Sometimes the surreality of a moment---the penetration of a true dream-like experience into the concrete world of waking consciousness---is so overpowering that there is nothing to do about it but imply it.
From the World Trade Center, I took the group on a gentle arc of a tour through the tip of lower Manhattan, down through the Financial District.
Heading west from the site we walked up Fulton Street alongside St.Paul's Church, where the great Montgomery who fell at Quebec is buried, and the churchyard behind it, enclosed by the large spiked iron fence. I mentioned how Dey Street was one of the scenes of one of the most famous moments from 9/11, when a particular videographer caught the collapse of the North Tower, and the gush of the dust that came down the street alongside the churchyard to Broadway.
I took then around the front of the church, on the sidewalk along Broadway, directly across the street from old workplace at 222 Broadway. I told them that this stretch of the fence in front of the church is where the wall of posters, seeking out the disappeared and mourning the dead, had sprung up, with heaps of flowers at the foot of the fence, and stuffed animals tied to it.
Then I led them to the corner where Park Row cuts off at a diagonal from Broadway, and opens up into the City Park. I pointed out the Federal Building where there was no doubt legal activity going on in regard to a famous criminal who had just apprehended and was being held in the federal holding facility nearby.
We could barely see the Woolworth Building from that angle. I pointed out the Park Row tower, which used to be the tallest building in the world, as I told them, echoing the brief elevator-pitch tour I'd given to my British and American co-workers many years ago, from nearly the same spot.
Then we crossed Broadway, walking on the sidewalk in front of my old building and headed south on Broadway, passing by One Liberty Plaza, the old Helmsley Building, and the Equitable Building, where at each recognizable structure I gave a couple sentences about its significance and history.
Then at Wall Street we turned and followed the famous little street down past Federal Hall and the statue of George Washing. Being with Ohioans, I made sure to have a picture taken with my cellphone in front of the plaque commemorating the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
I showed them all the stuff you're supposed to see, like the holes in the front of the Morgan Bank caused by the car bombing in 1920, and 40 Wall Street, and of course the original headquarters of a famous private bank down at the bottom of the hill on Pearl Street.
To finish the tour we wound up at the famous historical Fraunces Tavern, having drinks, and thinking about George Washington and his officers. I had not been inside for a long time, maybe ever, in order to have something to drink.
On the way back to the ferry terminal, walking back up Broadway, we passed by the old Customs House and Bowling Green, where, upon hearing the Declaration of Independence proclaimed on July 9, the revolutionaries had torn down the statue of George III. R. was interested in hearing me point the locations of the great shipping lines of the early and mid Twentieth Century.
Of course there ones find the statue of Charging Bull. How much it had changed.The bull was mobbed and nearly draped with folks taking selfies. I t was one of the mot popular things in the city. The little island on which it stood was impossible to access We opted out of taking any of our own photos.
Before cutting back up to the ferry terminal, we topped at Trinity Church. K's parents had married there, after emigrating from Wales and Sweden, the two of them. Of course we sought out Hamilton's grave (which is covered in loose coins that folks have stacked there out of respect). We also passed by the grave of Robert Fulton, but only I seemed to care about it much.
Probably the most surreal thing that day, something that could have been a dream, had a I dreamed it years ago, but is now an actual reality, was the transformation of the building where I used to work. The old entrance on Broadway, with its covered modernist portico, with an Au Bon Pain where I would get a pastry in the morning after coming out of the subway at the corner of Fulton and Broadway---that whole facade was gone. The entrance of the building had been moved around onto Fulton Street. In its place along Broadway, facing across from St. Paul's, was an entirely new first floor fronting broadway---a well known women's clothing retailer, the sight of which made me laugh out loud when I first glimpsed on while on our tour.
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