Today is always a tough day. At least for those of us who remember what happened. A lot of people have blocked it out of their mind. They don't care and just minimize it because it is old news. Like Pearl Harbor. Or the Alamo. Or the battleship Maine.
But it is a lot harder for those of us who live in New York. The World Trade Center is not just a tourist attraction to us. It was part of our everyday lives. You were in it all the time as it was a transportation hub. I mean I used to take the train to the World Trade Center three or four times a week to meet my buddies who walked on Wall St for drinks at the Seaport. I would get out and walk across the lobby especially in cold weather and come out on Trinity Place. We would hit Branigans or the Pig and Whistle or Volks and start drinking before heading over to the seaport.
I would go the New York State tax office to get forms all the time. We didn't have the internet back then where you could download forms so you had to go get them to fill them out by hand. I had a couple of audits there as well.
They had a great bookstore in one of the lobby's on the North End. For some reason they had a great poetry department and I got a lot of Yeats and Seamus Heaney volumes there. I would always stop even on the way to get loaded. One of the clerks who was always so helpful was lost in the towers.
There is a joint on Court St that makes me think of 911 every time I pass it. It was owned by a brother and a sister who got in a big fight. He was the chef and she was the business end. They fought so much that she quit and got a great new job. Banquet manager at Windows on the World. She was working there for two weeks before the first plane hit. Her brother never recovered. This other restaurant guy took advantage of his grief and weaseled his way into the joint and ran it into the ground. Now it is a crappy sort of joint called
"Karloff's" which serves brunch and crap. Every time I pass that place I think of them and what happened.
So I try not to dwell to much on it. I mean you have to go live your life. You can't be obsessed with it. Just remember it. Don't forget especially on this day. Say a prayer for those who passed. Remember people like Father Judge who gave their lives helping others.
Downtown will never be the same for some of us. No matter how many years ago it was.
46 comments:
no comment indeed.
Thanks for this.
For those of us who don't live there, don't know anyone personally who died, it does indeed seem removed. A dramatic event, but distant.
This post brings it closer and I appreciate being reminded, not of the terror but of the personal reality of it all.
I used to work on Franklin Street. I would go to the WTC all the time to visit different offices there (and often caught the subway or path trains from that station). It breaks my heart.
Remember the heroes of 9/11. There were many, thousands really. And hundreds of them died that day trying to save people.
Never forget...
The Manhattan boat lift.
Trooper, Knowing folks who live in NYC, it has been apparent from the very outset that for you good folks, it's different. It's always different when it's in your yard and you know people who were murdered. Thanks.
It was part of our everyday lives...
Just remember it.
Don't forget... Say a prayer for those who passed. Remember...
Yes.
Of the 2,753 lives taken that day, 1,121 of those souls left without a trace. Gone, with no evidence of death other than their presumed presence and continuing absence. Getting one's mind around the impact and magnitude of this kind of reality and loss is overwhelming.
The phrase "Uva Uvam Vivendo Varia Fit," came up this weekend, after watching the Lonesome Dove marathon. It fits here too:
A grape other grapes seeing, changes, or better yet,
We are changed by the lives of those around us.
Thank you opening your door of memory and allowing us to see and remember again what took place and how much it mattered.
I've been there twice - once when the towers were brand new, in '72 or so, my father in law drove us down so we could check out the buildings and the architecture.
Then, in 2000 I went to NYC for the girl friend's grandfather's 90th birthday. We wanted to do something touristy so we, and the gf's mother, decided to go up in a tall building. At the last minute we chose the Empire State Building rather than the WTC. The mother was from Manhattan and we could see where she grew up from the top.
In 2010 I went back to the city to visit my son. Took the PATH train to the WTC stop and I was all "What's all this construction, yo?", then I remembered. Oh yeah. It was just a big hole in the ground.
If I ever go to see my granddaughter no doubt I will be down at that end of the island again. Maybe head over to Brooklyn. One thing for sure, I travel better than a Brooklynite does.
I've never forgotten. Perhaps being a veteran has something to do with it, for I remember the friends who never made it back from the war that we fought in. I've tried to maintain contact with friends that I served with and was able to post comments at the web site the wall_usa where my email address was used by those surviving family and friends to contact me. Two of my Facebook friends are sisters of men who were KIA. I was able to provide pictures to them of their loved ones. Caring makes a big difference in life. At least for me.
I visited a friend in 2003 that I went to Viet Nam with, who lives on Staten Island. We took the ferry over to Manhattan and visited the site where the towers used to be.
I forgot to say that my friend from Staten Island knew a lot of the firemen and polcemen that died that day.
It's a day of memories, heroes, and tears.
We lived very, very briefly in Lexington, SC, just outside of the capital city, Columbia. Something very special linked it to NYC.
After 911 students at White Knoll Elementary School in Lexington began to collect money to purchase a fire truck. By Thanksgiving in 2001 these kids had collected over $500,000 and presented a check that was used to purchase a truck for the Red Hook Raiders, who lost seven precious souls that day. That's an incredible task for elementary students to accomplish, but there was an incredible motivation behind their action.
After the Civil War, Columbia was left with no firefighting equipment, so NYC donated a firetruck to them. The first one sank en route, so NYC raised funds--as promised--and a second one was purchased and delivered to the city.
A Confederate representative promised to return the favor "should misfortune ever befall the Empire City." A rather bold gesture, which probably appeared empty in 1867, but roughly 130 years later was fulfilled.
What a country.
I could see the World Trade Center from my front stoop.
It loomed on the Horizon.
When you are in Valentino Park in Red Hook it was like you could reach out and touch them.
It comes up in unexpected ways.
Last night we were watching an episode of "That Girl" on ME TV. We watch these shows for the fashion as Lisa gets some ideas from the dresses that they wear.
In the closing credits they have a long shot of the New York Skyline. As we were watching it we turned to each other and said "Look....they hadn't even made the World Trade Center!"
Yeah Trooper, I remember the skyline prior to the Towers and after..a bit eerie
I had to fly today. Kinda weird. Out of Newark and to Boston too.
I lost a few people I knew on the planes. I was working at Akamai Technologies at the time and the founder died on one of the planes and another person died from TJX I knew and another from Genzyme. Very sad.
Anywhoo, sorry I missed you in Boston. I was all over the place the past week. Princeton, Newark, Allentown, NYC and East Windsor NJ.
I also went to Trenton, and Philly.
And spent a couple of days in New Hope PA and Lambertville NJ. Very cute, on the Delaware River. It is very trendy and gay with lots of bikers-which was kind of a weird combo.
My husband and I got in a big fight because I got up in the middle of the night and found him jerky jerky to a video while I was in the room next door. I was pissed but finally got over it and called him jerky jerky the rest of the time and made him write me a check for 1000.00 so I could buy things...I then felt better.
You can not swing a cat without hitting an Abu Indian in NJ.
tits.
Titus, Sounds like a very healthy relationship.
The Newark Airport has all the typical black women TSA workers. Long nails, bitching about working, not looking at anything or anyone who comes through and talking to their girlfriends about their man who isn't taking care of his baby and is a cheating man too!
I loved it. I could not get enough of their conversations. Newark and Elizabeth New Jersey are fucking gross. Right next to the Newark Airport is some 100 year old Budweiser plant-it needs some remodeling.
But Central Jersey is actually very pretty, and there are farms there! I had no idea there were farms in Jersey.
I do find Bucks County kind of weird though. It is fairly wealthy, very moderate politically, a decent population and tons of housing developments where all the houses look the same. There are also beautiful homes as well, but a few too many blackies for my taste-unless they are blowing me. There is the Lower Bucks and Upper Bucks.
How many times do you hear a political analyst about how does it play in Bucks County? After visiting there my answer was who the hell knows?
The Delaware River is pretty but somewhat small.
I went through Camden New Jersey this weekend too. What a fucking dump. Wow, what an awful place.
Trooper, thanks for this remembrance. The story of the brother and sister painted the reality of human loss in a way that the stats can't show.
So I started out on High Street
Had to travel into town
Like some Orpheus descending
Through a turnstile underground
From Brooklyn Heights into Manhattan
Which was where I had to be
Now you have to take the A train
There's no more service on the C
And when you are underwater
Sometimes the mind plays tricks
And there beneath the East river
It felt like the river Styx
The first stop was Broadway Nassau
A few more passengers got in
We all sat no one was standing
There somewhere we'd never been
They say heaven's high above us
Hell is far below
But inside that subway tunnel
There was no sure way to know
Chambers Street a closed ghost station
Passing through we seemed to glide
Like prisoners inside compartments
On some house of horrors ride
The walls were tiled—I hadn't noticed
They seemed so antiseptic and clean
But we knew what we were under
The lights were on that seemed obscene
And there I saw the three initials
W, T, and then the C
I'd survived somehow was living
But somewhere I shouldn't be
At the next stop the doors opened
And I emerged up above ground
I was in another country
Elysian Fields?
No, Chinatown
They say heaven's high above us
Hell's somewhere below
Standing on Canal Street
There was no sure way to know
They say heaven's high above us
Hell's not far below
Standing on Canal Street
There was no sure way to go
As long as I have memory I will remember every second of that day.
Every second. Every second.
I will remember exactly where I was, what I was doing, what room i was in, the first, second and continuing emails I sent to my wife; more than one telling her how much I love her as I thought about the husbands and wives in that building.
I will remember the furtive whispered prayers pleading that God hold the souls of those in the buildings and their families safe in His loving hands for all eternity.
I will remember the reporters stunned narrative, at first refusing to believe it was a deliberate act. Until the second airplane hit.
I remember the call from my friend the structural engineer telling me both buildings would come down soon. It was inevitable, he said. he was right.
I remember the few televised leaps off the top of the building, 100 stories to the concrete below. The unimaginable hell those humans must have suffered to take that leap.
There is more to say, but I'm shaking now. The heroism of the fire, police and others. The strength of our president then; the profound weakness or our president now.
Well before 9-11 happened a friend who is a fraud investigator for a credit card company in Chicago would tell me stories about one of his lead guys - a man named Rick Rescorla. Bigger than life, utterly without fear, given to running into ghetto housing high-rises by himself to bust up fraud rings.
Rick Rescorla saved thousands of lives on 9-11. He was security director for Morgan Stanley. Google his name, read about him, see the YouTube video. What a hero!
Looks like we're coming to another tough spot. Embassies sacked, flags burned, israel thrown under a bus. The memories of what happened then should strengthen us now.
Let's roll.
Just for the record, both 9/11/2001 and not just 9/11/2001 will be forever burned into my brain. In not a single way have I changed my philosophy post *that time*. (Challenge that if you want to, however foolish that will be.) That said, I'm pretty disgusted by your abandonment, Trooper York. From what I can tell, you'd take--in a heartbeat--a relatively recent troll over folks you've known online for relatively many years.
What-ev-ah. Also: Fuck off.
Among the so-many-ways that 9/11, 2001 changed my paradigm[s], it was the very first time that I put my son--then just 15 months old (minus precisely one day) in front of a TV, as to babysit him. I scrambled for video. I didn't want him to see how hard I was crying. He watched kid-vids for many more hours that day than I could possibly be proud of. And, as I said, it was the first time I ever used media in that way in terms of my son.
Jesus. Do you people not understand how hard it was for EVERYONE ???
Also, I just have to wonder:
Do you, Troop, and everyone, remember all the other stuff that was going on at that time?
There was that whole random-shooter thing going on (have you all forgotten the serial-killer saga that overlapped?), for example. The other thing was the **via mail** anthrax scare. At the time, that was no damned joke. Among the affected centralized distribution points (and there were a number of them) of the USPS was not only the one through which the mail from all of our Delaware relatives was processed, but also ones, coincidentally, located at specific sites in other states in which we had (and have) a critical mass of relatives. YO, BABY! Coincidence is a bitch. Just, awesome, yo, wow.
Nothing got opened within a block of our house (meaning, our son). Nothing. Pretty sucky memories from that time (amongst, of course, the otherwise great ones of the little lad).
So.
Oh--and did I forget to mention it?--we knew people who were murdered on 9/11, too.
I remember.
Because my son was so young at the time and awoke so early, and therefore at that time I was an even earlier riser and was up beforehand, I got the "treat" of seeing planes attack sky-scrapers in real time. Horrifically enough, I even got to see jumping people for a minute or two before, thank God, the kabosh got put on that.
I got very angry that day. Luckily I had no muzzie coworkers, or I would have been fired, at least, perhaps jailed, for my reaction.
But since then our country has elected an un-American anti-American muzzie-lover as president and there was much support for a mosque in lower Manhattan. This is no longer my country.
Back in the '90s I worked on our church - building interior walls, painting, that sort of thing. All volunteer work. After a few years the minister's husband died and she left the area. They were the force behind the church and without them it faded away. The new couple was old and lacked energy and I stopped going.
Anyway, the building was sold and it is now one of the largest mosques in the county. My anger at those backward child fuckers is such that had I not moved I would be tempted to burn it down. Every day I would face that temptation. My blood pressure does not need that.
Let's roll indeed. I have plenty of ammo but I am now convinced that this country is lost, and beyond fighting for my own little acre it is pointless to take up the fight. My own sons, one of whom lives within sight of lower Manhattan are Obama voters. With children like that, why bother to fight? The future is theirs, debt, muzzies and the most corrupt government that the cronies and commies can construct. They can have it. They are too stupid to know what was lost.
I wrote about what I was doing on 9/11 over here. No reason to type that out again when I can just link. I have have found that specific memories are like horses in the barn--once they're out, they never seem to come back in the same way.
We flew to D.C. yesterday (9/11/12) which was a bit alarming for me. My wife is giving a talk at an academic nursing conference later this week and she needed to be out here. When I used to travel a lot on business, I always went alone. But she wanted the kids to see D.C. and I'm acting as sort of the au pair. Yesterday was the only available opening for a flight.
Before the flight, I was sort of nervous. I thought about what I'd do or try to do if somebody tried and funny business on the flight. But thankfully, the flight went without a hitch. I am thankful and glad about that.
Royal Chicken - enjoy DC - the Mall is great. The rest is dangerous.
I was born there and lived many decades nearby, and the Smithsonian is one of my favorite places. I have pictures going back nearly 60 years, and it was even cooler back then before it became a shrine to leftist diversity.
@Chickelit - If your schedule allows it, take time to visit the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. You may need to rent a car or take a bus to it, but it is awesome, and a perfect place to take kids.
Mr. Haz is correct - from the Wright flyer to Skylab and everything in between. Howard Hughes record setting plane, human powered flight, a mock up of a Saturn 5 - chemistry in action, am I right? - Mercury capsule, the Bell X1 and so much more. Saw an ME-262 - beautiful aircraft, I must say. I saw Enola Gay at their restoration facility, and while I have never been there, I understand the site out at Dulles is awesome. Might be worth a trip.
Oh, and I take the Metro to the Mall stop and walk the whole place - from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol, and everything in between. Wear comfortable shoes.
Spy museum gets good reviews however I've not been to DC since it opened.
We did the Nat'l Zoo today because the daughter wanted to. Going to the Mall tonight. Tomorrow is Arlington and Arlington House (thanks Darcy) and then the Patent Ofice's Invention Museum.
Friday we'll do the Spy Museum and Fords Theater. Saturday will be Smithsonian.
The Smithsonian out by Dulles sounds like fun but hard to get to- Metro, then metro bus to Dulles, then regional bus to museum--yikes!
Looks like we'll be on the same coast in a few days. I'll wave at DC (depending on the route we choose) on our way from WV to DE.
Skip the Dulles site, but do not, for any reason, miss the Air 'n Space museum on the Mall. It is one of the best museums there is.
...the Air 'n Space museum on the Mall. It is one of the best museums there is.
Seconded our eldest who went there with his aunt when he was a teen and didn't want to leave. She went to see the gargoyles at the Wash. National Cathedral by herself.
I remember being woken up by a phone call from my daughter, shortly after falling asleep after working a grueling night shift. I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower. I couldn't grasp at first that we were truly being attacked. That night at work we kept the TV on in the day room, all night and took turns watching, soon after that day my oldest daughter visited a Navy Recruiting station.
We are still being attacked, Allie, and that cocksucking black messiah you worship is selling us down the river. Throwing us under the bus like he did his own family.
This year's deficit hit 1 trillion the other day. And yet you still love that communist motherfucker.
By loving that useless piece of muzzie shit you have sold out this once great country. Have you no shame? Or intelligence or the ability to do math. Okay, you are a liberal, so math is hard. Never mind...
Bad day, huh, Sixty?
Especially if you're a Libyan ambassador. Poor guy probably believed in Obama, too.
Yeah, I am more than a little fed up that a bunch of child rapers from the 7th century put paid to our country, with active support from the press, the government and shit head liberals, but that's redundant.
Seriously, nuke Mecca, Cairo, the high Aswan dam, Bengazi, Damascus, Tehran and let those devils glow in the dark.
I actually agree with Sixty. The world would be a better place if every Muzzie country was nuked.
They are truly savage people.
And what have they contributed to this world?
Absolutely nothing.
I hate them but I would fuck some of them and afterwards spit on them.
They are sprouting up everywhere here too. The fucking women with the total beekeeper outfits on creep me out, especially when they are wearing huge Prada sunglasses and shoes. WTF is that all about anyway?
I ride the subway with this Muzzie couple many days. He is all Euro Trash/ fag looking and she has the beekeeper suit on with a Coach Handbag. Is she actually going to work looking like that? They are also springing up working at the TSA now, WTF?
There is another nig getting on the bus with her groceries on her head. One day she had like an 8 piece plate setting on her fucking head. I so wanted to push it off. And of course she is yakking on her Iphone in some foreign language and she is fucking loud....I hate her but admire her balance. My thought is always...where the fuck do these things work?
Titus you might like the Mohammed video...
Sixty, I'm back down in your neighborhood in the Piedmont, taking care of in-laws with post-surgical stuff. Mostly cooking and cleaning for them. Doing their at-home PT with them. Piedmont is much more tolerable in September than in the summer months.
Stopped in at Dale Earnhardt's mom's place to borrow a cane from her for my father-in-law. Doesn't get much more American than that. Route 3, Dale Earnhardt Boulevard, runs close by her house--his childhood home. I knew it as Route 136 when I lived here 24 years ago. I used to employ two of his cousins. A brother and sister, who used to get into fistfights with each other over nothing. Don't ever dare to step in and don't even think about taking a side. About all I ever did was tell them to beat each other up outside in the parking lot--which they promptly complied with.
Life continues despite the bumps.
It does, right up until it doesn't.
A friend of mine, a great musician with whom I shared many wonderful hours playing all over the state, died recently. His memorial is this weekend up in Asheville, but I won't be attending. He was dauntless in his ability to drive all over the place - even though he lived in Concord he would drive over to the Triangle for practices and gigs.
I used to call him the human juke box because he seemingly knew every tune ever written, and could recall the chords and words if you gave him enough time to sort through his memory banks.
Alas, he was a stoner and a liberal, and after 2001 we parted ways. I really can't abide hanging around with people who hate the country as much as his Asheville friends do. As with Allie, the stupid is strong in them.
Anyway, that story is apropos of almost nothing, other than the transitory nature of live, how we need to enjoy it while we are here, and how 9/11 changed me.
Oh yeah, I played piano at his wedding. That was the last time I performed in public - afterwards my stage fright was so strong that I shook for a week. In over 40 years of public performance I had never been that shaken by playing in front of a crowd. Perhaps it was because I was alone, no group around me to cover for me. In any case, that's just another blah blah blah story about a time of innocence and sunny days that are now gone. I kind of miss them, but on the other hand, I have work to do.
Oh yeah, WRT NASCAR, I live within walking distance of a dirt track where the 3rd NASCAR strictly stock race was run in '48, I think, and it was last used for racing in '69, IIRC. The last race there was won by Richard Petty, a NASCAR god.
The drivers would stay at a hotel in town then drive their race cars right down my street to the track. The woman who used to live here said it was loud as hell. Well, I added the hell - she was too polite to use such language.
We lived in Concord for five years before moving to the hills. Asheville is a freak show. New Age hippies and hipster douchebags crawling the streets downtown.
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