9/11
Michael Drummond Davidson

Tuesday, September 11th

8:15 am

It's a picture perfect day atop the old building; the morning sky a brilliant azure with whiffs of high cirrus clouds. The heat of August is gone, and New York settles in for some delicious days of bright sun and cool temperatures that make working high up in the stone canyons like a jaunt through the Sierra Madres.

In the distance we can see other crews on other buildings working off their rigs; often we'll hallo to them and wave in the silence of the clear, crisp air.

This morning we are having a brief meeting on the helicopter deck of the old Pan Am, over on 44th and Madison. It's the usual assortment of cannibals: nervous bean counters and micro-managers trying to armchair a work they know little about; a chain-smoking super who muscles through a kabuki of plans and specs with a broken-nosed labor foreman who talks in rude gestures; an electrician who won't listen, plus a few old wizened hardhats with weathered faces; and representatives of the steel and masonry trades who know too much and have little patience for young Turks in suits on the brown-nose make.

From where we stand, the morning sun sparkles the deco chrome eagles of the Chrysler Building, so close you feel you could touch their heads as they stand watch over the city. In the distance the Hudson is majestic in the September sun. The Circle Line and the ferry tugs dart and ply the island as if it were a holiday.

Just to our port side is the brilliant vista of all downtown New York

Classical and postmodern architecture grace the grand boulevards leading to downtown, still bejeweled in the morning light. The cascading pediments and porticos sprinkle the canyons of Madison, 6th and 5th Avenues and turn along Broadway posing as grand dames of another time. The skyline is impressive; the lower metropolis serves up clear views of the Prudential, Battery Park City, City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge. A little further south are the Twin Towers with the Verazzano and the Bay of New York beyond.

Office workers pour into their buildings, many with coffee in hand. It's a Tuesday. Warm, yet you can feel a cool Canadian front upon us. The meeting gets sidetracked and has little to do with us, but we stand around anyway to witness the slaughter of opposing egos.

Down below people and cabs appear as ants. Crowds roam 5th Avenue and loiter on the steps of the public library, taking in the sun. We can see the outdoor tables being set out with patrons taking their coffee and paper on the green at Bryant Park.

In the near distance, tourists gathering at the Empire state building observation deck, their camera lens reflecting back at us. It's going to be a grand day.

The view of the Trade towers is distant (50 blocks) but very distinct. We have brothers there. The steel workers are part of our larger crew; they do our rigging when we shift the heavy steel I beams that carry our hanging scaffolding rigs. They have other jobs around the city, and the Twin Towers is one of them. Some mornings when we were on coffee break, we'd act as clever Boy Scouts and make prearranged mirror flashes from our tower to theirs. If successful, we'd salute each other over the cell phone, guffawing like errant schoolboys. They in turn would show us pictures from the top of the trade center looking north; fantastic panoramas of the city and New Jersey, but a little too high for me.

By 9 a.m. our skull session is over, leaving little blood to feed on by all the suits; with the super chewing his shirt buttons over some practical math he should have learned in school if he was paying attention.

We get to work hanging rigs from the 57th floor; it's a busy morning. We are rigging up over on the Vanderbilt side, with commanding views of all the West Side, gamming on about the weather and what we've got to do, when my foreman, Tiny (who is all of 265) breaks conversation and says, "Getta load of this asshole!"

With that, all eyes focus on this incoming 757 wagging its wings, coming down 6th just over the Pan Am just 200 feet from our deck. As the huge jet approaches, it veers slightly to the right; the sparkle of the sun glistens its wings and the warm rays spotlight its fuselage.

Our men, who hang precariously off the sides of buildings, are outraged at the total disregard for safety. They stand from their rigs and yell obscenities at the pilot, shaking their trowels as the jumbo passes just up and broadside of us.

The sun is very bright just now. We can see the white shirt of the pilot, and in the direct sun we can see the heads of passengers at their assigned windows. I distinctly see a blond woman at her seat to the rear. I can just make out her face as it is pressed against the glass with a look I will never forget.

Those of us at this vantage point stare in disbelief. Perhaps this is another low-level tourist ride; perhaps he came low to avoid another aircraft; perhaps... perhaps... as we watch the plane pass the Empire State Building and then diminish in size until... until... poof.

A large ball of flame emerges from one of the Twin Towers. All at once everyone is screaming. Radios crackle. "It hit the Trade Tower... Tower hit... A plane just hit Trade Center!!!

We are slack jawed; there's a deafening silence as we glance at each other in momentary stillness; radio calls are coming in from below asking for information. We watch the burning and tug at cigarettes, hangnails and lower lips, unbelieving of what we have witnessed. In silence we watch a black ugly smoke fill the air and our hearts with the knowledge that many souls are in ugly torment right now.

Minutes, thirty or more, pass, then we observe what appears to be another plane coming in for a "look see" as if to provide assistance, then suddenly it plows into the other tower... explosion; then fireball.

No mistake this time—that's deliberate. It's now apparent that something terrible is going on; something awful and vile is gripping our stomachs and won't let go of the sinking helplessness of witnessing this tragedy.

The radio crackles; emergency services and the FBI orders everyone out and off the building; we are informed that the Pan Am and Grand Central Station immediately below us are possible targets. By order of the police and the military, we are to get down and move away from the building. The reasoning is simple: take out the Pan Am, take out Grand Central—we're next.

Everyone starts yelling over the radios. "Get down! Get down!" Like submarines under depth charge attack, the rigs spring into action and scale down the building like spiders, in record time. Over their radios, the men are cussing and yelling and watching the sky for incoming, but handle the machines expertly.

Inside, the stairs and the elevators are jammed. There is no panic yet, but the slightest jar of the building could get this crowd running; everyone is anxious and fearful to learn about what's happening to them and the city.

Once down, we head for the huge tourist Irish bars, O'Malley's and Patrick Connelly's and the TGIF, where we stand six, seven, then ten deep getting information from the huge sports TVs, cradling black and tans and nursing eye openers.

Office workers jam in with us, and even a French restoration crew in hard hats. The bars are now ten and fifteen deep; I interpret news for the French as the crowds spill into the streets, trying to move away from Grand Central and in hopes of evacuating the city all together.

Traffic is stalled; we hear all the bridges and tunnels are closed. There, on large screens, the tragedy unfolds in Washington and Pennsylvania. We think of our missing steel crew and ponder their fate.

Unable to call loved ones, some of us are crying, others vowing revenge, all different nationalities, all united as New Yorkers and patriots in America, whether we make our homes here or not. There isn't time for a second pint. Port Authority and emergency service police from Grand Central burst into the bars rapping their clubs on the fabled walls and marble floors with rapid succession, shouting, "Get out, get out! Grand Central is going to blow!"

For a split second, no one speaks; our lives seem to be in suspended animation. There is no time for good-byes; our eyes say everything. With that, a sea of sweating humanity makes for the exit in a departure not unlike the evacuation of a ship sinking at sea.

Quick paced and fearful, patrons take to the streets only to be swept up by another surge of humanity running and jostling their way through the mass of the larger influx.

The men, some still cradling their pints and eye openers, try to stay together but it's impossible. Briefcases and high heels litter the street. The crowd surges and snakes in overflow capacity as thousands spill into the Times Square area at 44th Street. I watch and wave good-bye as part of my crew drifts south with a large mass of people going downtown in hopes of walking to their homes in Brooklyn, just over the bridge.

Some of the other men who I thought were just behind me suddenly were no longer there. I am now separated and somewhat disorientated. Like Virgil, I decide, if this is the apocalypse I would be better served to witness the end first hand, rather from my bed or any ill-prepared illusions of self survival.

The crowd in Times Square is as large as any on VJ day. I arrive there and mesh with the crowd of thousands watching the mega-screens, so famous among the lights of Broadway. The crowd is muted as the buildings burn. Absorbed in their own thoughts, they try to get some handle on the tragedy, try to come to grips with the totality of this criminal act.

From the swelling crowd there arises a communal gasp that grows in size and tempo to uncontrollable cries as the terrible collapse of Tower 2 unfolds before our eyes. The disconnect between the screen and the awful events ongoing just downtown was too much to bear. In the aftermath, mayhem breaks out, and the crowd in its uncertainty becomes broken. Spellbound, it moves pell-mell: a hydra with many heads snaking north, or moving south, moving—moving to God knows where; towards homes impossible to reach, but moving just the same.

Since my work apartment is in Hell's Kitchen; I don't have far to go; besides, with the bridges and tunnels closed, there is nowhere else to go, really. No, the quickest way off the island right now is to swim for it, not an entertaining thought since my gold medal days in the free stroke are long behind me. Not since the fall of Hong Kong have so many people of a major metropolis tried to leave a city en masse during a crisis. My plan, if you can call it that, should it become necessary, is to head for the river in hopes of being picked up by river traffic heading to New Jersey. A remote possibility at that, but a sound one, as I find no comfort in large numbers.

The biggest fear here now is lack of food, water and sanitary conditions. The next 48 hrs are critical to the city's survival to make sure that doesn't happen. Civil unrest and looting would surely follow such shortages, not a pretty picture to contemplate in a city of 11 million. The surge of the crowd carries me along Broadway to 42nd Street, where many stand holding hands in prayer and stare at televisions in disbelief as thousands try to make their way to the now inoperative Port Authority bus and subway stations.

Here there are mega-screens three stories high. Like gods, they appear before the throng showing the aftermath and distant destruction of the first tower. The media is dismal and has nothing new to report, but drones on with repeated broadcasts of the towers' collapse with endless empty pseudo-speculation.

I wander and witness the area for hours, Why not? Whatever is happening here is happening all over the city; if not the world; only here it's happening first and tenfold.

All the while, I'm thinking that, quite possibly, the world as we know it has changed forever. I'm praying that this isn't so, but I'm passing people engaged in the same quiet anxious speculation, praying and waiting for buses that don't come, subways that don't run, and phones that don't work.

We are all waiting, looking skywards and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In passing, I even take in twenty minutes of the black preacher, a normal fixture on 42nd and Eighth Avenue; his Gospel, an animated and excited one, usually falls on deaf ears during the busy workday. Today his crowd swells beyond the sidewalk and well into the street. His voice fills the air in a raspy prophecy of scripture and dire consequences for those not saved, only this time it is against the fiery backdrop of an Armageddon.

I also take in the wisdom of Rudy's Bar, a famous New York blue-collar watering hole in Hell's Kitchen where self-styled policy makers are in full session. There I witness barflies transformed into commandos and old hands of old wars who call out for the A bombs against the supporters of atrocity. Conspicuously absent are the off duty firemen and police who usually stop in here after their shifts. Gone also is the sense and sensibility of an old New York replaced by the sullen and angry bravado of the male ego in Helplessness.

By 5:40 the other shoe drops when the second tower collapses. The magnitude of the events forces me outside, and I head back towards my apartment. A medieval pall grips the city. The air is thick and dark and dirty with a strangely acrid and pungent smell. Businesses are closed; people scurry about like shadows under the lights of Broadway, now extinguished. There is no traffic. Clusters of people stand on street corners and fearfully stare to the South where the terrible carnage of lost lives and twisted metal lies encapsulated in a ghostly orange glow against a menacing night sky. F-16s dot the horizon. There is a raw emptiness in everyone's stomach. We are like sailors who suddenly realize that the peaceful sailing is over and that our last best meal was the night before, as we face an unknown tempest of gigantic proportions,

After 8 hours of wandering, I now slowly make my way to my apartment. In the process, I pass the empty firehouses, already draped in black and strewn with flowers for their lost men. Unable to fathom the number of widows and orphaned children left behind, I stare numbly as caretakers, eyes vacant, and look upon the night with dread.

I climb the steps of my apartment like an old man. I take account of my few meager possessions and jam what I may need in a rucksack, should I need it. From somewhere in the apartment above, a monotonous TV spews the same inane coverage over and over like a record caught skipping and repeating. I open the fridge and check how much food there is should the crisis worsen. As I stare glumly at some wilting celery, I realize the days of summer are over. No matter what your creative thoughts were before this, cherish them, as we may have just seen the last of the good old days.

I've got a day, maybe two, of food, and that's if I stretch it and water and electricity holds. To break the monotony, I try to call home again, this time from a hard line phone, hoping I can get through. No luck. I can't sleep; there are endless sirens moving down the West Side Highway. I keep trying the phone. It's a long night before I get through. My first phone call home is at 2 a.m. There is a lot of crying and relief from my family, because they know we sometimes work in the area of twin Towers; and simply, they just didn't know what had happened to me. They are all fine, but my baby wants her Da-Da home; it tugs my heart that I am not there. It seems that back home in Mississippi, as it is so common elsewhere, there is a run on petrol and ammo.

I feel lucky to have been able to call home. Tonight as I lie in my bed, there are thousands of families waiting to hear from their Da-Das calling home, a call that I am beginning to realize will never come. Over the next days and weeks, the pictures of the missing will flood Grand Central Station and the Port Authority with the scrawl of little children asking Please for their daddies or mommies to come home. Please.

Wednesday, September 12

On the second day, as planned, our crew returns to the work site early to secure equipment and help organize relief and rescue crews to go downtown. Some subways are running and everyone is volunteering. Several of the local men have missing family there, and we all want to pitch in for the relief effort. There is no word on the steel crew, who are still missing and presumed lost. Even the gutsy French (and one German) have organized and left with a crew of their own to volunteer. I last saw them shouldering pick axes in their blue French overalls, marching down 5th Avenue in the early morning to Ground Zero.

The call goes out that there is a tremendous need for welding equipment and large cutting torches and various heavy machines to move rubble. We have none of that here but assist at another site to bring the equipment down. By late morning we have already taken one load off to the Javits Center, when there is a second incident (bomb scare) at Grand Central, only this time more surreal. I am underground at the time, in the parking lot, and go up on the Pan Am Building to make sure everyone from my crew is down off Met Life. The work sites are clear.

When I come back down the construction stairs to the upper level bypass (by Grand Central), no one is there. Odd; there are no cars, and no people. Thinking it a quirk, I hurry along the elevated highway in a dead run, my hardhat and clumsy safety rigging clanging away on my head and back, towards the front of Grand Central.

Once there, I stand under the wings of the great statue, Mercury, and stare out at a metropolis devoid of people and cars. I look up at the tall buildings eager to see a face, of somebody, a solitary soul to prove I'm not dead or dreaming. Nobody. Only the still flap of the flag and an eerie midday silence on a warm Wednesday morning in what was one of the busiest cities in the world. This is real, my nightmare is realized; not even Freud or Jung could have called it. I am alone on the promenade deck of Grand Central gazing out on a populace that just isn't there.

What a joke; my humorous side wants to make a speech; a memorable speech from my lofty platform; perhaps Caesar to Cassius. But it is clearly not the time. There are greater forces at work in that I am not alone and that I feel that I am being watched, most likely through the cross hairs of a sniper scope. Slowly, I lean over the stone railing and look farther west, way up to the Public Library at Fifth Avenue, and spy thousands of people held at the barricades by police. Leaning over and looking east I am greeted with the same discovery from 3rd Avenue. My wait didn't take long; suddenly a large, well-armed SWAT team commando appears, and escorts me to the distant barricades, where I pay homage to the irate captain only to receive the Laurel and Hardy treatment from my crew.

This is where my notes finished.

Fortunately, Grand Central did not blow up; I assisted in the relief effort moving equipment to the Javits but never visited Ground Zero until weeks later and still the cleanup was going on. I was able to go home 5 days after the attacks, to the relief and joy of my family in Mississippi.

There are many miracle stories associated with 9/11. The saga of our friends on the steel crew bears repeating. Miraculously, as it turns out, they had been transferred from working days to nights on the Twin Towers on September 7th—it seems they were making too much noise. As was their obligation, they dutifully left work at the Twin Towers, September 11th at 5 a.m.

Because my work schedule was so erratic, many of the men I saw and worked with that day I have never seen again. I heard the French made it all the way to Ground Zero, but after a few hours had to leave because security said they were not Americans.

This story was only recently edited to give continuity and connect the dots of fragmented journal entries made on loose notepaper, then saved on a friend's computer on or about September 14th. The stories of this tragedy are endless, and this was mine.

© Drummond Davidson 2004

Michael Drummond Davidson is a stonemason specializing in restoration; he works nationally and lives on a horse farm in rural Webster County, Mississippi with his wife Belinda (the mayor) and their four-year-old daughter, Mary.

The ongoing journal notes that formed the basis of this account have yielded a collection of stories entitled, A Stonemason's Journal: A chronicle of short stories and events regarding the raw life of an itinerant stonemason recording life on the road and work up high.

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