A 9/11 Memoir

9/11, I was up on 110th, near the corner of Broadway. Brother in law comes into the room and says "Dan, a 757 has crashed into the World Trade Center. Being a late riser, I began in my grogginess to say "you gotta be kidding m...," but could tell straight up that he was serious as a cardiac arrest. He found out because he'd been listening to NYC radio; suddenly there wasn't a station to be found on the dial. The Twin Towers' antenna had already plunged with the towers, I believe. Or maybe not, just out of service, because when we took the elevator up to the roof of the 15-story building, we saw - from about 6-8 miles distance - the first tower still burning. Then we saw what we thought at the time to be an Air Force fighter sent late to intercept, but during the last 9 years my bro-in-law have compared our experiences. We now both believe that the plane we saw was the one that struck the second tower.
We went back to the first floor and watched the coverage on TV, as the transmission had been switched to the Empire State Building by then. Made me cringe to see "NYC Under A State of Emergency." Of course one must expect it, but it was a very uncomfortable sense of being imprisoned on Manhattan. Which we effectively were, for two days. I went back to the roof a little later and saw a vast cloud of dust and ash where there had been sinister smoke and flame before. I apparently viewed the aftermath of the collapse, rather than the collapse per se.
Thinking we would be under a protracted state of martial law, I went to a nearby supermarket and stocked up on supplies, as did so many others.

It was still Tuesday, 911: We watched the TV and listened to the radio coverage, as transmission had been switched to the Empire State Building. I unsuccessfully tried to donate blood at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and stopped in on the way at the Cathedral of St. John The Devine for a little "quiet time." Later, I tried to purchase heavy boots for, can you believe it, volunteering - for the "rescue" effort. No dice; I bussed or subwayed or walked down as far as 40th street near Times Square; Manhattan was blocked off south of that point. The whole day we were under the impression that 10-20,000 were dead and thousands more injured. All day Sept 11, 2001 there was a caravan of first responders screaming down the Henry Hudson Parkway from upstate, and black SUVs and NYPD squads screeching through the streets. Still Tuesday, 9/11, I heard about the Pentagon and the Plane that went down in Pennsylvania. I wondered if Bush and Rummy were behind the Terrorist Attack, as Rumsfeld was conviently on the opposite side of the Pentagon from impact. Bush and Cheney, by our reckoning, were god knows where. Wednesday I walked the dog down by the Hudson River and smelled the burning plastic in the air, as the wind had shifted northwards.
The Siege of Manhattan was lifted on Thursday the 13th; bugging out, I got to experience the bedlam and bomb threats at the Port Authority Terminal that day. As the bus emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel on the New Jersey side, there were gasps from the passengers as we all turned to see the smoldering ruins at "Ground Zero." The coach continued almost non-stop to Cleveland, where the station was mobbed. There were hundreds of passengers trying to board various buses, and a near-riot, because those of us originating at New York and continuing to Chicago got precedence over all other newcomers. Some of the transfers who got on in Detroit had been waiting for 12, 18 hours or maybe even longer.

Noticed, between Cleveland and Chi-Town, for the first time in my life, not a plane in the sky! Arriving in Chicago, the skyline never looked better. This is all to the best of my recollection; I've probably got many things out of sequence.