Men of Concord

At the top of the escalators from Oculus we came out into the plaza. It was sunny and bright, and people visiting the plaza and memorials. In the old days you would have no seen so many tourists hanging around what everyone took as a bland concrete plaza.

K., being the good host she was, had originally asked when we had arrived in New Jersey if we wanted to see the memorial museum, or go up to the top of the new tower, both of which and R. (Red's father) had already done.

I had said no. She had wanted to make sure, as at the time we could still get tickets, but I said specific I did not want to do either of those. I wanted to hang out at ground level. So I was relieved even when we saw the line for the memorial was very long. It can be a relief when certain options are lifted from you automatically.

We headed to the nearest memorial fountain that are in the footprints of the tower. Here I got disoriented. What I took to be the South Tower was actually the North Tower. I had fooled by the change in the whole plaza, and also by the location of the New Tower, which I realized to be on the north edge of the old side, probably outside the old slurry bathtub wall that kept the Hudson from flooding the PATH stations.

For a moment at the North Tower I went looking the name of someone I know who was killed in it. He was one of the people trapped above the floors of the initial fire and damage. He was the older brother of a guy I knew in my elementary class, and also from Church. It was a family of brothers. Their house felt like the 1950s to me. The sons wore flannel shirts like the Hardy Boys. Their father was the deacon who baptized me.

But there were too many people to search for names, and no apparent system. One could look it up online, but that was something to do in advance, not in the moment.

At the South Tower I told the story of the firehouse in Concord, Staten Island, that I would walk past, on the long walks I often took, often by riding the train a couple stops, and hoofing it around the nearby blocks in an exploratory fashion. Concord was about half-way to the ferry along the train line, at the base of the Serpentine Hills at that part of the island. I would walk there. past the firehouse, the classic two design in that part of the island, and the door would be open, and there would be guys hanging out, playing music, doing chores on the rig and on the station.

This was one of the companies that was called into the South Tower, which was the second one hit. Some many companies from Manhattan and Brooklyn had already responded to the North Tower, that they had to call in ones from the outer boroughs.

"The South Tower was the second one hit, but the first one to collapse," I said, as part of my modest tour. "Those guys at Concord never had a chance."