It was a happy nighttime drive to New York that night, or so I wrote. I remember taking several odd turns, using my trusty maps, and trying to avoid any highway that would impose a toll. Heading northeast out of Lancaster I was attempting to get to New York at a not-too-indecent of an hour to catch up with my old, good friend Julie. Julie was an art student, so I figured she’d be up late and appreciate the spontaneity of my arrival, since

I never called to let her know I was coming. But I wasn’t sure how she’d take it, to be honest.

I passed through a lot of towns that night that I imagined were very beautiful in the day. I could see the brick in the buildings, the old street lamps, the trees losing their leaves. These were simple things I’d never really seen before, growing up in Southern California, which is known for its Hollywood where everything is fake, clean, and has that reproduced sheen on it, like it hasn’t ever been properly aged. In the movie business, a necessary entity is an “art department”, which has people employed to properly dirty things up a bit, make them look more “real”. Here on the east coast, everything looked perfectly “real” on its own. It was very well done. When you’re from Southern California you compare everything to Disneyland. You go to Europe and walk the aged cobblestone streets and you think, “it looks like Disneyland!” (But it smells like piss.)

At one point that night I drove past a sign that read simply, VALLEY FORGE, and I thought, “No, really? The real Valley Forge?” It was the place where General Washington and 12,000 of his men hunkered down for the winter, fearing the revolution was lost. I knew the old story, but could not stop to appreciate it, and buzzed right past. It was the same with Gettysburg, and Philadelphia, and tens of others of historic places I saw signs for, but I didn’t have the time nor the money. I regretted it, but this was to be a drive across the country and back. A marathon. It was the ultimate road trip, not a sight-seeing tour, if I could help myself.

My collection of AAA maps had become invaluable, and I made my way towards that uncanny, unmistakeable skyline, on a lonely Saturday night. When I first caught a glimpse of it from the highway, I was so stricken by its stately majesty that I pulled off the road and made my way on side streets to a dimly lit district by the Hudson River. I found a place to park and ran down to a little plaza by the water and... there it was: the grand Manhattan skyline. Filling the view from north to south, all those buildings lighting up the horizon and growing it to the sky. It was a wondrous sight, and one I’d seen so many times on flattened pages, but here it was on a cold, clear, breezy night, just beyond the waters, the sounds of boat horns and trains in the distance. I stood there for a few minutes and just took it all in; The Big City. And it was New York City, which is THE city of the world, and the view I was currently admiring, its mere image or notion even, defines modern human civilization itself.

All that way and my little wondrous car had made it. I hopped back in and glanced at the map to find a way over to the metropolis, (it appeared that I would be taking a tunnel) cranked up the heat and rolled down the window, fired up some music (Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, which I had predetermined and packed in the event of this exact occasion) and headed across to the island, hooting and hollering all the way. Moving through the tunnel astride more taxicabs than I’d ever seen in one place, I had my arm on the open window, and my hand up on the front corner of the roof. I noticed that temple-shaped indentation up there, right there, just below the antenna, and I could run my fingers over it. I’d noticed it before, but it here it was reminding me of everything that was a continent away, and yet remained unanswered. Okay, so I’d escaped. For now. But had I really? It was all right there to touch, in my outstretched left hand. Cold, hard, and unforgettable.

In the city, it was a good laugh driving my car up and down all the boulevards. There was all the expected honking and so many cabs, just like in the movies. (Who owns a car in New York?) I laughed at the sight of it all, and raced along with the flow of Big City life, trying to find my way to Julie’s, block after block after block, all one-way streets.

Julie was staying midtown somewhere, at a YMCA, of all places. She was actually a Franklin and Marshall student, but had taken a year to do some art studies in Manhattan and found herself momentarily shacking up at the Y for a time. I was no stranger to YMCAs, having been a camp counselor there for a couple years, and after locating a parking place, (no small feat in New York) I made my way through the building without disturbing security and found myself standing in front of Julie’s door. I took a breath, hoping this wasn’t a terrible mistake, (I had no idea where I’d go if she wouldn’t have me) and then -I really, really hoped she wouldn’t be mad- I knocked.

She was home. She opened the door, looked up at me with a deranged blank stare, like she was trying to place this very familiar face, and then... I ran.

I feigned panic and ran down the hall and turned the corner, which was when I heard her scream, and then I slowed up and turned back. She laughed. We hugged. It was good to see her. We talked for a bit, got some stuff out of my car, while she just shook her head at the shock of it all, and then we went out for a bite. We walked the city, chatting away. It was clear she loved it here, though the YMCA could use some improvements, and she showed me all the sights she could in a night. I had just driven in minutes before, and here we were walking down Times Square, past Rockefeller Center, Central Park, Trump Tower, and the Plaza Hotel -it was like a dream. We stayed up talking, another long night for me, crashing out at nearly 5AM.

The next day, we walked through the Park on what was a near perfect fall day. The sun was shining and the trees were bursting with color, and there was a glimmer in all the windows of all the buildings that I would never forget. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and stared at the Rembrandts for a while -and she stared good and hard at them, I will never forget. We got some Chinese takeout and headed back to her place, where I just about passed out in my dumplings, I was so spent. 

Monday I had all to myself, (Julie had school) and I just headed out walking, with my camera. Julie had lent me a tourist map and I just wandered all day until my legs couldn’t take any more. I headed south and eventually passed the first capitol of the United States (I had no idea it was here) and the New York Stock Exchange (which let me walk on in and see the floor -as long as I checked my camera) and then I moved through Wall Street and went over to see the Brooklyn Bridge, which I consider eternally impressive.

And then I found myself in the plaza between the World Trade Center towers. Eyes drawn upward, I caught a snapshot looking straight up at the imposing, awesome structures. I had reserved ten or fifteen bucks for a single tourist excursion, and I was trying to decide between the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, or the World Trade Center, but for some reason, when I saw the towers there, I was drawn inside and  slapped down ten bucks and took the elevator to the top.

I suppose I thought that it would be the best view of the skyline. The Empire State is mid-town, and you can’t see the whole city in one clear shot, and the Statue of Liberty tour, if I remember correctly, was a bit expensive and time-consuming, but for some reason I went up to the top of the south tower to see the view. 110 stories, 1362 feet. I remember going outside, way up on that rooftop deck and looking over at the other tower, so close, and then the vast city beyond. I never took a picture. I can’t imagine why not. Sometimes things are just too big.

Of course, I remember where I was on 9/11/01. It was a Tuesday, like today, only I didn't have a family and a home and a business to run. Not a lot had noticeably changed in the eleven years since that road trip. I was housesitting for some friends in Pasadena, and doing odd jobs to pay off some over-the-limit credit cards. I was staying up late pretend-reading literature, drinking beer with my buddies, still driving around the beat-up old Honda. I'd stayed up late on the 10th, actually, and slept in on Tuesday, waking to the phone ringing. I got the message "how terrible it was what happened" and turned on the news to see it all at once: the planes hitting the buildings, the buildings going down, the confusion. To be honest, I don't know if I had even turned on the TV before the towers had fallen. All I could see was everything at once, like coming home to your house burning down and arriving at the same time as the firefighters.

I remembered being at the top of the tower eleven years before, and here it was crashing to the ground, utterly pulverized right before my eyes. The world stopped turning for a moment. I remember going surfing in Huntington Beach the next morning and there wasn't a plane in the sky. All the freighters were lined up offshore, not allowed into L.A. Harbor -there must have been fifty of them, massive super-tankers with nowhere to go. It was an unforgettable sight. But it wasn't until a couple days passed that the real gravity of it all got me. That Friday in Pasadena there were people on every street corner. A man came into the brewery I frequented and played “The Star Spangled Banner” on his bagpipes, and the whole place shut up, for once. And then people started saying "Never forget", and spelling it out with their finger on dusty car windows, and then, eventually, putting it on t-shirts and bumper stickers. And everyone had their flag out. That is to say, they had a flag out. I think September 12th was that historic day in America when a lot of people realized that they didn't own a flag.

But back on that day that I was up on top of the tower, in November of 1990, the mere idea of the coming devastation would have been a laugh, or a creative enterprise, like some impassioned pitch for a far-fetched a science fiction film. I was just a hapless young guy impressed with the view enough that it didn’t occur to me to get a snapshot of it. And I’m sure that same guy was there that Tuesday morning 11 years later, and met his death. 

Within a year of September 11th, 2001, many of my friends would be married and moved away, and a few months after that I would be married and moved away myself, and the country would go to war in Iraq on the eve of my wedding. Looking back, September 11th is that pivotal event in my life that folded everything in, and sent it sailing. For me, that's the day that marked the beginning of the serious changes in my life. The day the old passions started being replaced with real convictions. The day frivolity died.

And everything before that was just a road trip.