In these times, when an unhinged young man can walk into a grammar school armed to the teeth and wipe out two dozen people - most of them innocent first graders - people may be yearning for a simpler time. The NY daily news published a story today that says a lot about those times. It’s the tale of a disturbed 17-year-old who kidnapped two young girls, took them joy riding in a stolen car, tied them up, raped them, and eventually killed both, sadistically. I’ll spare you the details. What’s different about this story is the way justice was served on teen Eddie Haight. It was different in 1942; the killer was found, confessed, led police to the remains, and 52 days after the crimes, was executed by the electric chair.

My Grandfather was a NY City Police Captain. He died when I was 2, so I have no real memory of him. I do have vivid memories of his brother, who we called Uncle Tommy. Tom Crane was also a police officer. He was plainclothes and worked special investigations and often would serve on security details. He was a modest man. Both of the Crane brothers were born in Ireland. It’s a long story, but they found their way to Canada, enlisted in the Canadian Army in World War I when both were under age, and then, like a lot of Irish, made their way down to the U.S. and somehow on to the NYPD. The tales are told of their roles in the NYPD, with Captain Crane accompanying Mayor La Guardia on nightly runs to smash up illegal slot machines in the gambling halls of Queens. Or of Uncle Tommy being requested by one Winston Churchill whom he was guarding at the Waldorf Astoria if he could fetch him a good bottle of brandy. Or of the bolt of Irish tweed that arrived at the precinct in Tom’s name, some weeks after he complimented the visiting Mayor of Dublin on his fine suit of clothes. The tweed was enough to make Tom a fine suit of his own which some NY tailor eventually did.

Uncle Tom always had a twinkle in his eyes as he told police stories, but at age he was stout and built like a redwood tree and I imagined that as wonderful as he was to the family, I don’t think I would want to be the suspect sitting across from him at some interrogation.

But the one lesson I always learned when talking to Tom and hearing about my grandfather was the pride they took in their jobs. They had a sense of order and believed in the need to protect people from law breakers.

They enjoyed a stiff drink and a good smoke and liked a sunny day at the race track and a chance to make a few dollars. But they also understood moderation, and common decency. They wouldn’t have been politically correct. They worked before food stamps and welfare came into vogue and they worked - as so many did because the government wasn’t paying for 99 weeks of unemployment. I don’t think they would understand all the stupid laws we have in this country or how we got to be trillions of dollars in debt. For some reason on, you wonder were all the good right thinking people who followed him have gone, and how so many who don’t hold those values somehow seem to have taken over things. You also wonder, those who of us who do hold those values, can take things back.