Green giant | 30 years ago | September 7, 1976 | George Mercer interviewed bank robber Willie Sutton about his life and new autobiography, Where the Money Was.
“Robbing banks was Sutton’s life’s work, almost a calling. He writes about it this way: ‘A professional thief is a man who wakes up every morning thinking of committing a crime the same way any other man gets up and goes to his job.’ And Sutton was a skilled, imaginative worker, ‘the Babe Ruth of bank robbers,’ as one police commissioner called him. His use of disguise to gain entrance to a bank was a stroke of creative genius. No one, apparently, had thought of it before. . . .
“Known for his non-violence, Sutton carried a gun on the job as a prop more than anything else. In the interview he reflected that in the old days, ‘In stealing it was the worst thing in the world if you had to use violence. You were like some sort of outcast. Nobody wanted to hurt anybody. If they got the money, they’d run like hell with it. People today set out to hurt you. It’s some kind of new kick that they have.’ Ever the rationalist, Sutton figured that brandishing a gun only caused more panic. Often he never even showed it. Instead, he did what he could to quiet down the captured employees, guided them to an out-of-the-way corner, calmly explained the situation to them, and reminded them that it wasn’t their money.”
Haze factor | 35 years ago | September 6, 1971 | Alan Milner discussed the sad life of the drunk and homeless.
“ ‘Living in the weeds’ is skid-row slang for the lifestyle of the street-skimming alcoholic, the homeless derelict who can’t make the price of the town’s cheapest flop because the need to drink drives him to convert everything he can beg, steal, or earn into alcohol. Nothing else matters. During the day, he panhandles pedestrians, smears automobile windshields with scummy rags, performs the most demeaning labor, and even steals from his bottle kin to get the money to keep his glow going. At night, he sleeps in city parks, vacant lots, back-street doorways, unlocked cars, or ‘empties,’ abandoned buildings found in his part of the inner city. (He lives in a state of mindless oblivion, only dimly conscious of his own suffering and vastly more interested in the whereabouts of his next drink, until he ends up in jail, the hospital, or the morgue.)”
Where are they now?
Seth Gitell is the former press secretary for Mayor Menino and a freelance writer. Chris Wright is Senior Editor at Boston Magazine. David Barber is Poetry Editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Neil Miller is a professor at Tufts University as well as the author of Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. Stephen Schiff is a screenwriter who recently adapted Don DeLillo’s White Noise. Alan Milner is the former director of the Massachusetts Drug and Alcohol Hotline.
