Nows and Forevers

When I was 13, I read two books I found among my relatives’ books that shocked my adolescent sensibilities. One was Dennis Smith’s “Report from Engine Co. 82,” which taught me as much about poverty and despair not so far away from where I grew up than it did about the firefighting that drew me to the book in the first place. The other was Joseph Wambaugh’s “The Choirboys,” which I happened upon as a paperback in my stepfather’s bookcase. Wambaugh died Friday.

Wambaugh, who had been an LA police officer and detective, told a different story than you saw on TV in the ‘60s and ‘70s: Sarcastic, sad, silly, sometimes violent, often full of alcohol and other vices, and full of the stresses of life and the emotional baggage carried by everyone, cops and criminals and everyone in between. There were no heroes, just people suffering from immense trauma.

I can’t say as I understood some of what I read, given the shield my parents drew over me as a kid where reality only occasionally poked out. (Not that I’m complaining about that.) But “The Choirboys” was definitely an education. And it led me to more of Wambaugh. My stepfather, a voracious reader, had several other of Wambaugh’s books, including “The Onion Field” and “The Glitter Dome,” and I devoured those. I picked up “The New Centurions” at the library. It helped by that time that I lived in southern California, so I knew some of the places that Wambaugh wrote about even if my mother wouldn’t ever let me anywhere near others.

I had no idea at the time but those books helped me understand what I would be doing in the next decade, covering crime for a few daily newspapers, spending more time with cops than I ever thought I would, and preparing me for what their working lives were like. That was helpful because I’m not a fan of true crime TV shows or movies or books, other than Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson and Ross McDonald, and that’s mostly for the noir style.

I haven’t read any of Wambaugh since the ‘80s and I already can tell it’s not something I would recommend to my kids. But I respect and honor anyone who tells stories in an authentic voice, lifting a veil and bringing out the real people, and Wambaugh definitely did that.