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Mar. 8th, 2018 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brushwolfWatching anything about NYC in the 30s and 40s, where the police are involved, pings weirdly. (In this case about the reclusive Collyer brothers, who died in 1947).
My grandfather was a policeman at the time. He started in 1936 because the job wasn't going away, and barely squeaked the 5'4" height requirement. It's what kept him out of WWII - he was in one of those batches of would-be enlistees where the recruiters turned away police, firemen, dockworkers and railroad personnel perceived as needed at home. He left the NYPD sometime in the late 40s or early 50s and it's never been entirely clear to me whether he was actually invalided out of service or whether my grandmother demanded he quit; exactly what happened isn't clear, either; but someone hit him with a car, and he went over the entire thing and landed on the other side with a concussion.
The story about the police excavating the Collyer residence looking for bodies matches the sort of things I got from my grandfather's stories about police work, mostly reading between the lines. I came away with this picture of things being really lonely, cold and really brutal in places. Like my Dad's told me about how this particular alleyway in Brooklyn was where bodies got dumped after Tong fights, and my grandfather was one of the guys who'd get to remove them afterwards. Or that incident where someone flew a B-25 into the Empire State Building? My grandfather was one of the policemen guarding the site afterwards. One of the real treats of being a beat cop in the late night or early morning was apparently getting to read the next day's newspapers as they hit the stands.
My grampa once told me that he kept all his old logs, planning to write some sort of big sprawling memoir, until my grandmother decided that they were clutter and got rid of them.
The thing is, almost all the grimy, cold, occasionally corpse filled misery the job must've involved largely stayed out of my grandfather's stories. My Grampa's stories about police work almost always ended up with him falling flat on his face or having his uniform torn to shreds; he never cast himself in the role of some big paladinic hero. I think I get a lot of how I tell stories from him that way, because hell, you can find heroes pretty much anywhere in the world, fools and klutzes are a lot more entertaining.
My grandfather was a policeman at the time. He started in 1936 because the job wasn't going away, and barely squeaked the 5'4" height requirement. It's what kept him out of WWII - he was in one of those batches of would-be enlistees where the recruiters turned away police, firemen, dockworkers and railroad personnel perceived as needed at home. He left the NYPD sometime in the late 40s or early 50s and it's never been entirely clear to me whether he was actually invalided out of service or whether my grandmother demanded he quit; exactly what happened isn't clear, either; but someone hit him with a car, and he went over the entire thing and landed on the other side with a concussion.
The story about the police excavating the Collyer residence looking for bodies matches the sort of things I got from my grandfather's stories about police work, mostly reading between the lines. I came away with this picture of things being really lonely, cold and really brutal in places. Like my Dad's told me about how this particular alleyway in Brooklyn was where bodies got dumped after Tong fights, and my grandfather was one of the guys who'd get to remove them afterwards. Or that incident where someone flew a B-25 into the Empire State Building? My grandfather was one of the policemen guarding the site afterwards. One of the real treats of being a beat cop in the late night or early morning was apparently getting to read the next day's newspapers as they hit the stands.
My grampa once told me that he kept all his old logs, planning to write some sort of big sprawling memoir, until my grandmother decided that they were clutter and got rid of them.
The thing is, almost all the grimy, cold, occasionally corpse filled misery the job must've involved largely stayed out of my grandfather's stories. My Grampa's stories about police work almost always ended up with him falling flat on his face or having his uniform torn to shreds; he never cast himself in the role of some big paladinic hero. I think I get a lot of how I tell stories from him that way, because hell, you can find heroes pretty much anywhere in the world, fools and klutzes are a lot more entertaining.