I got on my bicycle around 6.00 in the afternoon and rode across the Brooklyn Bridge to lower Manhattan. I try to turn my memory back to before construction of the World Trade Center began, to understand the skyline now.
The skyline is still grand, but the memory trick doesn't work. Smoke still rises from the site of the World Trade Center, even after steady rain yesterday. A combined total of almost 300 floors from several buildings of synthetic materials and other inflammables will surely smolder for a long time.
From the Brooklyn Bridge, I turned left on Park Row, in front of City Hall, and then rode down Broadway to Bowling Green. Pedestrians were kept behind barricades on the east side of Broadway. To my amazement, I was able to ride right down the middle of the street without hindrance, the only other vehicles being official and rescue vehicles. This brought me to within one block of the World Trade Center. I had previously seen it from two blocks away. From Broadway, the Canyon of Heroes, the site of ticker-tape parades, the sight is horrible beyond description. The building most standing, 5 World Trade Center was a low building at the northeast corner of the site, housing, among other things, one of the main entrances to the World Trade Center concourse and a very popular branch of Borders Books. It is now a gutted half-shell.
At the southern end of Broadway are Bowling Green and, behind it, the old U.S. Customs House. I turned left into the narrow streets of the oldest part of the city, riding up to Wall Street, then down to Water Street, near the East River. The area around the South Street Seaport normally would be chock-a-block with tourists and day-trippers. It is nearly deserted now, a perverse pleasure for natives.
I continued up Water Street, past the Brooklyn Bridge, to Chatham Square, in the heart of Chinatown. In Chatham Square is a memorial to the Chinese American veterans of World War II, and a candlelight vigil was going on that night, led by members of the local American Legion post. A large American flag, made entirely of flowers, was put up. Many expressions of regret and defiance, in English and Chinese, were posted on two large bulletin boards.
I made my way up to Union Square, which was a collection point for supplies for the relict effort and is now full of makeshift memorials and posters describing those missing, now presumed dead. The crowd in Union Square gave the appearance of nothing as much as a late-1960s “be-in.” In one corner, a group of people who appeared to be of southern Asian descent sang the National Anthem. A ragtag rally was in formation for a march to Times Square; people carried placards calling for an end to war and racism, for an “alternate solution,” and for peace and love. I pointed out to one person my concern that those who destroyed the World Trade Center were unlikely to be moved by this appeal to non-violence. A blank stare was my answer. I talked with the minister of Calvary Church in Lancaster, Pa.; he and his wife drove up for the day to have a look at the city. He told me that he had asked someone to describe the proposed "alternate solution" and didn't get more of a reply than a mumble. One young man, looking to be of college age, sat on a parapet strumming his guitar, and weakly singing “We Shall Overcome.” Maybe I'm wrong, but nobody in that march looked as though they had lost anyone close in the wreckage about two miles to the south. The minister and I agreed that while these marchers seemed quite distant from reality, the fact that they could do this at all was one of this country's great strengths.
Further along in Union Square Park, I saw a fireman in full dress uniform, and supposed, correctly, that he had been at a fireman's funeral. He was looking upon the different crowds in the park, and at Union Square, and at Manhattan, without expression save one of lingering shock. Until a year ago he was assigned to Squad 1 on Union Street, one block from my house, but someone else got selected to head up the house and he got assigned instead to a fire house out on Kings Highway. He said that had he stayed at Squad 1, he might have been talking to me today; Squad 1 lost 12 of their 30 men. He told of a couple of fire houses whose entire crews were lost. I gave him my thanks that his Maker wasn't finished with him yet, and he smiled.
I got on my bike and rode west on 14th Street, then left on 7th Avenue, down past St. Vincent's Hospital, past my favorite jazz club (the Village Vanguard) and left on Bleecker Street. Greenwich Village was crowded with the usual Friday night vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Restaurants were starting to fill up. People were enjoying a pleasant evening. The city was, and is, starting to get its bearings back, and not before time. I rode down through Little Italy and Chinatown, along a typically busy Mott Street and a weirdly empty Lafayette Street, then across the Brooklyn Bridge and back home.
The spire of the Empire State Building is floodlit once again. The GE Building in Rockefeller Center is floodlit once again. The spire of the Chrysler Building has its lights on. We may well suffer more. This conflict will be fought, and won, at length, but this city, this country, this idea will prevail.