Fall 2001

I’ve been promising myself that I’d write this down. It’s a beautiful, warm day. The sky is a brilliant and cloudless blue.

It’s a few minutes before 9 and we finish our bagels. We’ve been watching a man right in front of us on a backhoe digging up 76^th St. for our breakfast entertainment. It’s too loud in the bagel shop to talk, at least for me anyway. It’s actually pretty fascinating to see the skill employed in digging a ditch in a street. I’ve run a backhoe, a little one, and it ain’t easy. Country boy comes to The City. Watches backhoe.

There’s a subway entrance right outside the bagel shop, but it’s so nice out. We decide to walk down Lexington to the meeting, at least to the next stop. The meeting is in a big building at Park and 33^rd and starts when we get there. Tim, my partner in programming, and I came down yesterday afternoon and determined exactly where their logon process was messing up our software. It took until about 8 and by then the techs had gone, so we said we’d be back in the morning to go over it with them. We knew what was going on before we came down, but no one seemed to be able to get it over the phone and we needed to do some handholding and pointing.

There’s a crowd on the sidewalk looking in a window that turns out to be a Smith-Barney office. Like most brokerages, they have a running ticker so I figure there must be something big going on with the market, even though at a few minutes after nine, I don’t think it’s opened yet. We stop and I check the ticker, the charts, and then look up at the TV monitors near the ceiling that are silently showing the World Trade Center on fire, Live, from New York! We watch as a plane silently glides into the second tower. The man next to me says Oh My God, and then he says it again, and again. The bar at the bottom of the screen announces that a second plane has flown into the Trade Center.

Someone in Smith-Barney walks over and opens the door so we can hear, but this is too much and we start downtown again. I make some silly-ass comment about the fact that some air traffic controller is in deep shit (for the next couple of days all of my comments will be more silly-ass than usual). Upstate we tend to have stupid accidents caused by stupid or drunk people, not terrorist attacks, so the fact that it must be deliberate doesn’t occur to me.

A couple of blocks later, a woman runs by, headed downtown, on her cell phone, crying. There are sirens everywhere. Fire trucks and ambulances are trying to get down Lex but the gridlock is now hopeless. They sit in traffic, horns blasting, sirens screaming. Cars pull up on the sidewalk to let them by, but it’s still hopeless. Some of the fire trucks decide to try their luck on 2^nd avenue. I hear one fireman on the truck loudspeaker screaming, “get the fuck out of the way” over and over as they head across town. It must work because his voice fades. If I’d known so many would die, I would have stopped and saluted them. I would have searched for faces behind the glass, tried to make eye contact. I want them to know it matters to me, that they matter to me, standing on the sidewalk far from harm's way, watching them go. I want them to know I'm grateful. Troops off to battle, foe unknown. I cry as I write this. Get the fuck out of my way.

We miss the next subway entrance, so we walk down to 66^th and catch it from there. The subway is quiet, normal. Too normal and I realize that a lot of the people on this train can’t possibly know what’s happening in the streets above. It hasn’t even been half an hour yet.

There are a lot more people standing around the building smoking today. You can’t see the fires from here or even the smoke, but people look downtown anyway while they smoke. I could use a cigarette myself. We take the elevator up. Everyone’s in shock. We walk down to the cubicle we vacated the night before. You can see the smoke from the fires practically at eye level from the conference room on the other side of the building, but there’s another big building blocking a direct view of the fires and people flinging themselves into the air. Still, it draws a crowd. Fires do that.

I insist on having the meeting we came for. The tech (can’t remember his name) is outside having a cigarette and we wait. Lucy, Our Client, chats with us for a bit, we pay lip service to the distant silent horror, and then she has to leave for a few minutes. I suddenly realize that my wife knows I’m in New York, but not where, and I call her at school to tell her I’m all right and the meeting was in midtown. She’s watching CNN in a classroom with the kids, and hadn’t thought to be scared for me until I called. It’s one of the last long distance calls from that office.

The person in the cube next door has the radio on but we can only hear snippets. We wander in and he turns it up so we can hear better. The subways are closed, busses stopped, bridges closed. Uh-oh. Someone sticks her head into the cube and said she’d heard from her brother who works in the north tower. He called from a payphone in the basement of the south tower. They’re not letting people out because of the falling debris (and bodies), but he’s safe. She’s so relieved. Lucy comes back and says the U.S. air fleet has been grounded but there are 8 planes missing. We look out the windows, scanning. We’re really high up. Still no tech. Must be smoking the whole pack.

Someone rushes by from the observation/conference room and says the south tower just collapsed. I think of the people gathered in the basement for safety (I don’t find out until weeks later that they all got out). The tech arrives and we meet. He needs to login to the computer but after 4 or 5 tries at typing his password with shaking hands, he gives it up. We all have shaking hands now. We go over the problem, explain what we found, he writes it down, we all think he gets it. Ten minutes and we’re done. We had another meeting scheduled but that’s not going to happen. Lucy says if we can’t get out of the city and need a place to stay, she’ll find us something. But we have the company apartment and no one will be able to get into town to use it, so lodging is no worry. We shake hands, I’m aware that it’s maybe for the last time (turns out it is, so far)

We take the elevator down and it doesn’t occur to me until the doors close that an elevator in a tall building isn’t the best place to be right now. I wish that these things occurred to me sooner, and I look around and up, hoping that Die Hard and disaster movies have given me enough training to cope with whatever. Looking around at the tight expressions, I think not.

We walk out onto the street into chaos. The people that were in the subways and on the busses are walking, spilling over into the street from the crowded sidewalks. A lot of people are trying to hail a cab (to where?), but they’re not stopping, no way. We decide to walk over to Port Authority and if the busses to upstate are running, one of us will wait in the inevitable line while the other hikes uptown and comes back with our stuff. We walk up to Grand Central where a lot of people apparently think that getting out of town is a great idea, but it’s locked up tight and we’re happy that it’s not our destination. We walk past the Empire State Building, walking quickly, knowing it’s a target and there are still 6 planes missing. Everyone (1000s) ducks, literally, when a plane flies overhead. The fact that it’s a fighter is no real comfort.

I suddenly realize that we got turned around when we circumnavigated Grand Central and we’ve walked uptown instead of cross-town, about 6 blocks out of our way, and we head across. We’ve gone just a couple of blocks when I spot Artie striding towards us. Artie is my wife’s ex-husband’s sister’s husband – sort of my ex-brother-in-law. I haven’t seen him in years, not since we were declared off-limits by his current sister-in-law. I call out, Artie, and he stops but doesn’t see me and I call again. We rush into each other’s arms. He gives me such a hug that he breaks the glasses he carries in his pocket. Neither of us can believe that we would bump into each other this day in this spot in this crowd. We do 90 seconds of catching up, but it seems we both have places to rush to and we rush off. I’m more amazed by this than anything else that’s happened today. Amazement amidst the shock.

We head downtown toward Port Authority and about a block away you can see the crowd. I realize I have no idea what’s going on and I duck into one of those little shops stuffed with electronics that are all over the city and buy a small radio and some batteries. Radios are selling really well, the man says. He unpacks it and puts batteries in it.

Rudy is saying to please stay away from lower Manhattan -- they have all of the volunteers they need (he’s wrong). And then they start listing the bridges that are closed (might as well say all). No word about what’s happening at Port Authority. The line at Port Authority is as wide as the sidewalk and stretches around the building. The doors are locked and the crowd is very large. Someone yells “How bout an announcement” but gets no response. You can just barely see the security guards inside, staying back from the doors, watching, ready to repel boarders. We have no idea what to do now. Getting to Port Authority was 100% of our ideas. Transportation out of the city is not happening, at least not right now. Volunteers aren’t wanted.

We decide to walk back to the apartment, 50 blocks or so. It’s hot and I stop at a small grocery to get some water. The owner is probably Pakistani and seems surprised to see me, people have probably stopped coming in, despite the heat. Several men are sitting around on milk crates, just staring at the floor, and I realize how awful it must be to be Arabic or Pakistani or ‘other’ on this day in this place. I feel like telling them that it’s not their fault and no one will blame them, but it would be a shameless lie, so I leave. The sidewalk crowds aren’t as massive here, but these streets would be pretty empty this time of day anyway. Police cars rush by, some marked, some not, but you can tell the unmarked by the coating of thick dust that I later realize is people and concrete.

The sidewalk on Central Park West is jammed, just jammed. I think I see Eric Clapton, but it can’t be because he looks just like I remember him and he’s older than that now. We can’t take it and decide to walk into the park and sit by the lake, cool off, collect ourselves a bit. We sit and watch the ducks, the sun on the water, the fighters circling overhead, meeting and circling again, the people snuggling and kissing, oblivious to the pall of smoke that erupts in the distance. The peace after the tumult of the streets is overwhelming. I think out loud that they might have put bio or nuclear or chemical agents on the planes and we could be dead right now and not know it. Birds sing, sirens scream in the distance.

There’s no direct way across Central Park here, it turns out. The paths we follow twist and turn and abruptly end. The only people around are men who sit or perch on benches along the paths, predatory, watching. A sign says we’re in the Ramble and ramble is about all you can do. A jogger passes us and stops to ask directions from one of the men and I think, you’re braver than I am lady. We follow her and catch up to her just as she’s getting her next set of directions and we follow her on like this until we come out on the other side. We’re men, we don’t need no stinking directions. Tim says he was watching a special on Central Park a few months ago and they said the only place in Central Park that’s dangerous in the daytime is the Ramble. Gamble in the Ramble, bungle in the jungle. It’s the least safe I’ve felt all day, worse than ducking when planes fly overhead.

There’s a huge crowd of people waiting to give blood outside Lenox Hill Hospital and we stop to find that the wait time is 6 hours. It’s 3 now and they’re talking about closing at 8 so it doesn’t seem like a reasonable thing to do. Tim generously offers to wait with me even though his blood is all junked up with anti-clotting stuff and he knows they won’t take it. Type Os go to the head of the line but I’ve never given blood so I have no idea. I call my doctor on my cell (why is my cell still working?) but they have no idea what my blood type is either. We continue on to the apartment, but it’s too peaceful – no TV, no radio, long-distance is down, so no calls. I didn’t bring a charger for my cell phone (I will from now on) so we decide to save the battery for tomorrow and maybe the next day. We freshen up and then head out again.

A huge convoy of trucks with generators, banks of lights, and spools of wire are headed down 1^st Avenue, 20 trucks or more. It’s about 5 and still hot so we stop at a bar on for a beer, still reeling. 7 World Trade Center collapses on the TV over the bar that would normally have had some sport show on. Some people pause for a second to watch the silent dust swirl. I think it’s a rerun of the north tower collapsing, not prepared for it to be yet another building. We walk down to the promenade along the East River and head down toward Sloan-Kettering where I know there’s a blood center from when my brother-in-law was there, fighting to hang onto a life he’d come to love. The East River is empty, except for a NYPD patrol boat. I feel the beer and think that whoever gets this blood will enjoy it. We walk down toward the smoke.

The Sloan-Kettering blood bank is closed and they direct us to the Red Cross a few blocks down, but when we get there, they’re closed too. A man outside gives me a ticket for the next morning, explaining that ticket holders will go to the head of the line. I remember that there’s a fantastic pizza place around here somewhere but we can’t find it, so we stop at one on 1^st Ave. that looks promising and buy a slice but it’s not as good as the good place.

There’s security all around some of the buildings and some of the streets are closed. As we come out of the pizza place, a delivery guy on a bicycle with bags of takeaway tries to get up one of the streets, but the cop is having none of it. Won’t even look in the bags. Says the guy can walk in, no bike, no bags.  They’re still arguing as we walk away. We head back up to Lenox Hill, but the man at the barricade says they’re closed for blood. A man strides up from inside and says they’re open again and rushes off. We walk past a long line of ambulances, crews sitting, waiting, some hosing down the interior. I ask for the donor forms but the woman wants to know who said they were open. I say everyone but her, and she says she’s in charge and they’re not taking blood. She also explains that hardly any of the blood from today will be used for victims because there aren’t very many needing blood. We look into each other’s eyes, she raises her eyebrows, I get it. She says that they’ll be throwing a lot of this blood out in 45 days or so and I should give then because by then no one will care (she’s at least partly right).

Trying to give blood turns out to be hungry work and we go over to 2^nd Avenue, find a sidewalk café that’s still open and order some food. We sit and watch the street. Bus after bus goes by headed downtown, some filled with police, some with medical personnel, some with construction workers. There are no busses coming back up. A convoy of backhoes, dozens of them, streams by led by the guy we watched digging in front of the bagel shop a lifetime ago. I can’t believe we’re just sitting here, eating. I’m unofficial, jealous, but I don’t know what else to do -- Rudy still says stay away, and only later do I find out how few people are paying attention to him.

The next morning someone calls into a radio talk show to ask them to please let someone know that there are a whole bunch of people trapped on the Staten Island Bridge. The cops have closed both ends of the bridge and won’t let anyone even walk off – they have orders not to let anyone on or off the bridges – and they’ve been trapped for 16 hours and there are no facilities.

I work the cell phone trying to get through to the bus company and finally get someone in Binghamton who is clearly annoyed to be asked for the 10,000^th time about the busses out of the city. She’s curt and snappish and has no idea that she represents the only way I know to get home. I call my sister-in-law in Beacon who has made some calls of her own and found that there are busses running from Poughkeepsie and if we can get on a train, she’ll pick us up from the station and take us to the bus depot. We pack up, walk to a now empty Grand Central and find that the trains are running an almost normal schedule out of the city. I spend a few fruitless minutes racing around trying to find a Times, but there were only a few and they’re gone. The main printing plant is in Long Island and the trucks couldn’t get into the city.

We’ve got some time so we stop at the subway museum and I buy a few postcards of the Trade Center, figuring it may be my last chance. I also buy a small version of the signs they have at the subway entrances -- they have several for the Trade Center station and I buy a couple. The woman says I’m smart because they’re going to be worth a lot of money some day, but it hadn’t occurred to me. I just thought that they would be artifacts of a time and a place that was gone and wouldn’t return. I but them to hang on just a little bit longer.

The train ride is uneventful, long, seemingly normal, except the Hudson River is strangely empty of traffic. There’s a large Coast Guard cutter cruising up the river but no big boats, no small boats, no pleasure craft. My sister-in-law meets us at the station and rushes us over to the bus depot, but the bus is late, very late. This is bad because we discover that we have to make two more connections. The bus shows up finally. It’s not the regular driver and he got lost. We toddle over to Middletown where we find that we did indeed miss the bus and the next one will be along in 3 or 4 hours. There’s a diner next door and it turns out that missing busses is hungry work. We just get our food, when a bus pulls up. Tim checks it out and discovers that this is a guy just driving over to Monticello, not scheduled, and would we like a ride. We get our food to go, and get on the bus, just the two of us, the driver and a buddy of his, along for the ride.

The bus depot in Monticello is pretty empty. And no they’re not running scheduled service to Binghamton today. Maybe someone will be headed that way but, well, who knows. A row of empty busses bound for New York sits over in the parking lot. But the sun is warm, the grass is green mostly, after you pick up the litter, and we settle down to wait on the other side of the depot from the busses. After about an hour of a kind of tense relaxation, I hear brakes and walk around the depot to discover that a whole flock of busses have arrived all at once. I ask around and someone says that the driver of the bus on the end lives in Binghamton and might be going home. Sure enough he is, but we can’t get on the bus till there’s an announcement and about half an hour later there is. When they hear the announcement, a few people get off each of the busses and head over to what is now the Binghamton bus and a few people get off it and on to other busses. We get on. It’s almost 5 o’clock, but Tim might still make it home in time to get the soccer equipment in his van to soccer practice. There’s lots of empty seats on the bus. We don’t sit together. We ride. We look out the window. We don’t talk much. Turns out practice was called off anyway.

© Copyright 2003 Jon Phipps. Last update: 4/13/2003; 8:39:35 PM.