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When you’re a cop you’d better love them because you will be going to them whether you do or not. In New York especially. New York is the melting pot, with emigrants from all over the world thrown into it to be part of an international stew, but at the same time resisting and demanding to retain their original identities instead of being completely assimilated and losing them altogether. And how do they fulfill this need? With a parade of course. Get off the boat, grab a flag, and head for Fifth Avenue. You’re half-way to being an American already.
I personally was a witness to these outbreaks on the part of the Irish, the Greeks, and the Hispanics, but not to the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese, the Israelis, or the Poles. The British, French, Indians, Russians, Spanish and some others don’t parade, apparently because their population count hasn’t yet reached the critical mass required to trigger one. As soon as we see a parade application from any one of these, we’ll know the point has been reached.
The groups listed in the first sentence above represent the Big Eight, who each get to have a march in Manhattan yearly. In the case of the Hispanics and, I believe, the Israelis, they get more than one, being divided into subgroups, with separate agendas requiring a parade for their exposition.
Luck was the only reason I didn’t see service with all the Eight instead of only three of them. My name didn’t come up a few times, but it came up enough. Ethnic parades aren’t the only ones that happen in N.Y. There’s the yearly Thanksgiving parade, in connection with which I made two appearances -- one distributing barriers in my early days and one in formal attire in my later ones. There are armed service parades on Veterans Day. Some of the Hispanic ones are actually religious, although ethnic as well. The biggest black parade is the West Indian blockbuster every Labor Day on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. I remember that one well. It finished in my precinct, Prospect Park. Thousands milled around listening to the battle of the bands being carried on from adjacent platforms. From the headquarters trailer I could look out over the crowd and see here and there a cop caught up in the middle of it, the only one not dancing. I hoped they liked steel bands and calypso. I hoped they didn’t mind being hopelessly outnumbered.
The other black parades were held in Harlem, but that didn’t mean that segregation had been re-enacted. All the ethnic marches had black contingents in line, at least as bands leading parade divisions.
The bands were the best part of every march of course. Getting stationed near the reviewing stand was the best way to take in their performances, because they’d be sure to cut loose with a crescendo for the reviewers and the nearby TV cameras.
My best memory of the reviewing stand, though, is the time in the Fifties when Robert Briscoe, the Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, was the guest of honor on St. Patrick’s Day. The sun recognized that this was a special occasion and blazed out as in midsummer. I probably attended more St. Patrick’s celebrations than any other, because this was the biggest parade, with the biggest police detail, but there was never a day like that. There were in fact a number of cold and rainy ones, probably because there was no Lord Mayor in attendance.
Weather, though, was generally one of the compensations for parade duty, since obviously they took place in good months, when clear skies were likely to prevail. The only exception to this was Macy’s Thanksgiving wingding. November is a tricky month for outdoor activities, but Macy’s has generally lucked out. I didn’t, however, the time I went. It was wet. Cold, too.
Well, we should “Let the warm and tender memories be the ones that will remain”, as the song says, and mine aren’t too bad. Some of the turnouts had contingents of nurses in uniform marching, others had college girls in caps and gowns. Some of the participants did a little dancing, some of the bands were melodious. All of them were loud. One of the best ways to find out about them was to roam about the assembly area where they rehearsed pre-march.
Parades weren’t bad for celebrity-watching either, especially if you were into politicians. I saw all the Mayors, naturally, also the senators and congressmen. The upper level was represented by George Bush I and Jimmy Carter. A TV reporter asked me what I though about Jerry Brown staying in the race after losing a primary to Carter. I told him come to think of it, I didn’t have a big reaction to it either way. These were my 15 nanoseconds of fame. I cherish them.
It wasn’t necessary to attend a parade to encounter celebrities in Manhattan in the Fifties. They roamed freely in Midtown, greeted by people who recognized them, but not bothered by groupies, if in fact there were groupies then. I saw Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Joe Louis, Marlene Dietrich, Joe DiMaggio, even Garbo, along with others. They all said Hello, Officer, and my heart stood still. Not really, but it was something to mention at dinner that night. “Guess who I saw downtown today”. “Oh him, what’d he say?” He said “Hello, Officer”. “Oh, did I tell you who I saw today?” “No, who?” “Your mother. She says you don’t call, you don’t write”. “Geez, I saw her last week”. “You didn’t tell me. I knew you were still a momma’s boy”. “Now wait a minute…”
A 50’s celebrity who didn’t confine his activities to Midtown Manhattan was Lawrence Tierney, recently deceased at the age of eighty. I encountered him at 8:00 AM in the middle of 7th Ave. at 122nd St. in Harlem, attempting to flag down a cab to take him downtown. The cabbies were practically all engaged at that time and besides they didn’t want Larry Tierney as a passenger. He was a notorious barfly and street fighter, whose general approach to life had made him a natural for the title role in the film bio of John Dillinger. From then on he was typed as a hoodlum and he had no trouble living up to the part. Now he’d left a Harlem after-hours club, disheveled as usual, and was cussing out cabbies at the top of his voice.
With the rest of the day squad just turned out from the 28th Precinct around the corner I was taking this in and thinking of taking Larry in (please Lord, not me) when our Haitian colleague, Doc Blanchard, strolled over to him and offered to get him a cab if he promised to behave himself on the trip. Doc was as big as Larry and had a convincing manner, so a deal was cut. Doc flagged a cab, introduced the cabby to his fare and sent the two of them on their way. Case closed. Condition corrected.
I’ll drop one more name before I quit. My last parade came on a quiet Sunday morning on upper Fifth Ave. John Kenneth Galbraith came walking by, saw the preparations and said “That’s what New York needs. Another parade.”
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