Word: stralla
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Dates: during 1939-1939
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...Tony Stralla said the Rex alone cost him $600,000. Mayor Fletcher Bowron (whose closing of Los Angeles gambling nightspots last year vastly improved Tony's trade) estimated the Rex's "take" at $300,000 per month. When local officials tried to shoo him away or close him up, Tony Stralla was upheld by California's Court of Appeals: his ships were beyond the three-mile limit, beyond State jurisdiction...
...week Attorney General Earl Warren of California, an ambitious Republican in a Democratic regime, personally directed a raid against the gambling flotilla. Police launches visited and closed Texas, Showboat and Tango. But when Mr. Warren's men sought to board the Rex, they had to deal with Tony Stralla and his skipper, George Kirkham, a retired Navy officer...
...good night aboard the Rex; 600 patrons were tossing in their chips. As Attorney General Warren's boarding party approached, huge nets were flung overside on the Rex. "Stand off!" bellowed Stralla through a megaphone. "We're on the high seas...
...Warren's men grabbed at the netting to clamber to the Rex's rail. Stralla's seamen met them with a blast from the Rex's fire hose. The Warren party fished out their men, returned to shore, where a stronger squadron was organized, including ships of the Coast Guard and Fish & Game Commission. The 600 patrons were returned to shore during a truce, at dawn, and then the Warren fleet anchored or cruised around the Rex, promising to starve its commander & crew into submission...
...Tony Stralla, defiant in a tan sombrero, angrily snorted that he had "enough food for a year" on board. He threatened to have the law on Attorney General Warren and his "pirates." While he stuck to his anchorage, far away in Washington large legal wheels began spinning. The House of Representatives passed and sent to the Senate a quick measure, approved by U. S. Attorney General Murphy, making it a crime to operate a gambling ship under U. S. registry. Tony Stralla had an answer for that one. If need be, said he, he would fly the flag of Japan...