way down, down, down by the docks of the city
blind and dirty, he asked me for a dime
a dime for a cup of coffee.....
i got no dime but i have some time
to hear a story (Hunter-Garcia)
so i remember the cup with maroon triangles more than anything else.....i see it consistently....i dream about it....it's always there......i will try to find a picture on the internet.......it's significance to me is not just because i was fiddling with the lid to add sweet & Low when i was knocked out of my chair and onto my desk when the first plane struck my building.....it was the last thing i saw before all hell broke loose......i had a recurring dream ( and still do) that i am in the building and i am the only one that knows the planes are coming....and that cup is always there......and all of a sudden in my dream i realize that i have to run for the stairs......usually wake up in a cold sweat......but that cup....yep......it never should have been there, but it may have saved my life.
In the summer/autumn of 2001 I was working for Instinet Clearing Services ( a subdivision of Reuters...we were one of the first and only at the time ECN ; electronic crossing networks) we were on the 13th Floor of the North Tower...TOWER 1....first hit, last to fall. I was part of their venture into a Retail Brokerage offering and a Clearing Corp......we were still in our early stages and Reuters was prepping for an IPO to take us public ( an offering that i would have close to 100,000 share of options ...i was going to retire before my 50th birthday) i digress.....in the summer of 2001, since we did not have much work, the Margin Dept did a lot of sitting around, we took extended lunches in Little Italy or the Village, Drank in O'Haras and played on the computer......but we had a regular breakfast in the Port Authority Cafeteria on the 43rd floor of Tower 1 ( we had to take 2 elevators to get there) we would sit there and admire the incredible views while we read the post and drank coffee.....It was me, Johnny Fraulo, Pooch and Anthony.........but the day prior it just so happened that Fraulo was on Vacation in Vegas.....Pooch was on Jury Duty in Staten Island and Anthony was always late on the Express Bus from Brooklyn.......so as i rode the ferry over from Hoboken i decided to grab a coffee from a street vendor on Vesey street between wtc 6 and wtc 7.......ironically i then walked up the survivor staircase to the plaza and into Tower 1....and so a few minutes later i was at my desk ( and NOT in the elevator going to the cafeteria) i have often wondered what would have happened if any of the other 3 were in the office......the howling screams i heard coming from the elevators just a few minutes later (while i was on the Emergency Phones by the Stairs) could have been my own screams....the burnt, smoldering corpses that littered the lobby just 10 minutes later , the still smoking bodies we had to step around to get to the Vista Hotel could have been me and my buddies....
I remember Sept 13th ....i was the only person in my car on the NJ Transit train....I had to walk from Hoboken to our disaster site at 101 Pavonia Ave in Jersey City...it was a ghost town....we setup shop in a room that housed our computer servers...it was freezing in there, it had to be.....and the Old AC unit made a loud BANG every time it kicked on.....which was every few minutes......i remember some of the women were in tears from being scared by the loud noises....i remember some of them were sent home....i remember we had one long window in the room that faced lower Manhattan......we spent a month there.....there weren't any good bars there along the water in 2001......but we had a deli......and everyday the four of us would grab 3 or 4 pints in brown bags and sit on a park bench and stare across the Hudson at the smoldering pile that used to be our office (years later Dorrians would open across the street) we watched the smoke change from Black....to grey......to a sickening yellow haze......for weeks it continued to rise....slowly killing everyone and everything in it's path.....and we sat helpless across the river just watching...wondering ...waiting.
I share some of this today because i fear that many in the country have....if not forgotten...have chose to move on......i fear that attention paid to the anniversary will only wane and diminish from year 26 and forward...i wanted to get this out and on paper before it slipped from my memory too....although i doubt that will happen ....my luck, even i have Alzheimer's someday; this will be the only shit that sticks with me.....the Cup with the maroon triangles....i wish i could find one, i would post a picture.
anyway...stay safe......i'm going off the grid until saturday.....i have a beach chair and a cooler full of beer with my name written all over it
I got up and wandered
Wandered downtown
nowhere to go
just to hang around