beach. However, Costa Mesa became his fiefdom. To hell with the

sheriff, whose duty it was to enforce the law in that area. Tiny did it.

Some of his efforts were a trifle irregular, but highly effective. For

example, if a bar had a bad reputation for serving drunks, Tony didn’t

waste his time remonstrating with the management. He just parked his big

Buick outside the bar and arrested every drunk who staggered out. Trade

quickly fell off and, facing bankruptcy, the bar owner quit serving

drunks.

Tiny’s bookkeeping was deplorable. Every year, he and the grand jury

auditor had a confrontation that usually resulted in threats of

indictment and prosecution. However, nothing ever came of it and when

Tiny died, his books were in such a mess that no one ever tried to clear

them up.

Tiny’s son, Don, who later became a well-known figure in yachting

circles, was, in his youth, high-spirited -- to put it mildly. He had a

hopped-up car and constantly was engaged in a game of outrunning the cops

and the California Highway Patrol. Sometimes shots were fired and

roadblocks went up, but Don usually escaped.

But every once in a while, the fuzz would win and Don would end up in the

pokey. He would beg the police not to call his father. Being of mean

spirit, they invariably did. Tiny would arrive at the jail. Don would be

brought from his cell. Then, as Don loved to tell it: “You remember the

Elks ring my father wore on his right hand? Well, that was the last thing

I saw before I woke up at home.”

Tiny was a man of direct action. He had one peculiarity that was a trifle

startling to those who didn’t know him. While sitting at a bar, he would

whip out a knife and drive it to the hilt into his leg.

The secret, of course, was that Tiny had an artificial limb, having lost

the leg in a motorcycle accident. But to someone who didn’t know about

the artificial leg, watching Tiny bury a knife in it was an unnerving

experience.

At one time, the restaurant in Corona del Mar now called the Five Crowns

was known as the Tail of the Cock. The original Tail of the Cock had been

opened in Los Angeles by two men, Warren and McHenry. They split up,

McHenry kept the Los Angeles operation, and Bruce Warren opened a similar

establishment in Corona del Mar.

I had been representing Bruce in some legal matters, and since he was

chronically short of ready cash, I took out my fee in food and drinks at

the restaurant. On one such occasion, I was dining with a lady friend,

and Tiny Vaughn and Marcus McCallum -- the oil man and former mayor of

Huntington Beach -- were sitting at the bar nearby. Marcus said something

to Tiny, and Tiny roared, “That’s right, Mac,” and at the same moment,

whipped out a pocket knife and thrust it into his leg right up to the

hilt.

Plop. My date fainted right into her dinner salad.

Marcus looked over his shoulder and said with his well-known stammer,

“B-B-B-Bob, she’s not for you. She d-d-d-doesn’t have what it

t-t-t-takes.”

He was right, of course. She didn’t have what it t-t-t-took. I don’t know

what she would have done if she had been at the Glider Inn in Seal Beach

the night Tiny pulled out his trusty .45 and blasted a hole in the bass

drum -- while the drummer was playing.

It took a certain stamina to be around Tiny Vaughn.

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

runs Tuesdays.