Word: stralla
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Your statement [TIME, Aug. 19] that Tony Stralla feels that Angelenos deserve the luxury of his floating gambling enterprise because there isn't a professional crap game west of Reno hardly makes sense. Los Angeles is east of Reno, as every high-school geography student knows...
Tightlipped, hard-eyed Anthony Cornera Stralla, "admiral" of the Long Beach gambling ship Lux, has lived a life devoted, in a manner of speaking, to public service. He also has great respect for laws, is always trying to keep from breaking them. But for two decades both state and federal officials have been baying after him like bloodhounds, continuously balking his efforts at aiding the masses...
...Italian-born ex-coal-passer, Tony Stralla entered rumrunning in Prohibition days "to keep 120,000,000 people from being poisoned to death." He generously invested a small fortune in a steamship, brought vast supplies of liquor from Vancouver, B.C. to the arid California coast...
...days later deputy sheriffs touched him hard. They arrested the operators of his water taxis. Hundreds of people were marooned all night on the ship, had to lean dismally against the walls because there were few chairs. Stralla, unruffled, gave himself up, stood chewing grapes while being charged with criminal conspiracy. He hoped the judge would restrain his tormentors. But the judge ruled against...
Tony planned to press the court fight on grounds that his water taxis were engaged in foreign commerce, thus were outside Los Angeles County jurisdiction. But at week's end it looked as if Tony Stralla would never be able to convince an unsympathetic D.A. that he lived and worked only for the community good...