Keillor: Hullabaloo in Times Square

By Garrison Keillor

I often walk through Times Square where the Incompetent Bomber parked his 1993 Nissan Pathfinder last Saturday with the alarm clocks wired to the M88 firecrackers in the canister between the 5-gallon gasoline containers and the three propane tanks, the bags of non-explosive fertilizer, and so I take a personal interest in the case.

I'm fond of Times Square, which is an out-of-body experience offered for free to the public, the colossal flash and razzmatazz of 10-story LED hi-def imagery rolling and bouncing among the JumboTrons and billboards in the glass canyons above the statue of Father Duffy by the TKTS booth. It is pure hullabaloo, millions in advertising canceling itself out by sheer overload, and one block away is Bryant Park and the serene reading rooms of the New York Public Library, where, for all you know, the scholarly gentleman across the table may be studying the art of explosives.

Last Saturday night I was at a show on 43rd Street two blocks away, unaware of any threat, and I maintained unawareness for the next several hours, catching a taxi on Sixth Avenue and proceeding to a Chinese restaurant on 65th and packing away some giant prawns and fried wonton in the company of others. We ate freely and jabbered about all sorts of things, and nobody came running up to ask if we'd heard about the car bomb. People in Williston, N.D., probably got the news before I did. That's what I love about the city, that feeling of being utterly out of touch, as if you were in the Australian outback.

Bomb experts did not agree on the deadliness of the device. One retired New York bomb guy said it came within a “millisecond” of creating a fireball 30 feet high that could've killed hundreds of people and “caused horrific lung damage and fried the hair and faces of anyone within a 50-yard radius.” He was the guy the tabloid Daily News decided to quote. The Times quoted another bomb guy who referred to the device dismissively as “a Rube Goldberg contraption” - “It's the ‘swing-the-arm-with-the-shoe-that-hits-the-ball-and-knocks-over-a-stick-

that-knocks-something-off-a-shelf,' and it is all supposed to work.” The bomber, he said, thought he'd invented the atomic bomb but was somewhat short on ability. The Daily News guy recalled a car bomb years ago that blew the hood of the car 21 stories into the air, suggesting that this might've been of that magnitude. The Times guy was slightly amused by the perp as being ambitious but certainly no Ted Kaczynski.

Both bomb guys agreed that the bomb had not detonated.

The Times reports that New York City operates 82 surveillance video cameras between 34th and 51st streets and Sixth and Eighth avenues, and I hope the city fathers aren't mesmerized by Cheneyesque visions of fireballs and fried faces and persuaded to station 82 officers to observe those monitors in eight-hour shifts, a mind-numbing occupation.

We have more than enough security people in this country. Highly trained TSA operatives with headsets for instant communication stand by the scanners in airports and remind you to put your computer in a separate bin and remove your shoes. You walk around any downtown and see all the beefy guys in fictitious uniforms whose job it is to stay awake and scowl. This is not the same country I grew up in, but never mind.

Today I will be back in Times Square, and I plan to walk around and enjoy the crowds and the lights. Call me irresponsible, but I may stop and think of the millions of dollars spent on self-erasing advertising cascading mindlessly overhead. God bless America and now let's go eat.

n Comments: phc@mpr.org