Daydream Notes: Mid-Sixties Life Overturns the Applecart

Mid-sixties Life has really taken off. The Vietnam War, generating stories since Kennedy's time, has entered into the public consciousness, as has the protest movement against it.

Two stories worth sharing:

The Great Blackout of 1965.

In November 1965, a faulty relay circuit in Ontario caused a blackout across southern Ontario and New York State. This blackout naturally happened at rush hour, stranding millions of people in New York City. Somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 people were stranded in darkened subways, but all of the commuters were out by midnight thanks to the efforts of the police and the fire department. Restaurants (if they had gas burners) stayed open by candlelight. Respectable people ended up sleeping in hotel lobbies and the buses that were supposed to take them home. It's a disaster story that wasn't; the people of New York City demonstrated an amazing amount of solidarity.

A few issues later, there's a profile of a Broadway detective. George Barrett (even his name is perfect) must be the progenitor of a million TV shows, because in 1965 he was Dirty Harry before Dirty Harry was a thing.

Every evening George Barrett kisses his four sons goodnight, including the two oldest who are 17 and 19. It embarrasses the older boys to be kissed by their father, and he admits it may seem "a little weird". But, he says, "I think that the way I live I may never see them again, and I don't want to be stretched out dying in a street some place wishing for one more chance to see my family and say goodbye. So every time I kiss them it's like the last time I'll ever see them, and I'm kissing them goodbye forever."

Forever can come very suddenly to Detective George Barrett. He is a hunter of men. And none of those he hunts --- thieves, drug pushers, Murphy men, assault and robbery men, killers --- wants to confront him on anything resembling even terms. Because when George Barrett hunts for a man, he invariably finds him; and when he find him, the man is not always arrested, but he is always sorry he has been found. George Barrett is a tough cop. His eyes, cold as gun metal, can be looked at but not into. His jaw is hard and square as a brick, and his thin lips are kept moist by nervous darting passes of his tongue. When he laughs, only his face and voice laugh. Inside, George Barrett does not laugh.

George Barrett also seems to be something like a certain fictional taxi driver with a perfect name who later worked the same districts:

This is Broadway, the Great White Way, the fabled street of dreams. Barrett calls it the sewer. Down it floats the worst America has to offer in the way of degenerates, perverts, and lawbreakers --- to Barrett, the 'germs.'

Life is not easy in the war on germs. Detectives need to appear in court, even if not called upon, or else the charges are dropped. If this happens on a detective's day off, then the detective goes unpaid for his court time. Processing anybody takes a mind-numbing amount of paperwork. Maybe worse, is that the rules for arrest have grown more complected, all making for an intimidating series of moral hazards for police -where the job becomes safer and easier the more they ignore. The problem isn't procedure per se; it's the clarity of procedure when quick judgements have to be made.

Barrett even has a origin story as to why he became a cop:

"Barrett has been involved [in the fight against crime]...His father, a newspaper pressman, was on his way home from church when he was robbed, beaten, and left for dead in a doorway. He lay there for two hours before a neighbor found him and called a doctor. Barrett remembers that the beating was so severe that "when the doctor arrived I had to help him press on my father's stomach to keep everything in place."

A year later young Barrett was walking behind his two brothers when he heard two thugs planning to attack them. "I slipped into a doorway," he says, "and grabbed a couple of empty milk bottles. Then when these two guys go up on my brothers, I stepped in and tattooed them into the ground with the bottles. I did what had to be done. And ever since, that's been the story of my life. I do what has to be done."

The whole thing reads like some little film noir, and is quite good.