I believe it was on a Monday or Tuesday morning in my US History class over on 21st and 2nd Ave in NYC. The class was abnormally boring that day, but our commotion started to take a change for attention about thirty minutes into class. The School of Visual Arts’ humanities building was right beside a police precinct. The class could hear a commotion outside of police officers screaming commands at each other, firing their sirens and evacuating their precinct. To me, a tourist in the big city, this just seemed like an everyday occurrence in the Big Apple.
My teacher, an elderly man who seemed to have first hand recollections with much of the history lessons that he taught us, ignored the blazing sirens and shouting of police officers outside. He just closed the window and went about his business. In the back of the classroom, one of the more quite students had his earplugs hooked up to a small radio, something to bypass the boring lecture time of class. The young student just interrupted our professor’s lecture with, “a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.”
Most of us, including myself, just chuckled. We imagined some tourist plane flying too low to the skyscraper and dinging its belly against the surface. The teacher also ignored the comment as well and continued to teach the lecture. It couldn’t have been just a few minutes after that we felt a large rumble within our classroom, something like a tiny earthquake. Nothing vibrated off of the walls, but the vibrations could be definitely felt through the structure of our aged brick building.
“The Twin Towers just collapsed,” the boy grumbled in disbelief, but this time we took his information serious. He acted as our one man conduit of information to the outside world. “Did anyone die,” a student asked, “what is going on,” another questioned, but the young boy with a small radio hooked up to his ears did what he could to keep us informed of the activities going outside over twenty blocks away from our classroom.
“Classes have been cancelled,” we were interrupted from huddling around the one student and his radio by one of the building’s security officers. “There is an emergency right now, all classes have been cancelled for the remainder of the day,” the security guard continued to inform my professor, “everyone should go home and be with their families.”
It was shortly after that point that my professor finally gripped my attention for the first time that early Fall semester. The older man, who was roughly the same age or even older than my Grandmother, slipped on his baseball cap and tucked his thinning wispy hair underneath. “You will all remember this as a day in infamy. This will be your generation’s Pearl Harbor – class dismissed and go be with your families.”
Leaving the school building and walking down to the street of hustling and bustling police officers created a mixture of being excited, afraid, worried, confused and relieved. As a student, you are excited that you get out of school early, but as a young adult cut off from his family during my very first major crisis, I had no idea what to do, where to go, how to get out of the city, but most importantly what exactly was going on in New York City at this time.
I really only knew of one other student in my History class, his nickname was Lunchbox, due to our common love of Kevin Smith films and he was from Jersey. We stood outside on the sidewalk in front of the School of Visual Arts humanities building, as all of our other classmates ran back to the dorms. We were one of the students who had the commute out of the city, so the two of us decided to go together and make the large trek home.
Lunchbox was also one of the few people around who had a cell phone that I could borrow. I tried to call home, but I just got a busy signal. I guess even ten years ago when everyone in the world is on their cell phone, it must have fried the system. As we walked the corner back around the main SVA building to head to my usual Six train Subway station, I saw that the pay phones had lines of people going around the corner. “Screw it,” I thought to myself, and decided to trek on home and at least be with someone that I knew during this crisis.
From the pay phones I continued on down to my subway station. It was blocked off by police officers who denied anyone access. “Looks like we’re hoofing it,” I slung my bag over my shoulder and braced the trip to go from 23rd St and Lexington to Penn Station so that Lunchbox could make it home, and I would then head over to Grand Central Station.
Along our way I couldn’t help but feel like I was in a movie. Possibly because I am a huge film buff, and that so many disaster films take place in New York City, but as I walked over my several blocks with Lunchbox, more and more people joined our cause. We filled the streets from sidewalk to sidewalk as it seemed that car traffic had come to an abrupt halt. We were shoulder to shoulder with a variety of other people who I assumed were trying to make it back to their families. I felt like I was a member of a Zombie horde that was trudging through the streets for any surviving sole – or something out of Ghostbusters.
Again, I was under a mixture of fear, confusion and hysteria that could spread faster than wildfire. Lunchbox and I travelled through Times Square, I read a ticker of words made out of red dots sprawling across one of the buildings, I think it was CNN. It mentioned something about, “Plane crash in Pentagon building,” neither one of us still had any idea what was going on. In my ignorance, I just thought that there was something wrong with planes and there was a technical malfunction that was causing them to crash.
I think not knowing what was going on also spread into a bit of chaos. Shortly after I dropped Lunchbox off at Penn Station and wished him the best of luck, I continued on my travels towards Grand Central Station and joined a larger group of people. We walked down the street and someone shouted that they felt droplets of liquid land on their head. One of our nomad escapees shouted out, “its chemical warfare!” This caused everyone in our clan to do an about face at me and run as fast they could in any direction but the one where the man claimed he felt liquid hit his head. Luckily, I dashed into an alley way as the crowd ran by, I think that if I didn’t, I would have been trampled to death. A few minutes later after the crowd’s panic died down, they found out that it was water dripping from an air conditioner unit high up above. The panic somewhat subsided, the crowd continued to march on, and I eventually broke off from the pack as I entered Grand Central Station.
The hustle and bustle of the booming hub of commuters was much more at ease than it normally was from when I arrived or left the city. I tried to pick up the pace as I noticed signs for one of the last trains to leave for Poughkeepsie was just a mere five minutes away. Despite the burn in my legs from an already long travel, I dashed as hard as I could towards the Hudson line of trains. My satchel swung back and forth, so I held it close to my body under tired breath.
I came around the corner to the final track of the line, right where Zaro’s bakery was stationed. There was a little Hispanic man holding out bags of bread to anyone running to the train, “take the bread! Take the bread so it don’t go bad!” Sure it was a chaotic moment, but who am I to turn down a free loaf of Marble Rye. I grabbed the bag of bread like an old locomotive picking up a message along it’s track. I ran down the ramp to my train as I heard the conductor hitting the alarm that the doors were about to close.
I dashed into the train car all the way at the end with my bag and bread just in time. Commuters were standing like cattle in the cramped car. I continued to march down one car after the next, which seemed to get a little bit less crowded as I headed up to the front of the train. I passed by all of their faces, disheveled and worried just as much as I was.
I sat down in a four seat, which had two pairs of two seats facing one another right up against the restroom on the car. Our train stopped in Harlem on 125th Street as it normally did, but for our train ride home, it would stop at every single station along my sixty mile long escape. The stranger sat beside me, I normally just ignored anyone and everyone that would enter the trains, but today was a little different. He turned to me and seemed very upset, “hey man, I just need someone to talk to, to get this off of my chest,” he was reaching out for me to have someone to talk to and calm his nerves. How strange that it took such a chaotic event for me, and so many other perfect strangers to bond together on the train.
What would normally take around ninety minutes on my train ride, took about close to two and a half hours. At the Poughkeepsie train station, I hopped into my car and continued my weekday like I did every week – after school I drove another fifteen minutes down the highway and went to work at Michaels Arts and Crafts. My presence seemed to light up the faces of several of my co-workers, as they seemed to all know much more than I did. “Your mother has been calling for you,” my manager exclaimed and I knew it was about time that I reached my family.
I can remember hearing the relief in tears through my mother’s voice when I finally reached her on the phone. I can’t remember our exact conversation, but it was something along the lines of “I thought you were dead.” I assured my mom that everything was okay, and that I would go home after my shift. Looking back, it seems a bit crazy that I would work my usual night shift after this chaotic day, but I needed the money.
After work, I was greeted by a happy and relieved family. I was met with hugs and signs of joy. Behind them, I saw the reoccurring images or planes crashing into the Twin Towers and everything seemed to come together. I told my adventure to my family and how I escaped New York City which felt like a movie. We broke the bread that I got from Zaro’s and was glad that I made it home. My big adventure became none as Nine Eleven, and it turned into a day that would forever go down in infamy, it has become my generation’s Pearl Harbor.