When I was a kid riding the subways eons ago, you also had to worry about (attention! SC and PB!) George Metesky, aka "The Mad Bomber."
The "Mad Bomber" was before my time but I remember the fear of Son of Sam (even on the subway) during the mid '70s. It was amazing to see everyone reading a newspaper on the trains then and each paper had a drawing of Son of Sam on the front page. People would look at the photo and then look up and scour the faces of fellow subway passengers as if looking for the killer.
For many years I took a subway line on Sixth Avenue. This particular line broke off from the main line after the Rockefeller Center stop and terminated at 57th and 6th. I guess because there wasn't too much subway traffic at that point there always seemed like a sizable rat population on the tracks and even the platform. I've seen some rats there that was almost as big as my cat!! I'm skeeved by rats but not afraid of them to the point that I'd run away. I was always ready to do battle and stomp them if need be. Thankfully that never happened.
