"...Steady"

My friend Shelton Walden over on his page is remembering this night 40 years ago. July 13, 1977. There was a great regional Black Out. Like the first one in late fall 1965. However this one was not a night of neighbors helping neighbors. Volunteers directing traffic with flash lights or as they say in the commonwealth..."Torches".  2003 when a mass power failure happened once again was exactly like 1965. This since our culture had stabilized from the post 1960's chaos by then.

On July 13th 1977 I remember New York burning. One could smell the smoke. Your eyes burned. Yet because all the lights for hundreds of square miles were out the sky was full of bright stars. 

Green copper colored meteors streaked above our burning urban capital.

An extreme heatwave drove the mobs into a chaotic wave against their wrongfully inflicted poverty despair. Rage fueled the madness driven unwanted. 1970's New York had been a downward falling city for near a decade. Cocaine was snowing freely at studio 54 where the elite partied. Culture fuckers ran wild. It was Rome Burning! This at it's party! party! End!

I was there that Night of Nights. I was part of the fall of the middleclass, and the hyper wild world of the mad arts whose story has still not fully told.

It was very like the night the Barbarians broke through. The night they broke the last brave lines of Roman Legionaries. This as they smashed the gates of eternal Rome itself, and had their bloody way with it. Looting burning shooting stabbing killing on a scale not seen since the Civil War Draft Riots was all around us. I recall with relatives, and my brother, and father defending my brother's in law's furniture shop. When we got there it was half looted, and shops across the street were looted out, and burning. We parked our in-laws company van in front of the showcase window to stop further mayhem.

We were armed.

My brother had an AK-47 he'd shipped home from the war to me in pieces to keep for him...never told my folks till he took it out to get to the shop. Surprise. My In-law had a licensed .38, and he gave me an M-1 'light carbine which I had no idea how to use. My decorated Vet brother showed me. He taught me much that night. At last we were together in war. This is what I wanted when he was overseas. I wanted to be with him.

So there we were.

He taught me how to know if shots were coming 'towards' us or away. With several practice shots into the concrete wall across from the shop. He showed me how to shoot. That, and as the police who came by to check on us told us,..."Shoot, and shoot to kill".  Hearing this my brother John explained weapons discipline. That no matter what the cops said one only used deadly force as the very last option. Like if they break through, and are trying to kill us.

This freaked me out serious.

I was in an actual war. Shots were being fired everywhere, and it sometimes was coming closer. Like in the movies John my soldier brother softly, but actually told me, "...Steady...steady." We were soldiers together at the first fall of America's Rome. 

More collapses were to come.