Two Fears Converge

I used to go to an evening ice skating session at Sky Rink in Manhattan when it really was in the sky. Okay, I think it was on the tenth floor but for an ice skating rink that was pretty high. The rink has since moved to Chelsea Piers and, I believe, out of the sky. I don't really know. I have never been there. But that is not my point here which is to tell how two of my fears converged going home from Sky Rink to my apartment on West 85th Street one night.

First, my fears.

As a younger adult I was afraid of teenagers. Not that they would necessarily hurt me physically--although I guess that was a possibility--but more that they would somehow demean me. 

It was not so much a Lord of the Flies fear as much as a Mean Girls apprehension.

I'd never been in a public high school during school hours. I remember being terrified going to a Southern California high school on business. Walking onto that campus I felt not like a mature business woman but like a transfer student from Dorktown USA. A ridiculous emotion but it was mine. 

I also had a fear of a block in my neighborhood at least at night when it would be deserted. If there was any housing it was crammed between some commercial enterprises that were closed at night. The other side of the street was mostly school yard. It was the kind of block--I believe in some cases the actual block--where a fair number of bodies were found on early seasons of Law and Order.

I told myself never to get off at that stop on the way home from ice skating. It would be close to 11pm. I told myself to stay on the bus until Eighty-sixth street which would be busy. I never listen to myself. Maybe I told myself no one would mess with a woman carrying two sharp blades not to mention toe picks. 

So I got off the bus and started down the dark and empty block. And there they were. Three teenagers walking towards me. Three teenagers who noticed me. I could tell. As they grew closer, I grew more apprehensive. One of the males was eyeing me. Then it happened. Just like I knew it would. He spoke.

"Woody Allen plays the clarinet doesn't he?"

As I told them, he does.

Life on the New Jersey Turnpike

I live at Exit 6 of the New Jersey Turnpike. Some of you may know it as Pennsylvania.

I've often thought that if I had used all the hours I spent on the Jersey Turnpike towards a single goal I might have learned fluent Mandarin, earned Olympic medals, or bought a beach house with my gas and toll money. And, I never used the highway to commute. I viewed my hours on the road as wasted time especially in the years when I traveled with an AM radio. But yesterday riding in the backseat of friends' car, I saw the turnpike differently. I recalled memories covering the entire span of my life. The Jersey turnpike is an unique position to do that. We are about the same age. Aside from the first few years of my life when I wasn't doing much traveling, the turnpike was my contemporary.

I don't remember my first trip on the turnpike. I took the highway, the concept of a highway, for granted. For me, it was always there.

The turnpike was the road to New York, and my family traveled there regularly. First, with my brother and sister and later, because I was the baby, with just me alone in the backseat.
Here's what I remember from the era I rode the turnpike as a child.

Playing WHO AM I. Mostly because everyone found it hysterical when I asked "Have you ever appeared on the 'Betty White Show?'" To this day, I have no idea why they found that so funny. (I loved Betty White)

Playing SPOTTING LICENSE PLATES. Did this game even exist before superhighways?

Stopping at the Joyce Kilmer rest stop, the first place I ever encountered chocolate mint ice cream. God bless you, Howard Johnson. Only recently did it occur to me that Joyce Kilmer was approximately 45 minutes from where we lived. Okay, maybe 50 at sixty miles per hour. Yet, we always stopped. Didn't want to hit New York hungry.

Smelling Elizabeth. I never failed to respond to the odiferous section of the turnpike with moans, groans, and calls to roll up the windows. (No AC in those days.) I recall flopping around as in pain when I had the backseat to myself. I was so happy when Elizabeth NJ stopped smelling. It smelled yesterday. The air-conditioning didn't help.

The last family trip I remember was the only one I made with my grandmother. I was old enough to do the driving, and the speed limit was probably then 65 mph. I now wonder if she had ever been on a highway before. She may never have gone that fast. She was frightened. I was annoyed that my father insisted I drive in the right lane at the minimum speed of 40 mph. I wish I'd been more understanding.

My brother and his family lived in New England so, as an adult, I found myself starting every trip from Philadelphia on the turnpike. There was a time I swore it was always raining on that road. It was not raining yesterday, but it poured on the trip home.

Later, when I lived in New England, I would start and end many trips on the NJ Turnpike. Eventually, out of sheer boredom,  I found many alternative routes. Many. Not as direct but not as familiar (i.e. monotonous). I guess familiarity can breed contempt. But my old VW convertible and I still found ourselves together on the turnpike on more than a few occasions. There is something to be said for familiarity. And, not just the rest stops.

There are benefits to driving the turnpike. 

One is the view of Manhattan. When I lived in New York, the sight of Manhattan across the river signaled I was almost home. But just passing by was a treat. The most beautiful view? The twin towers of the World Trade Center painted an orangish-gold by the setting sun.

Not all my memories are sweetly sentimental. 

One night around Exit 8 on the turnpike going south, I discovered the people in the car behind me had just gotten on at Exit 9. How, do you ask, did I learn that? Well. When you sit for five hours in the middle lane of the turnpike in what is increasingly becoming the middle of the night, you tend to make friends. There's not much else you can do in the center lane when just a dozen car lengths ahead of you, a car hit a bus that hit a Brink's truck that might have actually hit a semi. We sat while they not only cleared the accident but picked up all the change that fell out of the Brink's truck onto the highway. And New Jersey made us pay the toll. I was going to pursue the injustice of charging for that trip, but priorities changed. That was the last night I saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I don't recall looking, but I always did. Within a few weeks they were gone.

Things I learned:

Never change more than one lane at a time. I learned that when I chose to not go all the way from the right lane into the left lane. Luckily. Two cars raced by at about 100 mph. 

Never sit in the left lane unless you are going well over the speed limit. Well, never even venture into the left lane unless you are going well over the speed limit.

When traveling on Christmas, always use the truck lanes. It appears that most truckers don't work on Christmas. 

And, don't forget to check out the New York skyline.

 

9/11

Written for Facebook post on 25th Anniversary: "I don't feel I have any right to write about 9/11 but neither do I want to ignore the anniversary. I made some notes in my blog."

9/11 was my tragedy only in the sense that it was everyone's tragedy. I wasn't there. I no longer even lived in New York. I knew one person who died. Some knew dozens. Thousands lost immediate family. 

I don't want to insinuate myself into others' tragedies but I do want to acknowledge them. Not to intrude but to honor. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, there was a nationwide memorial. I know it was a moment of silence at the moments the planes hit. I think church bells might have rung. I found myself outside, about to get into my car,  across the street from the home of a family that had lost a father. I felt as if I was intruding on their grief, usurping their pain, pain that I could not imagine. To lose a loved one is always hard, but to be forced to imagine the last moments of those victims is horrifying.

I have a vision of the only victim I knew. I see her with black smoke under her nostrils, the way I've seen the faces of fire victims.  But that is just my imagination. No one alive saw her after the plane hit.

Valerie loved working at the World Trade Center. She loved showing it off. I remember eating lunch with her on the plaza while she extolled the virtues of the complex. I think of the crowds of young attractive people and wonder how many of them were at work when the planes hit.

Valerie had been a colleague with whom I was sometimes friendly. When she lived in Los Angeles, I'd get in touch when I was in town. She was serious about building her career. She thought I was hopeless, working too hard for too little money. She was right. 

I saw her infrequently, the last time a summer or two before she died at her house in the Hamptons. After the disaster I didn't immediately put together that Valerie worked at Cantor, Fitzgerald. I could remember someone talking about Cantor. "Cantor this." "Cantor that." But as I watched the towers fall, I thought that I was witnessing the death of someone I knew. I don't know why I blocked that connection but I did.

When I lived in New York, I didn't go to the WTC that often. A few visits stick in my mind. Going to the observation deck with visitors. Fighting the wind on the plaza on a cold winter day. Sitting in the lounge at Windows on the World and looking out thinking how far away the nearest rooftop was. I concluded that even if I could string a pulley from the 107th floor to that roof by the time I reached the other building I would be traveling so fast the impact would kill me. Years later someone might have sat in that same spot, wondering the same thing--if they could see through the thick smoke. I don't think when I was imagining my escape I ever considered that could be someone's reality. 

In later years, I'd go to the World Trade on business. I don't  know what classes I attended or what companies I visited. I do remember one office and one especially fun contact. I recall looking out the window by his desk at the Statue of Liberty, so tiny from that height. I don't recall his name, so I'll never learn his fate.

There are strangers I think of in particular. I was often in an elevator or in an elevator lobby at 8:46. I would arrive early, get a snack in the mall area, and head up at 8:45 to a 9am appointment. How many of my fellow passengers were following that schedule on 9/11? It is painful to think what they went through.

When I first heard a plane had crashed into the North Tower, I didn't find it inconceivable. One night flying home from Albany on a commuter flight, our path down the Hudson and around the tip of Manhattan to LaGuardia took us so close to the building that I recall saying to myself, "Veal looks good." 

I never went to the site after September 11th. I was in the area within a couple of weeks but didn't walk the few blocks to look.  It felt wrong. It was not a tourist attraction. I'd been to the site after the 1993 bombing but that was because I visited a friend in the area. There was disruption but not widespread destruction. I don't remember any odor. There was no escaping the smell in 2001. 

That night I took the Staten Island Ferry to my car (which I didn't even try to bring into Manhattan) and watched the site from the back deck. The scene was brightly lit letting me see the smoke that rose as high as the other buildings in the area. Maybe fifty stories of dust and smoke.

Driving out of New York on Christmas morning that year, I passed the wall covered with photos that had hung there for over three months. That is the closest I ever came to viewing the site with the exception of what I saw on a ride on the PATH train to New Jersey. I assumed the gaping hole had once been part of the complex. I've never been to the Memorial even though I once stayed at the W Hotel across the street. Somehow visiting the site felt intrusive. I think on my next visit to New York I will go. It's time. 

The last time I recall seeing the Twin Towers was while landing at Newark on a flight from Seattle. I'd gotten to know the two boys beside me. In their early teens, they were on their way to a year in Israel. When I saw the WTC appear out our window, I interrupted them to point it out. They were excited. The sight of the Twin Towers could be exciting. When I lived in New York whether I saw them from a plane, train, or car, it was a sign I was almost home. When I didn't live in New York and drove by them on the New Jersey turnpike, they were part of a gorgeous view of Manhattan. I wrote a blog once about the ten most beautiful sights I'd ever seen. The WTC at sunset was one.

My plans for that week were to attend a wedding on 9/15 and fly to England on Monday 9/17. While I watched 9/11 unfold on TV I called my friend in England and asked if she was watching television. While she went to turn hers on, the Pentagon was hit. She asked if I was okay and I said I was fine. "I'm in a small town in Pennsylvania." We hung up and the next event was that a plane had crashed "in a small town in Pennsylvania." It was nowhere near me. 

My trip was postponed. All flights were cancelled leaving the skies oddly empty except for the occasion military flight. I drove to the wedding in DC. 

On that day I heard the most meaningful best man's speech ever. I can only paraphrase the ending. Walking to the ceremony in Georgetown, the best man passed an older woman who asked if he was headed to a wedding. When he said he was, she said, "I am so pleased that there is something happy happening today." 

Hope. It really does spring eternal.