10/30/20 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Our Kindergarten students learning math in motion with Ms. Haninger.

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family:

I was asked if I could re-tell the story of my first arrest and my complicity in the Great East Coast Black-out of 1965. Happy Halloween!

It was early November in 1965. I was a fourth grader living on Long Island in a town called Northport. I had come home from St. Phillip Neri Elementary School, and after doing some homework had plopped myself down on the couch in our den (remember when family rooms were called dens?) to watch a movie on our black and white Philco television set. It was just getting dark. My Mom and sisters and baby brother were elsewhere in the house and my Dad was working in NYC.

The movie that early evening was “Abbott and Costello Meet Wolfman and Dracula”. As I sat there enjoying the show the television started to flicker. I walked up to the old set and give it a good bang, which is what you did in those days. The image of Dracula on the screen continued to flicker. Just as we now do with computers I turned the TV set off so that I could quickly turn it back on in hopes of restoring the picture. However, at the exact second that I turned the television set off all the lights in the house went off. Turning the set back on restored neither the picture on the screen or the any of the lights.

I heard my Mom and sisters stirring. My Mother looked out at the street and saw that it was just not our house that was dark but the whole block. While we got candles lighted and started a fire in the fireplace a neighbor, Mr. Penders, came walking over to our house with a portable radio to tell us that not only was our neighborhood without electricity but the whole East Coast of the United States. That evening was later to be called the Great Blackout of 1965.

The portable radio that Mr. Penders left with us kept emphasizing that no one could find a cause to a blackout of such magnitude. Some felt that it was sabotage (the word used in the sixties for terrorism) and that maybe the Communists were going to attack. I knew differently, however. I knew for certain that I had caused the blackout by turning off the television set so abruptly!

I couldn’t tell anyone about my complicity in this catastrophic event because a month earlier I had been “arrested” by the police. Three friends and I had been playing army and throwing rocks at a greenhouse. I tell you it was addicting. The police caught us in the act and took us to the station where they put us in a little Mayberry type jail cell. One by one they called our parents and released us. We had to pay for the broken windows. Just before I left, the policeman said, “Son, you now have a record. If you do anything else bad, we will know about it and you will get in even greater trouble.”

Breaking glass in a greenhouse is one thing. Shutting down the whole East Coast had to be far more serious!

The next day, the headline in the Long Island Press declared that the cause of the black-out was a mystery. It seems that everywhere I turned people were discussing the events of the night the lights went out. For weeks the blackout was a major topic. It was a terrible time for me. Many times I walked by the police station, which was just down the road from my school, with the intention of turning myself in. Finally, I decided to unburden myself by going to confession. I told the priest the whole story of the Philco television set and how I had darkened 11 states.

The priest was quiet for a moment and then asked me if I knew what a “coincidence” was. I figured it had something to do with electricity but he explained the true meaning of the word. I was beginning to feel a lot better about the whole thing until the priest told me I had better say two Hail Mary’s and Three Our Fathers just in case!

Jim Silcott