The Great Trident Frogman Heist

By Larry Clinton
Among the many legends growing out of the Trident in the 60s and 70s is the story of  a late night robbery by wetsuited gunmen.
According to newspaper reports from the time, in October, 1971, at least three armed men in “in Scuba gear” entered The Trident from the waterside, captured two employees, and robbed the safe of approximately $30,000 in cash.
One of those employees, Patrick Pendleton, has provided this eyewitness account on the website www.tridentrestaurant.com:
“About 2:30 in the morning, I’m mopping the kitchen floor and I felt something and turned around to see the largest gun I’d ever seen pointed right at my face. The guy holding it was a little shorter than I and dressed in a wetsuit that was not wet with a neoprene hood that covered everything but his eyes and his nose.   He asked me who was here and I told him about Tom, the window washer in the dining room… and they grabbed a dish-apron off a counter and threw it over my head and then Tom and I were led to the men’s room and told to sit on the floor and stay there, a request with which we were only too happy to comply. …
“We could hear the guys drilling the safe and coming in periodically to check on us. After about an hour and a half, we risked talking and determined between ourselves that these guys had gone and we ought to tell somebody about it. So we got up and quietly checked the premises for stray bad-guys and hit one of the panic-buttons and I went out into the parking lot to wait for the cops to show up. We didn’t have long to wait…
“It was a pretty big deal because these guys weren’t a bunch of strung-out hippies, they were professional thieves who had taken the time and trouble to plan this thing. Of course, we planned too and were careful to clean up any incriminating evidence of our nightly debauchery before the police got there. After being interviewed by the detectives assigned the case, I still had to finish cleaning the kitchen – [Chef] Pierre was not one those guys I wanted to disappoint and I was just finishing up when he came in at about 6:30 am.    So I told him our sad tale of woe and he had this slightly amused look on his face as if to say, “Goofy…I’m glad you managed to not get your head blown off”…
“Looking at mug shots and talking with the DA and police detectives was somewhat unsettling to me. Since I couldn’t identify any of the guys from the book of mug shots, I thought that perhaps they wouldn’t call me to testify but they did and I was able to identify the guy I saw in court, which made the state’s case, the DA happy, and me?
Well… I got a clean driving record out of the deal so all in all, not too bad. It turned out that the guys had come all the way over from San Francisco in a zodiac boat and somebody saw them on their way back and that’s how they came to be caught. Cool, huh? The Marin newspaper, Independent Journal, started calling it the Frogman Heist or something like that and we got quite a kick out of that because we knew the guys didn’t swim up to the deck – their feet were dry.”
Once owned by the legendary Kingston Trio, the Trident has recently been lovingly restored, and will host a benefit party for The Sausalito Historical Society on Monday, January 28, 2013 from 5:00 to 8:00 pm at 558 Bridgeway, Sausalito.
The benefit will be a tribute to The Kingston Trio and will feature the World Premiere of “The Lion Sons” composed of Josh Reynolds and friends (Mike Marvin and Tim Gorelangton) singing folk songs made famous by Josh’s father, Nick Reynolds, of The Kingston Trio.
Chef James Montejano will be preparing delicious hors d’ouvres. A complimentary beverage is included in the admission price. In addition there will be a cash bar.
People are encouraged to come in costume of the 1960s and ‘70s, and there will be prizes for the best costumes.
Admission is $45. For advance reservations, call  415-289-4117  or e-mail info@sausalitohistoricalsociety.org, or send a check to SHS, PO Box 352, Sausalito, CA 94966.

The deck of The Trident was featured in movies such as Woody Allen’s “Play it Again, Sam.”
Photo Courtesy of The Trident Restaurant

Victory For Deaf Chippers

The following article is excerpted from a January, 1943 issue of  The Marin-er, a newsletter for workers at Marinship.  Chippers prepped and painted steel plates in Marinship’s Plate Shop, often using loud pneumatic tools.  
THEY are deaf mutes—unable to hear a word spoken to them—yet they are doing a BETTER job than many other workers can do.
They are the chipper gang in the Plate Shop, working on all three shifts. With them deafness is a
blessing, an occupational aid which makes them better fitted to help our nation build the ships for Victory!
Several months ago Ray Brown, head man of all riveters and chippers in the yard, thought of using deaf mutes as chippers.  So he spoke to John “Dutch” Philes, chipper leadman in the Plate Shop, and they got hold of Frank Dentici, who is entirely deaf.
As an experiment Dutch put Frank to work in the Plate Shop as a chipper, and the results were favorable.  So, Frank got some of his pals, who are also handicapped by deafness, to join him. They all went to work under Dutch on the day shift.
After all, it was a natural. The toughest thing about chipping is the terrific noise, enough to drive normal chippers into a case of the jitters if they aren’t careful.
Chippers who can’t hear aren’t bothered by the noise. Of course, there’s still plenty of vibration and plain hard work in chipping—but a deaf chipper is still ahead of a chipper who can hear it all.
One big problem was communication. Dutch didn’t know any more about the sign language than any of us do.  So he had to learn how to be a deaf mute while his  buddies were learning how to be chippers. Now, Dutch can speak with his hands with the best of them. It has worked out—not as a handicap—but as a big help. Now, it doesn’t matter how noisy the double bottom Dutch and his men are standing on. They can talk to each other with a literal flick of the wrist!
Almost from the beginning it worked like a charm. More deaf chippers were added, so that they are now on duty in the Plate Shop around the clock.  And maybe you think Dutch isn’t proud of his unusual gang! They are good workers, don’t beef, and have a fine record on production, absenteeism, and War Bonds.
What are these deaf mutes like? Well, they are just like you or me, except they lack the ability to hear or talk as we do. They are a swell, game bunch. Here are some typical ones. Charles Martucci is happily married and mighty proud of his three children. Frank Dentici has two children. Both met their wives while they were attending school for deaf mutes in Berkeley. Nick Kanihan will be remembered as a star fullback for Santa Rosa High School in 1934. Paul Auteri is a basketball player, and others of the gang like football and bowling.
So when you pass the Plate Shop and see some of the boys wiggling their fingers at each other through a curtain of chipper noise, you’ll know that it is some of the 14 deaf mutes who are doing a swell job building ships.
Say hello to them. . . they won’t hear you, but they’ll recognize your smile!
Copies of the Marin-er and other Marinship publications are in the archives of the Sausalito Historical Society.


Standing in front of a stern frame, five deaf chippers spell out VICTORY in sign language.
Marin-er photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society.

Louis P. Mountanos, Marin’s Top Gun

By Steefenie Wicks
There were three of them, Frank Lee Morris, the brains of the outfit with an IQ of 133, and the Anglin brothers, Clarence and John W. … would their plan work?  Sometime in the early hours of June 13, 1962 they put their plan to work and escaped from Alcatraz.   Their bodies were never found but in Sausalito, the escape raft washed up at the foot of Johnson Street and was discovered by artist Barney West.  The police were called and the scene took on a life of its own.
Arriving in his vehicle and known for looking quite dashing was Sheriff Louis P. Mountanos, who ordered patrols all along the Marin waterfront.  Sheriff Mountanos had been named Sausalito’s Police Chief in 1955, when he was only 27 years old.  At that time he was one of the youngest police chiefs in California and with his youth came daring that would one day make him a political leader in Marin County.  Mountanous, elected sheriff in 1958, would run for re-election four times and win.  One hears of individuals who become legends in their lifetime, and it is safe to say that Louis P. Mountanos was one of those individuals.
Mountanos was the son of Greek immigrants born and raised in the tight Greek community of the San Francisco Mission District. He attended Mission High School and served in the Navy during WWII.  After the war he returned home and became a member of the San Francisco police force, then found his way across the Bay to Sausalito, where his destiny awaited.  
In his career as Sheriff, the escape from Alcatraz would be only one in a list of world news events his name would be connected with.  In 1953, it was written in the local Sausalito newspaper, that Mountanos, “decided that he could not let the Greek royalty pass through these parts with out a personal greeting.”  The article went on to mention that Mountanos, whose parents came from Sparta, spoke in Greek to Frederika, the German-born queen when she and the King visited Muir Woods.  He reported that her English and Greek were “out of this world.”
In 1963, Mountanos, as Sheriff of Marin County, told the Sausalito Board of review that things had been very different in Sausalito when he was Police Chief. “The Chief of Police should be the City manager… meaning that all decisions should rest with him and not some City Manager who wants to write memorandums.”  Never one for memorandums, Mountanos the maverick went his own way.  Then, in 1970, an event that rocked Marin County took place in a shoot-out at the Marin County Civic Center.
On the morning of August 7, 1970 a call came over the police scanner about a possible gunman at large in the court area of the Marin County Civic Center.   News photographer James J. Kern would later testify that he had been on a call at Marin General when he heard the call come over the scanner.  
When he arrived on the scene, Kern said he saw Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, a shotgun taped around his neck, and convict James McClain, holding a jurist in a tight grip, another gun at the judge’s head, and also holding something that looked like a “home made bomb.”    Sheriff Mountanos and two deputies were standing against the wall, their hands up.   Mountanos, is quoted as telling the convict McClain, “if you blow his [the judge’s] head off I’ll blow yours off.”  To this day no one is sure who yelled “fire,” but as the inmates tried to drive away from the Civic Center, when the smoke cleared  all you could see were bodies.
This event became known as the attack to free the “Soledad Brothers” and would result in the death of Judge Haley, 17 year old Jonathan Jackson and convicts James McClain and William Christmas.  In 1972, a young woman named Angela Davis went on trial for this event.  But it would be the career of Mountanos that began to crumble.
Because by the late 1970s the “House Boat Wars “ on the Sausalito waterfront
would challenge his authority with what was filmed and reported as an out and out “war”on the waterfront houseboat dwellers by the local police and
Sheriff’s departments. Mountanos defended his department’s handling of the Waldo Point Harbor houseboat “riot” and felt that his job was to move his department toward more modern crime fighting technology.
But in 1978 he was defeated and left his position in Marin to become part of the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.  In 1982 he ran for Congress as a conservative Democrat and lost to Barbara Boxer.   
Mountanos was a graduate of the FBI academy, a Greek with a heritage that led back to Sparta, and he led his life as a warrior who faced the challenges of his world with the spirit of his ancestors.


Louis Mountanos when he was police chief of Sausalito
Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society

Marin’s Top Gun: Part II

By Steefenie Wicks

Frank Lloyd Wright cut quite the dashing figure in his cape and hat as he walked beside another dashing figure, that of Sheriff Louis P. Mountanos, exploring the ranch in northern Marin that would one day become the site for the Marin County Civic Center. Mountanos remembered that at one point, Wright pointed to a lone tree standing on the hill. “We’ll save that tree,” he said… and they continued on.

Sheriff Mountanos was re-elected to office 4 times, from 1958 to 1978, but his first place of office, Sausalito, would always be special to him.  At one point as Chief of Police of Sausalito, he was called to investigate an assault case in which the celebrated union leader Harry Bridges was punched in the nose in the restroom at controversial madame Sally Stanford’s Valhalla restaurant.  By the time he arrived, Sally had settled the matter and no arrests were made.

Then there was that morning in 1955 when the movie crew from the new John Wayne film “Blood Alley” was filming a scene on the waterfront in Marinship.  They were making fog with an old Liberty airplane engine resting on a sea mule in the harbor and burning diesel fuel.  It looked like the real stuff and when it wafted up to Waldo Grade, it blocked the morning traffic.  After inspecting the scene, Chief Mountanos went down and told the crew that they would have to figure out a way to control their fog.

Chief Mountanos would later tell the story of how the new John Wayne film had once been the new Robert Mitchum film.   Wayne had been flown out from New York to replace Mitchum after he had been fired because of a dunking incident in which a picture company staff member was pushed into the bay off of Angel Island.  Wayne and Mountanos got along well and the Chief always described Wayne as a big and friendly fellow.  Both the Chief and Wayne hoped that Mitchum would learn from this folly, but Wayne assured the Chief that this incident would not hurt Mitchum’s career.

Being involved with the community was always one of Sheriff Mountanos’s greatest achievements, but as time went on and he watched the surge in Marin’s population, he saw his duties change as Sheriff.   Now he was involved with the courts, the jail and other facets of official business.  One of these was to bring him into a relationship that he later would have to defend, that being his connection to the group Synanon.

The group was founded in Santa Monica, in 1958 as a drug rehabilitation program by one Charles E. Dederich. In 1971, he moved part of his organization to San Francisco.   The Synanon approach to drug rehabilitation was at that time one to be proud of and the Synanon community had as one of their biggest supporters, governor Ronald Reagan. 

So when the group made their move to Marshall, Sheriff Mountanos supported them.   It was later in 1977 that the group would prove to be a cult with alleged criminal activities including attempted murder and Federal and Civil problems with the IRS.

It was also around this time that the development of Waldo Point Harbor on the Sausalito waterfront erupted into out and out war.  As Sheriff of Marin, Mountanos felt that he had to protect the rights of the owners of the property who wanted the people living there to leave and open up the area for development.

Those people had other ideas, and when officers were sent in they were met with waterfront resistance that was shown on the 5 o’clock news and around the world. 

Later critics would say that the Sheriff had been soft on Synanon and much too hard on the residents of Waldo Point Harbor.  Mountanos would say that’s “baloney.”  Yet in 1978 he was defeated, and after an awesome 20-year career in law enforcement, he had to step down.

The Marin Independent Journal reported that his retirement celebration, in November, 1978, drew over 500 friends, associates and family members.  Among the accolades were tributes from the California Legislature, the Marin County Police Chief’s Association, the Marin County Board of Supervisors and many others.

That Sheriff Louis P. Mountanos, held office for so long (1958 -1978) was a strong indication that he was doing his job and as a Greek with that warrior background …what else could he do but a job that would make his ancestors proud.

Sheriff Mountanos at his retirement.

IJ staff photo by Scott Henry

Larry Moyer, A Sausalito Waterfront Original

By Steefenie Wicks
The following is excerpted from an oral history recorded for the Historical Society.

The Sausalito waterfront has always attached itself to the concept of freedom, a dream that is part of the California culture.   As Larry Moyer says, “A lot of artists and everyone else are looking for freedom and for some reason people are attracted to the waterfront because of the freedom it presents.”
Larry Moyer is a 40-year resident of the Sausalito waterfront. He has worked as an artist, filmmaker, photographer, union organizer and at one time he taught dancing at the Arthur Murray Studio in Los Angeles.  During the late 1970’s he would become one of the Sausalito waterfront organizers to help fight the development that was taking place at Waldo Point Harbor and changing the lives of all who lived there.
“I’m a transplant,” Larry says. “I was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1924 and all I ever wanted to do was be a gangster.  They had cool cars and lots of women and growing up I thought, hey that’s what I want to be.  Then one day there was a shoot out on my street and I saw this gangster lying in the street with blood running down into the gutter; it was at this point that I decided I did not want to be a gangster.  My father and uncles were part of the old Bolsheviks and had fought in the Red Army so it was only natural that I would be involved in civil rights long before the Civil Rights movement.
“When I grew up we hung out with Blacks and Black culture was what we associated with, it was just part of my life, a natural part. But then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and if they hadn’t, I doubt if you and I would be sitting here talking.  Because that’s what brought me to California.” And with that he blows out a cloud of smoke from his cigar.
“It was after Peal Harbor that I came to California. I worked on the submarines at Mare Island and we were sent on a big convoy to Hawaii.  It was during my time in Hawaii that I tried to help organize the working girls.” I can see the twinkle in his eyes as he continues. ”You see, the girls were only getting $3 for 3 minutes of service and they wanted to get $4 for that 3 minute service, so I helped them get organized; to this day I’m not to sure how that worked out,” he says with a laugh.  “World War II was a horrible war and it served to screw up a lot of people but for me I had a great time.  I traveled all over the world and in 1957 I was standing in Red Square in Moscow and I looked over at this guy that was looking at me, we approached each other, his name was Shel Silverstein and we became great friends.  We lived together and traveled together, later we both worked for ‘Playboy’ magazine.  This was from 1957 to the middle 1970’s.  I was working as a photographer and did some film stuff.   But I was ready for a change and Shel and I ended up here on the Sausalito waterfront and that was back in 1967, ‘the summer of love’ … 45 years ago.”
We are conducting this interview from Larry’s home on board the ‘Evil Eye’ a floating home that shelters Larry and his wife, artist Dianne Kasden, and their 6 cats.
I asked him how he liked living on a houseboat.  “In the old days there were a lot of artists here, they were all here because we paid no rent.  It was like living on a movie set and we were all in costume and every day was different from the last.”  He shifts in his chair and looks past me as he continues, “Yeah, I can remember those days when you could shop at the Mohawk gas station and get anything from girls, dope, guns to alcohol and gas at that spot.  It was the old days when you wore cowboy boots and carried a big buck knife, you knew everyone and you hung out together … you felt good just hanging out together.”  As he moves to pet one of the many cats that have joined us, he continues, “Yeah, this is Shel’s boat, Dianne and I are now the care takers for the Shel Siverstein Trust.  Shel was a great guy and I had many an adventure with him but a lot of them…you can’t write about.”
I ask him if he could say anything about his years on the waterfront and the changes that he has seem and his response was: “We may have lost the battle but we have won the war.  When we came we paid no rent but we fought for the right to stay.  Buckminster Fuller was one of our champions and he wrote many a piece in favor of what we were doing.  Alan Watts was another champion who came here to live the freedom that he spoke of and taught.  There is a certain spirit about the place that will always attract artist, writers and thinkers.“  As he rises from his chair and walks to a window overlooking the Bay he turns to me and says, “Whatever you want to do it’s out there and you can do it.  There is always a way of going and doing and with that … I think this interview is over.”


Larry Moyer at home on the ‘Evil Eye’

Photo courtesy of Steefenie Wicks