Jimmy Breslin (1928–2017)

I need to go wash my hair.

The first time I ever heard the term "sandhog," was when I read about workmen on the Brooklyn bridge. I was impressed with a job that looks horrifying, and it's probably much more so in reality. In this case, sand hogs are creating tunnels that will carry water to the billions of people that live in the New York City area. I say billions because it's an unthinkable amount of people living there.

The best parts of this book were accidents that happened because of the dangerous nature of this job.

It was a love-hate relationship with this book. The wife of the protagonist, Dolores, was an admirable character. She reminded me so much of myself when I was younger and I married someone who took my innocence, my youth, my heart, and gave back nothing. I hated the character of the protagonist, "Ownie," whose real name was owen. He was an alcoholic for whom the bottle meant more than anything: more than his marriage, more than his child. Willing to throw away what was so meaningful, to prove that no woman would tell him what to do. It was terribly triggering for me, as so many books are. I wish so much I could reach through the pages and slap the crap out of the son of a b.

Here's the first of the accidents that were so thrilling:
".. when at work one day, deep in the tunnel under the dam, Morrison's friend, Jerry barry, who was here 3 months from donegal, turned off his acetylene torch at the tip but left the tank open. Lit up like he deserved a good smoke for himself. Lit up in a tight chamber far under a reservoir. Barry blew straight up through the roof and into the water. Later, standing on the gravel shore, somebody spotted Barry out in the reservoir. The head was bobbing along, the face looking up, with sometimes no water covering the face at all, looking up at the sky as the water swept it toward the gate in the dam that led to the tunnel in the city. Somebody handed Morrison a pole with a small net on it and said, 'well, this is about all you'll need to fish Barry out of the water.' It was. When Morrison picked it up in the net, the man rowing the boat looked at the head in the net and said, 'I guess he sure left a sour taste in the drinking water.' "

Here's an accident that happened to Owen Morrison's ancestor, Jimmy Morrison. It was a pretty good accident, too:
" A year later, working in High Bridge, Jimmy Morrison and three others got on a lift that dropped like a flower pot off a windowsill, dropped down a 900 ft shaft with the four men on it trying to scream out but unable to make a sound. Jimmy was on his hands and knees and forcing an Act of Contrition through his Frozen mind when the elevator cable caught and the elevator stopped at once. The four were thrown against the steel sides of the shaft with bones breaking and the first cries coming from them. Then the lift broke Free again and dropped the last 50 ft to the bottom. It splintered and the four men were pulled out and had to remain in the shaft for several hours until a new lift was fashioned and sent down to them. One of the four, Gene Cooney, went berserk and, when healed, had to be put away. The other two left sandhog work. Jimmy Morrison, with fractured vertebrae, was in a ward in Bronx general hospital for 6 months."

Throughout the book, mentions are made of a woman named cindy. Cindy is a sex worker, though to her friends it's more like friends with benefits. What I disliked immensely was the author's attitude toward her, as if she's something dirty and smelly, instead of directing it back to the men that make the bad smells and the dirt.
"in the middle of the night or the start of the morning, or whenever it was, he sat on a wicker hamper in the bathroom of Fat's apartment. He knew it was Fat's apartment and he knew his throat throbbed. She stepped out of the shower and stood directly in front of him with the towel held up under her chin.… (mehr)

The Good Rat, by Jimmy Breslin. A writer of some excellent fiction, Breslin now gives truth to "stranger than fiction" and does it with the same panache he displays so well in his fiction. Good guys and bad guys alike stand revealed in all their naked true selves. I wonder he is still alive considering the characters he investigated/wrote about, and no punches pulled. The tension is there as the deadly deeds are revealed by the perpetrators. Every revelation puts the witness in danger, but the revelations go on. The story revolves around an imprisoned man who operated inside and outside the law, but he testifies honestly with, seemingly no reprisals. You got'ta wonder. A quick read, very entertaining. A great look at the decline (?) of organized crime.… (mehr)