Midnights is both a comedy of errors and an affectionate portrait of small-town police, those beleaguered souls charged with the task of keeping their neighbors in line....
A reminder that those assigned to protect are often vulnerable and quietly heroic.--Time Funny, touching, revealing, here is the view from a rookie cop\'s patrol car, during midnight shifts, in a (mostly) peaceful town.
Midnights is.
It is also for anyone looking for a marvelously engaging read.
This is for any reader looking for insight into the real lives of Police officers, outside of large cities, across America.
This is experiential journalism at its most poignant and entertaining--and it launched the career of Alec Wilkinson: writer, interviewer, essayist, and author.
Right now I work on the Police force, another officer says, my wife stamps cans in the supermarket, and she makes more money than I do.
The job is often thankless.
It depresses me.
It\'s sad.
As a rule, you always get called when people are at their worst.
Nobody ever calls you when they\'re behaving themselves, one admits.
Throughout there are conversations with his eight fellow officers who Wilkinson comes to respect and admire.
The robber is still listening to investment options when the Police arrive.
The teller convinces the robber that his haul ($300) is too much to carry around in cash.
There is an attempted bank robbery.
After that, when I found out the people I thought were my friends weren\'t really my friends, I felt better off.
The first six months were murder for me, Wilkinson\'s partner confides on his first night.
There are domestic squabbles.
There are high-speed chases and stopping drunk drivers, one of whom tries to set Wilkinson\'s hair on fire.
Committing himself to a Year wearing a uniform and carrying a gun, and with no training, Wilkinson was sent out to keep the peace, hoping nothing would happen.
Wilkinson\'s main qualification was familiarity with the town of 2,000 people from summers there growing up.
That\'ll be a big help.
Music, huh? the Police chief said during the job interview.
When I was twenty-three years old, five months out of college, with a degree in music, and without any idea of what to do with myself, I took a job as a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, so writes Alec Wilkinson.
with a rich cast of characters, this is a classic memoir of the fear, surprises, excitement, embarrassment that comes with a protecting and serving a small community.
Midnights is both a comedy of errors and an affectionate portrait of small-town police, those beleaguered souls charged with the task of keeping their neighbors in line....
A reminder that those assigned to protect are often vulnerable and quietly heroic.--Time Funny, touching, revealing, here is the view from a rookie cop\'s patrol car, during midnight shifts, in a (mostly) peaceful town
