The New York City Blackout of 1977: The History of the Power Failure that Led to Looting and Arson Across the Big Apple by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2016-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4: Pain Begets Kindness

“In the commonwealth of darkness, New Yorkers rediscovered their kinship with one another, and celebrated it. In a downtown high-rise, a blind woman descended to the lobby with a candle and offered it around. ‘I have no use for this,’ she said. ‘Someone might need it.’ On an uptown street corner, lawyer Beaufort Clarke lit his way to a pay phone by candle, and someone offered him $20 for it. My God, people need these, he thought, so he repaired to his apartment, collected all the candles he didn’t need, and handed them out in the streets to disbelieving passersby. At a midtown hotel, a young woman found herself abandoned by her date, robbed of her wallet, and stranded miles from her Long Island home. A vacationing deputy sheriff from New Orleans put her in a cab and paid the driver $50 to deliver her there. ‘We’re from Louisiana, honey,’ he drawled. ‘We’re used to trouble.’ It was, the Eight Million told one another, like London in the blitz-a time when pain begets kindness and necessity mother’s invention. At Coney Island, the Wonder Wheel ground to a stop, with one carload of passengers hanging 150 feet high; a thrown-together work gang of policemen and volunteers wound them down by hand. A Baskin Robbins franchise ice cream merchant drove his Lincoln Continental up on the sidewalk and did business as usual-by the light of his headlamps beaming through his show window. On West End Avenue, the lobby of a handsome old high-rise went dark. The building superintendent jumped his car over the curb, nosed up to the front entrance, rigged a hookup between his auto battery and the wiring inside and within ten minutes had the lobby bathed in light.” – Newsweek, “Heart of Darkness”

Obviously, not everyone on the streets participated in the looting. Some, like St. Martin and others with minimal medical training, were simply trying to help in a strange situation, one that in many places resembled a war zone. He explained, “I was in medical school, so, you know, I figured might as well just go and work at the hospital. It was packed. Full-blown -- people outside in the street waiting to get in. I went in, and there were some doctors there. And I explained that I was a medical student and he asked me had I sutured before. And I said, ‘Well, I'd done a little bit but not really.’ He said, ‘Okay, come, come. I'll show you. We need your help. We need your help.’ All night long, I was in a corner just closing up wounds.”

Despite all the looting that was going on, the night the lights went out also produced a surprising number of Good Samaritan stories, including some from very unusual places. Journalist Pete Axthelm told one such story: “The girl walked slowly out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue and squinted through rimless glasses at blacked-out Times Square. She was wearing cut-off jeans and a T shirt.

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