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In the middle of the Williamsburg Bridge, high above the inky East River, 1,700 passengers in two trains were suspended like riders on the Coney Island Wonder Wheel. "The wind would blow," said Mary Cronin Doyle, 18, "and the train would sway, and then some woman would scream." It took police five hours to assist everybody across a precarious, 11-in.-wide catwalk running 35 ft. from the train tracks to the bridge's roadway. All told, 2,000 trapped passengers preferred to wait it out—including 60 who spent 14 hours in a stalled train under the East River.
Sartre & Peale. Rescue workers had to break through walls in at least three skyscrapers to get to elevator shafts and release some 75 passengers. One man trapped in an RCA Building elevator for 20 hours gave his three companions a course in yoga positions—including standing on his head. At the Empire State Building when a rescue team finally broke through, one of its members solicitously inquired, "Are there any pregnant women aboard?" Shot back a male voice: "Why, we've hardly even met!"
The blackout tried everyone's resources—and few would admit defeat. In stalled elevators and trains, passengers improvised games, including one whose object was to suggest the unlikeliest partners for stalled elevator cars (samples: Jean-Paul Sartre and Norman Vincent Peale; Defense Secretary McNamara and a draft-card burner; any Con Edison executive and any New York housewife). Trapped office workers improvised candles with copies of Book Week and rubber cement.
Candlepower. More than anything else, candlepower saved the day. On Wall Street, a man from Merrill Lynch dropped in at Our Lady of Victory Church, left a generous contribution, and made off with all the votive candles. At the U.N., Secretary-General U Thant worked for five hours with light from candles that, joked an aide, were "left over from the Pope's visit"—then led a procession of eight to the ground, 38 stories below, by candlelight. Housewife Harriette Browne hated to do it, but she had to use the 48 candles from her husband's birthday cake to light the house. One Fifth Avenue jeweler credited the sale of a $6,500 brooch to candlelight. "It does give such an attractive glow to diamonds," he purred. At Irishman Jim Downey's, a celebrated steak house, the light came from Jewish yahrzeit candles, normally used to commemorate the dead. The New York Hilton used 30,000 candles during the long night. So great was the demand that Ajello's candle shop in midtown sold fancy bayberry models at $7.50 a pair—though there were no takers for the 90-lb., hand-dipped model for $150. To make the occasion complete, Mrs. Anthony Ajello, wife of the candlestick maker, had a baby boy in the midst of the blackout—by candlelight, of course.
There was some profiteering. Streetcorner "salesmen" hawked candles for 500 and even $1 apiece, flashlights for three and four times their