July 15, 2007
Nostalgia, Of Sorts
I lived in New York during the summer described in this article.
At the time, I was employed in the Loss Prevention Department of a national discount department store chain, working directly for the comptroller of loss prevention, a man named Murray. I spent most of my time travelling out of state, but I happened to be in New York at the time of the blackout, and Murray called me at home the morning after the lights went out to ask me to head over to our South Bronx store and see what kind of shape it was in after the looting of the night before.
I called a co-worker and asked him if he’d like to join me, and the two of us drove over to see what we could see.
The store in question was a three storey building that had contained $16,000,000.00 worth of merchandise (this was 1977, so you may well imagine the dollar value back then vs the amount of inventory involved).
When we arrived, we found that the looters had been quite thorough, they had absconded not only with every last piece of merchandise, but they’d also taken the cash registers, the display racks, the mannequins… in fact, the only screw-up we could ascertain was that they had forgotten to take one shoe from one mannequin (we didn’t sell shoes, but where there was one, there was a pair).
We spent the next several hours in the home office dealing with the paperwork necessary to officially close the store — if those animals had to rip us off like that, we certainly weren’t going to restock the store and carry on with “business as usual”.
Then there was the Son of Sam, of course. Some cops stopped me on the way home from work one night — I was doing a week’s relief for the manager of our Fordham Road store, who was on vacation — for a search of my briefcase and I — and I was somehow required to visit Queens Central Homicide the next day, which was based in the Ozone Park precinct, to talk to one of the detectives on the Son of Sam case and look at composite sketches. Yay! One closely resembled a friend of mine who couldn’t possibly have been the psycho SOB, so I kept my own counsel. Good thing, as he wasn’t David Berkowitz.
The NYPD folks were pretty desperate to catch the mutt, and it was indubitably a day of rejoicing for many when they snatched him up on something so mundane as a parking ticket. But at least they got him, and thank G-d for that.
But all in all, it was a summer we New Yorkers won’t completely forget — at least those of us who are old enough to remember…
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=707
July 15th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Interesting reminiscence, Seth. A surreal summer in NYC that year.
The case of Son of Sam is fairly interesting. I well remember how surprised we were when baby-faced Berkowitz was arrested. I especially recall his odd smile of what appeared to be satisfaction.
He’s still alive and well in prison, I think.
July 15th, 2007 at 7:47 am
You refer to one of the bad blackouts. Apparently these outages are termed good and/or bad:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3154757.stm
Either would be an adventure. As a rural type, the only blackout I ever experienced was at my bachelor party…not real sure, but I think it was one of the ‘good’ ones.
July 15th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Thanks for sharing your memory, and that summer was indeed one to remember for all, as even those who weren’t in New York can remember the tension and eeriness caused by that creepy nutjob forever etched in our memories, just like he wanted, That Son of Slime.
NewYork NY was suffering through some hard and trying times those years and thank the lord was able to come back stronger than ever, enough to survive the next nationfelt tragedy quite fresh in most of our minds, those that still have minds left that is.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:55 am
AOW –
Despite what most of America believes courtesy of Bellisarius Productions, et al, and the various series’ of forensics based mystery novels, a serial killer like the Son of Sam is nearly impossible to catch, and then only when he makes a mistake. Berkowitz had the supreme luxury of picking his own times and places.
His mistake was the parking ticket. If not for that, he might well have been active for years to come.
BB –
I see the premise between the two classifications in the linked article and tend to agree — any event such as a power outage or, worse, an abnormally powerful hurricane or a destructive earthquake is going to occur regardless of how we feel about it — in this case a “good” black-out is one that garners an overwhelmingly responsible, civic minded response to the event, while a “bad” blackout is one in which pandemonium, property destruction, looting and violence take center stage.
“Good” or “Bad” classifications are excellent indicators of such qualities among the population as disposition, and charactar.
The outage of 1977 was, and me a New Yorker saying it, a “bad” one.
Ray –
The Son of Sam was/is a real piece of work. He used to write to Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin and say things like (not verbatim), “When they finally get me, I’m going to buy the entire NYPD new shoes to make up for all the shoe leather they’re wearing out trying to catch me.”
He bated the cops on a regular basis.
New Yorkers are a resilient lot, much as I suspect people here in Chicago are. A lot of stuff happens there that doesn’t seem to happen in too many other places.
From spectacular events such as George Willig climbing one of the Twin Towers to less pleasant scenes like Bernard Goetz shooting down those adolescent muggers on the subway and finding himself a hero among New Yorkers for doing something we would all have liked to do {I used to have a tee shirt with a picture of Goetz on the front — :-)}.
After Bernie ran off, witnesses sent the cops that arrived in the wrong (pursuit) direction. At the beginning, when nobody knew who he was, the newspapers were running copy like pictures of Charles Bronson with the caption, “Who is the Death Wish Killer?”
In court, he would have gotten completely off the hook except that he had said to one of the scumbags, “You don’t look too bad, have another”, and capped the mutt a second time. As far as I’m concerned, that should have earned him a medal at the very least, but the judge and the prosecutor saw things a little differently.
Bummer.