Five years later, I still have a tactile memory of a place I'd left eight years ago. It still hurts like hell to recall five years ago. It still hurts like hell to recall eight years ago, last I set eyes on my WTC, but five years ago still breaks my heart.
I used to work at Harborside Financial Center in Jersey City, which was straight across the Hudson River, straight across from the majesty of the Twin Towers. Most of the time, I drove to work, an endless maze of little roads which took me the shortest route from across the GW and eventually into Jersey City. Other times, though, I let the Liberty Line do the driving for me, and took the BxM18.
The BxM18 (which stood for the Bronx-Manhattan 18 Bus) was the express bus that went between Riverdale and downtown Manhattan, cruising down Broadway for most of the trip, and leaving you off right at Vesey Street. I would walk up Vesey to Church, with the WTC right in front of me. I still don't know which one was WTC 1 or WTC 2. I just knew I would enter the front doors, look at the shoes in the window of the Nine West store, and go right down the stairs or escalator into the WTC concourse.
The concourse was that little diversion right before I made my way to the Path train. There was a coffee shop that prepared decadent chocolate mint coffees that I toted across the Hudson. If I spilled the coffee on that which I was wearing, I could always stop at the Gap store in the WTC and buy a new shirt. I remember buying certain articles of clothing in several stores in the concourse. The newstand (where I recognized the distinctive elderly gentleman who had previously worked at the newstand in the bottom of Rockefeller Plaza) was where I picked up a Daily News or Post once in awhile (snotty NYT reader that I am.;-)). The lunch treks my friend Michael and I used to take across the river just to get the chicken pita at Miami Subs on Liberty Street.
But it was the little diversion I had before even arriving at the WTC that I've remembered in these past few days leading up to today. It was the BxM18.
By the time the bus arrived at 261st and Riverdale, it had probably picked up passengers at two stops. I knew it originated at the Yonkers-Riverdale border, right in front of where the nuns used to play basketball. The folks who had been picked up first had determined their seats on the bus a long, long time ago. I was a relative newbie compared to these seasoned riders, who were older folks in their late 50s, 60s, maybe even early 70s. They had the gravelly voices and accents of southeastern New Yorkers, sounding like all my aunts and uncles from the Bronx and Westchester.
I would sit about two seats back from the driver, as an act of respect to the more established riders who wanted to sit in the middle of the bus. Eventually, I established my seat right there, two rows back. I would take out my NYT crossword to work on. Except that I didn't always work on it. Instead, I listened.
These veteran riders had been riding the same bus together since time immemoriam, it seemed. They all knew one another by name. They knew about one another's jobs, families, lives. Their comfortable patter, in those inimitable accents, was a soothing balm to me during the harried start-and-stop ride down the highway and city streets.
They talked about old times. One gentleman sang the old Robert Hall theme song. They dredged up other 50s and 60s pop culture examples, Maypo commercials, remember what used to be on Johnson Avenue!, what about Father so-and-so over at St. Ann's, my grandson had his bar mitzvah, and oh so many gems. I was rapt. My heart used to swell with affection for these individuals, some whose faces I would never see, only big winter coats and briefcases as they ambled down the narrow aisle of the bus at their stops.
I hadn't thought about these people in years until now. And now I think of the many faces I never saw, only the voices I heard that filled my mornings with a bit of history and times gone past. I wonder how many of these people actually worked in the Twin Towers. I wonder how many of those voices were silenced that day forever.
It was my WTC. But more than my WTC, it was theirs. Their morning journey was a rich part of some rich lives. I am grateful to have been privy to their lives, their stories. And my heart breaks a little more again today.
