Friday, September 11, 2009
Memories of 9/11
On September 9, 2001, Jayne and I married in a small ceremony in the outer garden of a restaurant on Cooper Square. The Village Voice offices are across the street, as is the Cooper Union. A walk to the World Trade Center would take the average person around 20 or 30 minutes.
The Trade Center was the site of our first date. We liked walking around Battery Park and along the river. The night of our marriage we stayed at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, and our room looked at the towers. The morning of Monday the tenth, we went out to breakfast and laughed at all the people who had to work that day, savoring the beginning of a honeymoon vacation. We talked about going to the Trade Center, but decided to put it off until we came back from our trip. We had reservations in wine country in northern California, and we had packed on the previous Saturday, so we would be ready to just pick up our suitcases and go.
As Monday the tenth went on, clouds started moving in and in the mid-afternoon it began to rain. We took a cab to JFK and checked in. By the time we got to JFK it was raining pretty hard and lightening was lighting up the sky. We boarded the plane.
Jayne used to fly quite a bit, but over the years she started to develop a fear of flying, and the lightening was really bothering her. Our flight to San Francisco was scheduled for a 5:20pm take off. we pushed back from the gate on time, but once we were on the tarmac and in line for takeoff the plane stopped. The pilot spoke to us over the intercom, informing us that because of the weather we would be delayed. Lightening was all over the place. Jayne was relieved we were not taking off.
We talked about how her brother and nephew had Yankees tickets and the game would certainly be rained out. They came to town for our wedding from Atlanta. We sat on the tarmac for five hours. The crew were wonderful to us. They fed us, they brought the drinks cart down the aisle, the pilot turned off the seat belt sign and we were allowed to use our cell phones.
We finally took off around 10:30p and landed in San Francisco at around 1:30am Pacific time. Our rental car had been given to someone else. We protested to the night clerk that we had a reservation. He apologized. Jayne said to him that we were on our honeymoon. The magic words. He upgraded us to a luxury car, a huge Chrysler with leather seats and a terrific sound system.
We knew when planning the trip that we would be landing late at night and we didn't want to drive to wine country in the dark, so we had reservations that night at the Airport Best Western. We got to our hotel room at around 2:00am Pacific time on Tuesday September 11th. Our body clocks were still on Eastern time, so to us it was about 5:00am.
We got into bed and fell asleep quickly, tired from the long day. After only a few hours, we woke up, a little after 6:00am Pacific time. The towers had already been hit, but we were unaware. We were in San Francisco, we were about to drive to wine country, it was the first real day of our honeymoon. A little honeymooning, and then a shower. Jayne had a habit of turning on the TV and the Today Show almost as soon as she got out of bed, but not that day.
After we got out of the shower and dried off, we talked about going out to breakfast. I started to shave and she turned on the TV. The smoking towers were on the screen, but the sound hadn't kicked in. She began to change the channels, looking for the NBC logo in the corner. It seemed the same program was on every station. As I shaved, Jayne was talking to me about what was on the screen.
"I can't find NBC- Oh, wait a minute." She saw the NBC logo, but the programming was the same. The sound kicked in once she stopped flipping channels. A solemn voice said 'and the World Trade Center is no more.' Jayne started to scream. "Oh my God it's real!"
We stood in front of the hotel TV for several minutes completely dumbfounded. The crawl at the bottom of the screen was talking about the Pentagon explosion and the evacuation of the White House and the houses of Congress. The San Francisco local NBC affiliate news team broke into the broadcast, and it was showing picture in picture downtown Manhattan and telling us that the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge were closed, that all American airspace was frozen, and that for security reasons the police were quarantining the airport area. They put up a map of the airport area with marks as to where the roadblocks were being set up. We were just inside the quarantine area. Jayne started to panic.
"What are we going to do?" She asked.
"Let's get the hell out of here. We've got reservations. Whatever is going on we're way better off in a small town inland than in a big city on the coast."
We hustled our baggage out to the car. Jayne went to settle the bill while I finished loading the trunk. Stunned people were milling about the parking lot. An airport shuttle pulled up, filled with people whose flights were suddenly canceled - they all needed rooms. Jayne came out to the car and we drove off. I turned on the radio, and we found a morning news broadcast. Local authorities had decided not to close the bridges, but I didn't want to drive across either one of them that day. I decided to drive south to San Jose and go around San Francisco Bay.
Just as we were about to get on the freeway, a Korean Air Lines 747 flew, very low, over the car. I figured they must not have had enough fuel to divert to Canada and must have been the last plane to have clearance to land. By now it was about 8:00am, maybe a little later. I drove for a while, and once we were on the eastern side of the bay we stopped for breakfast at a roadside diner. We started calling people on our cell phones. Jayne got hold of a friend who lived on First Avenue and Fourth Street. I called some family members, who didn't remember that we were flying the night before and thought we may have been on the flight from Newark that crashed in Pennsylvania.
It turned out that several people tried to call us, but because we had 917 area codes on our cell phones they couldn't get through to us. We could not receive calls, but since we were in the bay area we could dial out. There were some restaurant patrons at the next table, laughing about something or other, then became silent when they heard us talking to our loved ones, telling them that we were OK, that we had flown the night before.
Arriving in wine country was surreal. The wine train chugged past with people inside sipping and having a nice lunch. We made our way to the inn where Jayne had made our reservations. They had a 4:00pm check in time, and we arrived there around noon. The innkeepers were pleasantly surprised at our arrival, knowing we were coming in from New York and unsure as to when we were flying, whether we could make it, whether or not we were alive. Our room wasn't ready. Our hostess suggested a winery where we could go on a tour while our room was prepared. Not knowing what else to do, we went on the wine tour.
This was one of those inns with no TVs in the rooms, only one in the lobby. There was a guest in the lobby watching the TV. There were two couples from Augusta, Georgia. The right wing Republican husband of one of the two couples sat in the lobby, holding the remote. This guy was going on and on about how his stocks were going down the toilet. I wanted to punch his lights out. The subtext of the shit this guy was spewing as he continued was that New York was a necessary evil because the banks and the stock market were there. I knew that this guy saw my adopted home as a cesspool of niggers and spics and kikes and fags. I thought of the words of a friend of ours: "Lincoln was wrong. The south should have been allowed to secede from the union."
Jayne and I talked for a moment about who we knew at the Trade Center- there were two, a close friend who worked on the 44th floor of Tower One and the father of one of Jayne's co-workers. The prick from Augusta said in the most snide tone-
"Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but there are 50,000 people in there and they're all dead."
I looked at him thinking 'I'll bet you like to be the bearer of bad tidings' but I said nothing. We left the lobby and went outside to look at a koi pond, the huge goldfish helped bring on some needed tranquility.
The rest of the day is now a distant blur.
The Trade Center was the site of our first date. We liked walking around Battery Park and along the river. The night of our marriage we stayed at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, and our room looked at the towers. The morning of Monday the tenth, we went out to breakfast and laughed at all the people who had to work that day, savoring the beginning of a honeymoon vacation. We talked about going to the Trade Center, but decided to put it off until we came back from our trip. We had reservations in wine country in northern California, and we had packed on the previous Saturday, so we would be ready to just pick up our suitcases and go.
As Monday the tenth went on, clouds started moving in and in the mid-afternoon it began to rain. We took a cab to JFK and checked in. By the time we got to JFK it was raining pretty hard and lightening was lighting up the sky. We boarded the plane.
Jayne used to fly quite a bit, but over the years she started to develop a fear of flying, and the lightening was really bothering her. Our flight to San Francisco was scheduled for a 5:20pm take off. we pushed back from the gate on time, but once we were on the tarmac and in line for takeoff the plane stopped. The pilot spoke to us over the intercom, informing us that because of the weather we would be delayed. Lightening was all over the place. Jayne was relieved we were not taking off.
We talked about how her brother and nephew had Yankees tickets and the game would certainly be rained out. They came to town for our wedding from Atlanta. We sat on the tarmac for five hours. The crew were wonderful to us. They fed us, they brought the drinks cart down the aisle, the pilot turned off the seat belt sign and we were allowed to use our cell phones.
We finally took off around 10:30p and landed in San Francisco at around 1:30am Pacific time. Our rental car had been given to someone else. We protested to the night clerk that we had a reservation. He apologized. Jayne said to him that we were on our honeymoon. The magic words. He upgraded us to a luxury car, a huge Chrysler with leather seats and a terrific sound system.
We knew when planning the trip that we would be landing late at night and we didn't want to drive to wine country in the dark, so we had reservations that night at the Airport Best Western. We got to our hotel room at around 2:00am Pacific time on Tuesday September 11th. Our body clocks were still on Eastern time, so to us it was about 5:00am.
We got into bed and fell asleep quickly, tired from the long day. After only a few hours, we woke up, a little after 6:00am Pacific time. The towers had already been hit, but we were unaware. We were in San Francisco, we were about to drive to wine country, it was the first real day of our honeymoon. A little honeymooning, and then a shower. Jayne had a habit of turning on the TV and the Today Show almost as soon as she got out of bed, but not that day.
After we got out of the shower and dried off, we talked about going out to breakfast. I started to shave and she turned on the TV. The smoking towers were on the screen, but the sound hadn't kicked in. She began to change the channels, looking for the NBC logo in the corner. It seemed the same program was on every station. As I shaved, Jayne was talking to me about what was on the screen.
"I can't find NBC- Oh, wait a minute." She saw the NBC logo, but the programming was the same. The sound kicked in once she stopped flipping channels. A solemn voice said 'and the World Trade Center is no more.' Jayne started to scream. "Oh my God it's real!"
We stood in front of the hotel TV for several minutes completely dumbfounded. The crawl at the bottom of the screen was talking about the Pentagon explosion and the evacuation of the White House and the houses of Congress. The San Francisco local NBC affiliate news team broke into the broadcast, and it was showing picture in picture downtown Manhattan and telling us that the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge were closed, that all American airspace was frozen, and that for security reasons the police were quarantining the airport area. They put up a map of the airport area with marks as to where the roadblocks were being set up. We were just inside the quarantine area. Jayne started to panic.
"What are we going to do?" She asked.
"Let's get the hell out of here. We've got reservations. Whatever is going on we're way better off in a small town inland than in a big city on the coast."
We hustled our baggage out to the car. Jayne went to settle the bill while I finished loading the trunk. Stunned people were milling about the parking lot. An airport shuttle pulled up, filled with people whose flights were suddenly canceled - they all needed rooms. Jayne came out to the car and we drove off. I turned on the radio, and we found a morning news broadcast. Local authorities had decided not to close the bridges, but I didn't want to drive across either one of them that day. I decided to drive south to San Jose and go around San Francisco Bay.
Just as we were about to get on the freeway, a Korean Air Lines 747 flew, very low, over the car. I figured they must not have had enough fuel to divert to Canada and must have been the last plane to have clearance to land. By now it was about 8:00am, maybe a little later. I drove for a while, and once we were on the eastern side of the bay we stopped for breakfast at a roadside diner. We started calling people on our cell phones. Jayne got hold of a friend who lived on First Avenue and Fourth Street. I called some family members, who didn't remember that we were flying the night before and thought we may have been on the flight from Newark that crashed in Pennsylvania.
It turned out that several people tried to call us, but because we had 917 area codes on our cell phones they couldn't get through to us. We could not receive calls, but since we were in the bay area we could dial out. There were some restaurant patrons at the next table, laughing about something or other, then became silent when they heard us talking to our loved ones, telling them that we were OK, that we had flown the night before.
Arriving in wine country was surreal. The wine train chugged past with people inside sipping and having a nice lunch. We made our way to the inn where Jayne had made our reservations. They had a 4:00pm check in time, and we arrived there around noon. The innkeepers were pleasantly surprised at our arrival, knowing we were coming in from New York and unsure as to when we were flying, whether we could make it, whether or not we were alive. Our room wasn't ready. Our hostess suggested a winery where we could go on a tour while our room was prepared. Not knowing what else to do, we went on the wine tour.
This was one of those inns with no TVs in the rooms, only one in the lobby. There was a guest in the lobby watching the TV. There were two couples from Augusta, Georgia. The right wing Republican husband of one of the two couples sat in the lobby, holding the remote. This guy was going on and on about how his stocks were going down the toilet. I wanted to punch his lights out. The subtext of the shit this guy was spewing as he continued was that New York was a necessary evil because the banks and the stock market were there. I knew that this guy saw my adopted home as a cesspool of niggers and spics and kikes and fags. I thought of the words of a friend of ours: "Lincoln was wrong. The south should have been allowed to secede from the union."
Jayne and I talked for a moment about who we knew at the Trade Center- there were two, a close friend who worked on the 44th floor of Tower One and the father of one of Jayne's co-workers. The prick from Augusta said in the most snide tone-
"Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but there are 50,000 people in there and they're all dead."
I looked at him thinking 'I'll bet you like to be the bearer of bad tidings' but I said nothing. We left the lobby and went outside to look at a koi pond, the huge goldfish helped bring on some needed tranquility.
The rest of the day is now a distant blur.
