"Wait for the traffic light, please. . .?

Thomas Burke is one of the few men in Cambridge who can tell a woman off and get away with it. Patrolman Burke puts in more than ten hours each weekday in publicly villifying errant drivers, jay-walkers, and absent-minded pedestrians from his green-painted booth in Harvard Square, and gets considerable pleasure out of this. "There is no doubt," claims Burke, "that women are much worse drivers than men. They spend all their time lookin' around at things, and none of it lookin' at the road. And when they have some one else in the car with 'em," Burke grins sadly, "there's no tellin' what they're goin' to do."

It is part of Burke's job, however, to figure out exactly what they are going to do. In addition to barking at them over an electric amplifier which carries his words more than a hundred yards through the noise of the Square, he attempts to regulate them with a manually-operated push-button traffic signal. Both the booth and traffic signal were built ten years ago when traffic conditions in the Square reached their present state of chaos, but the amplifier was not added until 1941, more or less as a last resort.

The need for Burke and his amplifier arises from the confluence of an inordinate number of cars, buses, trolley lines and subways in the Square. The loud-speaker idea has received a lot of publicity all over the country, and a man from "Life" has been around to photograph the whole contraption. As far as Burke knows, however, the Harvard Square booth is the only one of its kind in the country; a similar unit in Central Square closed down last year. Outside of its traffic control duties, the booth attracts a clamoring stream of information seekers. Burke is constantly assailed by people requiring guidance of all kinds. He is now able to direct traffic by instinct as he answers these questions; "but it was hard as hell at first," he concedes.

Burke puts in a long day. He comes on the job at seven in the morning and works through until seven-thirty at night, with a relief man taking over during lunch and dinner. He has been in the square for a little over six years, switching from a beat because of his health, and likes the work because it never gets dull.

But the job also has its occupational hazards. Last summer Burke was clicking the traffic light and directing a divinity student when there was a low rumbling and Burke stuck his head out of the window. He was greeted by an uncomfortably large Jordan Marsh truck which rammed the booth, picked it up, and deposited it in front of a jewelry store on Brattle Street. The booth was somewhat crumpled and Burke wrenched his shoulder, which still annoys him during damp weather, but the Jordan Marsh man was very apologetic, and Burke dismisses the incident. He figures the odds are strong against it happening again. And in the long run, he considers the women drivers a far more terrifying menace.