Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1942-06-01
Broadway
Eerie Sight
In BIackou+
Awesome Silence Cast
Over White Way
BY BENJAMIN DE CAssEREs

L Way in New York for many
years. / know every inch of it
not only the Great White Way
itself but all the streets that
branch off from it from Thirty
fourth to Fifty-ninth.
Now. although more than two
weeks have passed since the
total land now historic for all
New Yorkers) blackout of that
part Of the city. it has left as
ineradicable a memory in my
mind and nerves as Poe's The
Fall of the House of Usher"
Boecklin's painting. THE Island
of the Dead" or James Thom-
sons THE City of Dreadful
Night"
Broadway, street of the mid
night suns that runs through the
middle of gay old "Bagdad-on-
the-Subway." had never expert
enced such an event in all of its
humping history.
stood in front of the Hotel
Astor when at $50 every light an
far as the eye could see. turned
Broadway into a vast catacomb
through which shuffied hundreds
OF thousands of forms whose
faces l could not see.
A T FIRST there fell on us all
"A an awesome silence. A thrill
ran through those moving shad-
ows as of having suddenly
foundered in a vast sea where
the ghostly vestiges of sunken
city doomed through the mist
shot waters.
The skyscrapers looked like
paintings by those master-im-
pressionists, those craftsmen OF
mist and murk, Whistler and
Monet.
Two figures stood on either
side OF me. I peered with all
the power of my eye. but could
not see their faces. Not a wheel
turned in the streets.
Then came waves of historical
giggles from the ghosts of the
Great White Way, A man struck
a cigar-lghter to see whether
the woman next TO him was
pretty. II was struck from his
hand with an oath-by a marine.
SOMETHING terrible brooded
~ in the heart Of this shroud
OF gray-black. II was Mars,
lord Of wars and massacres. 7
could feel his damp breath on
my cheek. And so could those
millions who watched from 18th
10 123d street and from the
Hudson to the East River.
And through this gray-black
night there rose in the east the
full moon. 1t looked coldly,
ironically and with aged and
rheumy eyes on New York. And
this thought emanated from IL:
Behold me, the king of all
blackoutsw
A T $50 hundreds of whistles
"A rent the air from north to
south. from east to west.
Glory TO God in the highest!
Light! Blessed light again!
The gray-black ghosts were
incarnated again as human be-
lngs, things with dancing eyes
and laughing mouths and the
sure step of those who walk i'm
the flesh on terra-firma. Tragi-
comic relief was on every face.
/ Strolled into the Aston bar
and drank a toast TO the Great
White Way and 10 New York.
the incandescent city, and TO the
ineffable blessing of light,
TWENTY million persons have
Il read from time TO time in
Hearst's American weekly of the
astonishing undersea adventures
OF Lieut.. Harry f. Rosenberg.
He's kind of human fish ina
divers suit-a Victor Hugo sea-
epic all by his lonesome. Now
we have in book form. Il Dive
for Treasure" (McBride). Ries-
enberg's oceanic rovings for Is
years. And TO say that it's
banquet of thrills Ito use a cock
eyed figure of speech is to put
1t mildly.
Here are knife battles with
Tiger-sharks. octopi and barra-
cudas tthese latter have teeth,
by the way, that can slice a
divers suit TO slithers) and
other "denizens Of the deep" as
the old-time story-writers, used
to call them.
"A ND Rosenberg has found
"A plenty of mazuma, too. at
the bottom OF the Caribbean,
believe il or not.
From sixteenth-century GAL
leon sunk in Yucatan Channel
he recovered a sea-chest con-
tanning $4,000 worth of bullion,
mostly in pieces of eight: in
Manto Bay. Peru, the wrecked
Santa Cruz yielded him $4,000;
Silver Shoals, near the Bahamas,
gave him another $4,000 from
a galleon sunk in 1913.
In Kingston Harbor he dis
covered the lost city of Port
Royal, the fabulously wealthy
Pirates Babylon" engulfed in
1902 by earthquake and tidal