Weekly Mail September 26, 2021

 

Hi There:

Fall officially started this past Wednesday, so summer is definitely over. For most of us, summer ended the day after Labor Day. But now it's really in the rear view mirror. I hope that all of you with kids and or all of you who are teachers are settling into the new school year. And I hope you are all enjoying this really nice weather, aside from Thursday night/Friday morning, when the heavens opened and we all got socked with rain. 

Anyway, onto the week that was..

UPDATE: Barney the Bull Caught...

It took a little over 2 months and an awful lot of teamwork, but Barney the Bull was finally corralled around 11:30 PM Wednesday night, on a duck farm in Moriches, LI. 

The man who caught Barney, Skylands Sanctuary owner Mike Stura, set up a trap using bales of hay to lure Barney. Obviously this worked out a whole lot better than the plan to catch Barney by sending a horny cow after him. Especially since Barney was already fixed. 

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, especially if said man (or cow) is lacking all his "tools". 

Thank goodness Mr. Stura was on the case.

Per Newsday.... 

Dense woods, a river, and the fast-moving, often congested Sunrise Highway were all so close to the area Barney called home that Stura said neither lassos nor tranquilizers could be used. The former could easily get caught in branches or wrap around trees, while tranquilizers would not kick in for nearly half an hour, giving Barney time to run into danger before collapsing.

Can you imagine if Barney had staggered out onto Sunrise Highway? The way us Long Islander's drive? Perish the thought. 

And so as Gerald Ford once famously said, our long national nightmare is finally over. And what does Barney get for all his trouble? A one-way ticket to New Jersey. I don't want to offend any of my Garden State readers, so I'll spare you the "He would have been better off on someone's grill" jokes. I'll never understand how the hell this took 2 months to pull off, but the important thing is he's safe and sound and no one got hurt

May he live long and prosper. Thanks for the memories Barney. Enjoy your time in Jersey. 

TRANSPORTATION: Bus, Magic Bus!!!

There's few better days in school for students than the days they get to go on a field trip. And the 11th grade students at Brooke Charter School in Boston got an even bigger treat than they bargained for. 

Because of a shortage of qualified bus drivers, the kids got to ride to their field trip on a bus equipped with a stripper pole and flashing neon lights. 

                                          Photo Credit: New York Post

I would have loved to have seen the permission slip for this trip!

The children will be transported to the museum on the Flesh for Fantasy Party Bus, with a stripper pole, fully stocked bar and all the cheesy dance music they can handle. Please check the box to signify that you are OK with this...

Teacher Jim Mayers wrote in a since deleted tweet.. 

“It’s a funny story, but there actually is a real bus shortage and it speaks to major flaws in our education system,” “This in no way is a reflection of anyone involved in planning the trip, we were trying to have a fun day with the kids and that’s exactly what happened,” -Masslive.com

I've written this before, but we had a strip bar right around the corner from where I went to Catholic School. (My friends at St. Camillus had  Rockaway Playland, we had Nickel's Go Go Girls) but all our trips were on School Buses. No stripper poles for us. 

Maybe I shouldn't make light of this, but c'mon, you think these kids won't tell their grandkids about this trip? Most times the trip is the thing, for these folks, getting there was half the fun. 

BTW: WM has obtained an exclusive picture of the bus driver assigned to take the Brooke students on their trip...

FOOTBALL: Jets Mess

It's bad enough that poor Zach Wilson had to be told at halftime of the Jets-Patriots game last week that we were the dudes in the white jerseys, but now Sam Darnold has apparently turned into Joe Montana down in Carolina. 

OK maybe I'm overreacting a little bit (Me? Overreact?) but Darnold is already 3-0 for the Panthers and has had a pair of 300 yard passing games to boot. Granted, he's not playing behind an offensive line of matadors anymore, and in Christian McCaffery he has a potential All-Pro running back to hand the ball off to, not to mention a coach that has a clue about how to run an offense.

And yes, I'm still preaching patience with Wilson. We have to stop running QB's out of town around here. As much as I can't get excited about the Jets newest head coach and QB, we have to give them a chance. 

It would help of course, if he actually had someone to throw the ball to, and as I may have mentioned before, was not constantly running for his life on every pass play. This monstrosity against the Broncos today wasn’t all on Wilson not even close. He threw one bad pick towards the end of the game, otherwise he was the victim of bad drops by his receivers and a couple of asinine penalties. We had a 56 yard FG called back because of delay of game, and one knucklehead got a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for taunting! Which begs the question what exactly do the Jets have to brag about that we can taunt anybody???

Having said that, I would have rather lost like the Jets did than how the Giants did. On the day they sent Eli Manning’s jersey to the rafters nonetheless. 

BOOK REVIEW: Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the Summer That Changed Sports and Culture Forever 

By: L. Jon Wertheim 

A couple months back, I read a book that tried to make the argument that Los Angeles in 1974 was some sort of cultural turning point. I enjoy books like that, but I'm less and less interested in the point that the author is trying to make than I am in the stories that they tell. 

I was a baby in 1974. In 1984 I turned 11 during the summer. The author was 14 or 15 years old in 1984, but some of the things he discusses in this book I remember as clear as day. 

He starts off the the Olympic Basketball tryouts that were held in the author's hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. The reason? Indiana University coach Bobby Knight was in charge and that's where he wanted it. And yes, you had to tryout, even if you were Michael Jordan or Patrick Ewing or Chris Mullin. And wait till you see who Knight cut!

He discusses the 1984 Stanley Cup Finals (my Islander fan friends may want to skip this chapter) and the 1984 NBA Finals, of which I can honestly say is one of the things I'm most grateful for from my childhood: That I got to watch the Celtics and Lakers play in 3 NBA Finals in the 1980's. This was the first one. 

In case you want to read it I won't get too much into it, but I will tell you one story from this book that made me laugh.. 

The US had boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. In turn, the Soviets and many of the Soviet bloc countries boycotted the Games in 1984 that were held in Los Angeles. 

McDonald's had decided to do a promotion where they gave out scratch offs. If the US won a gold medal in the event you scratched off, you got free food. With all those teams out of the competition and the US having home field advantage, we cleaned up the gold medals. 

And my friends in Rockaway cleaned up at McDonalds on Beach 92nd Street, namely Richie and Billy Benn, who lived two doors down from me on 112 Street. One day, Richie went to McDonalds on his bike with a stickball bat. He came back about a half hour later, with three bags full of McDonalds burgers, fries etc. He put the bat across his handlebars attached the bags to the bat. He had enough food to feed an army, and if he spent 10 bucks on all of it, that was a lot. He used all those Olympic game cards. At the time, I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. 

The author talks about the promotion in the book. Remarkably as much $$$ as McDonalds lost in 1984, they brought it back 4 years later. 

It was a really good book. Both because of the things I remembered and the things I had forgotten about (or learned for the first time). 1984 was a fun summer for me, and this made me remember why.

4.5 Auggies. 

*******************************************************************************

I got an alert on my phone from ESPN on Saturday afternoon that someone named Oleksandr Usyk won Boxing's  Heavyweight Championship of the World, defeating Anthony Joshua with a unanimous decision in London. I have never heard of either fighter, nor was I aware the heavyweight title was being contested. There was a time where you knew who the heavyweight champion of the world was just like you knew who the President of the United States was. And if the title was on the line, it was a big deal. 

And there are few things more annoying on a Saturday night than getting a Breaking News alert on my phone from ESPN telling me who won that night’s UFC match. I couldn’t possibly care less. 

The Mets were officially eliminated from playoff contention on Saturday. It will either be the Braves or the Phillies who will win the NL East. Next week, as the regular season comes to an end, I'll have my rant against them and all the BS that took place since we went on break. If the Yanks make it to the play-in game, as it appears they will, we'll preview that as well.  

That’s all I got folks

Stay Safe

and Have a Great Week 

Weekly Mail September 19, 2021 (Season Premiere)

Please allow me to (re)introduce myself (and what the hell this is all about).....

I'm Bill and this is our weekly look at the world. Be it politics, sports and news in general, with a few personal stories mixed in. All with my weird, wacky, sometimes controversial but always honest take on the issues. 

For how this all started, we go back 25 years ago, around this time of year, 1996. 

My buddy and co-editor Karl (the Ace) Ludwig, came over to my house one Friday night with a telephone wire and an America Online Disc (AOL for you younggins out there). We ran the line from the basement phone to the computer and loaded in the disc. I chose my username 

(WildWill45. WildBill45 was taken. So we improvised. The 45 was my basketball number the one year I played in High School) 

I now had the world wide web at my fingertips, and what did I do with it? Mostly spent time going to Beatles Fan club websites, and then chatrooms. Pure Bliss! I could find anyone in North America who wanted to discuss if Free as a Bird was a legit Beatle song. If I tried to have that discussion at the bars, they'd look at me as if I was insane!

There were sports chatrooms too. I once had a heated discussion with someone about who should win the 1996 AL Cy Young Award. I was pushing for Andy Petitte believe it or not, while this other dude from Canada was endorsing Pat Hentgen of the Blue Jays. That Hentgen eventually won the award doesn't mean I believe my argument wasn't valid. 25 years later, I still think Andy was robbed. 

And then, there was e-mail. 

I used to write little editorials, either in longhand, or I typed them out on my word processor and print them. The idea that I could write something out and simply hit send was mind blowing. That the person receiving it could write something back almost immediately? That was almost beyond comprehension. 

So, usually on Sunday night, so as to not tie up the family phone line*, after everyone else turned in, I would write an e-mail to my friends, detailing my weekend activities (which to be honest mostly entailed either trips to the bars in Midtown, or Donovan's/Shelley's), followed by a couple of random thoughts on the state of the world at the time. The e-mail went out to a grand total of 3 people at the time, the aforementioned Ace, then (Razor) Ray McGarvey and his sister (and also one of my best friends) Mary. They were the only 3 people I knew that had e-mail addresses. So they got the first Weekly Mails.

As more of my friends got e-mail, either through AOL and Yahoo or through their jobs**, I was writing more Weekly Mails. Everyone got their own. By 2000, with the internet having exploded, I just started writing one giant e-mail. Everyone got the same one. This worked out great for a while.

Then a couple things happened.

For one thing people started to complain that they didn't want some of the things they had done over the weekend repeated for all the world to see. I could dig that. Sometimes I would write something that was funny if I said it in conversation with a smile, but came off mean and insensitive in the black and white of type. So I had to watch it.

And then 9/11 happened. 

And my Weekly Mail became very political. I mostly was writing to vent out the pain I think most of us were feeling at that point. Let's just say I fully supported any and all military action in response to the attacks. And while I don't necessarily regret or take back most of what I said, I maybe should have kept some of those thoughts off the computer. 

I started working at the Post in November 2003, and was surrounded by some of the most brilliant and talented writers you could ever meet. Some of them became WM readers and many of them complimented me on my writing, which made me feel great. What was ironic was that many of my co-workers at the Post leaned to the left and disagreed with many of my positions. 

Once I got married and we had our son, I kind of got away from writing as much. I weighed in here and there, but no longer writing every week. 

Then in 2015, I got sick. And while I was recovering, I met with someone who asked me what my hobbies were. When I told him about what I used to do, he recommended that I maybe start it up again. By this time, Facebook had become the behemoth that it is, so rather than e-mail it out, I just started blogging and posting it. Now readers have the option of clicking on it, or skipping it. You don't have to worry about getting it between Viagra ads and Publishers Clearinghouse applications in your e-mail. 

So you know what you're getting into, here's where we stand....

POLITICS- As I mentioned before, after 9/11, we were very much center-right here at WM. Gradually as time went on, we started moving somewhat leftward. 

Then Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. 

I've tried to separate my feelings for the man and my feelings for his policies. He is, in my opinion, a self centered, paper thin skinned, name calling bully. And I feel that his policies are geared to help himself, his family and if it benefits some of his friends, so much the better.  

I feel like the President should show some decorum. I believed that when Bill Clinton was getting his knob polished in the Oval Office just as much as I believe it when it comes to Donald Trump. 

I am very much pro Joe Biden. I don't agree with every position the man has, but I believe to be a fair, just and honorable man. Somebody once said, "If you can't get along with Joe Biden, there's something wrong with you." 

That somebody was Lindsey Graham. 

Having said all that, I don't want you the reader to feel that this isn't a blog post for you. 

First, you can always challenge what I say, I'm open to debate as long as you don't take personal shots at me. I also call out bad behavior on the other side too. I was all for Andrew Cuomo resigning as governor, though I agreed with how he handled COVID (for the most part).  I will be happy when Bill De Blasio is no longer mayor of NYC. I've had my issues with the so-called Squad. 

Secondly, this isn't strictly a political post, and my goal is to have something for everyone to enjoy. 

So we also discuss...

SPORTS- My teams are the Mets, Rangers, Jets and Knicks. We also root for Notre Dame in College Football and St. John's in College basketball.

I will write about the Yankees, Islanders, Giants and Nets on occasion. Sports doesn't seem to raise the temperature as it were, though sometimes it does. The last time one of my teams won a professional championship was 1994. I do a lot of kvetching about that fact. 

FUN STUFF-My favorite thing to do is to find an amusing news or sports story and put my own humourous spin on it. That's the most satisfying part of this. Those stories don't always present themselves, but we try to find them and do what we can with them. 

There are a couple of issues we will draw no quarter on though...

COVID 19- Both my wife and I work in hospitals. I'm more in the offices, but Tara was on the front lines in the early days of the pandemic. We have both seen what this virus is capable of, so there is no tolerance for anyone who tries to downplay it. Few people are bigger weenies when it comes to needles than I am, and masks fog up my glasses. But I am most definitely pro vax and pro mask mandates. This has nothing to do with who is President or not. There are very few issues where I will not entertain debate or discussion. This is one of them. 

JANUARY 6, 2021- I believe that the actions taken on 1/6 were nothing short of a terrorist attack on the US Government. I know not everyone agrees with this, and I will listen to dissenting opinions, but I will not change my mind. 

I believe Black Lives Matter.

I believe Blue Lives Matter.

I believe all of us have the right to come home from work to our families every night without incident, which I believe is the crux of both the above stated positions. 

I believe United we Stand and Divided we Fall. That doesn't mean we agree on everything, it means we try to let what we have in common define our relationships and accept the differences. 

Everyone who reads this blog has crossed paths with me in some way shape or form. We either went to school together, worked together, or grew up together. Some of you are parents of my son's classmates and some of you I met through being in the same FB Fan group (Rangers and Mets).  Many of you are family and pretty much all of you are friends. I believe we are all here for a reason and we might as well make the most of it. 

All right, if you've gotten this far and haven't said "This guy's off his freakin rocker", let's get to it then...

                                                                SINCE WE'VE 

                                                            BEEN GOOOOOONE! 

POLITICS: Afghanistan 

One of the sentiments I expressed in my 9/11 special is the idea that I fear that if anything like that ever happened again, we wouldn't get that spirt of unity that prevailed in the days following the attacks. The combination of cable news, social media, and the overall tension in the country that has been consistently running high, means that the finger pointing and name calling would commence immediately or even while the attack was happening. 

The murder of our 13 servicemembers outside of Kabul Airport was an absolute gut punch to all of us. We lose one service member, it's a bad day, 13? That's just horrible. 

George W. Bush used to say "We have to be right every time. They have to be right just once."  This was one day unfortunately that they were right. 

Could it have been prevented? Who knows. My opinion of how Afghanistan should have been handled hasn't changed from when we last published. I still feel that a peacekeeping force should have been kept there. And if that had been the case, maybe this would have been avoided. 

And yes, I am placing some of the blame of President Biden. He's the boss and the buck is supposed to stop with him. I think calls for his impeachment are ridiculous, the way I thought calls for George W's impeachment over Iraq were ridiculous. 

Biden has to own his share of the responsibility. As a supporter of his, I admit it wasn't his finest hour. I still believe the good days will out number the bad days, and that America and the world will be better off than we were when he took over. 

But I really would have liked to see a day of mourning, or an outpouring of love and support for what we all as Americans, lost on August 26. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think so. I just think we live in a dog-eat-dog world. And we're all the poorer for it. 

Oh and I try to keep these to a minimum, but we sometimes do celebrity

OBITUARIES

Rod Gilbert (August 22)- They called him Mr. Ranger, and for good reason. He is the franchise's all time leader in goals, assists and points. he played his entire career on Broadway, and chose to retire and take a position in the front office rather than go play somewhere else, when he still felt like he could contribute. (A dispute with then Ranger GM/coach John Ferguson led to his release)

But what struck me about Gilbert's death was the outpouring of sympathy, not only from the Rangers, but from folks outside the hockey world. WFAN doesn't like to talk much hockey during the hockey season, yet Sunday night host Chris Moore made sure to get Howie Rose on to discuss Gilbert's legacy. The next morning on Boomer and Gio, they spent a segment talking about him. That might not have been unusual if Boomer Esiason was there, but he was off and it was the rest of the crew (Greg Gianatti, Jerry Recco and Al Dukes) who talked about him. Gilbert was Boomer's favorite athlete growing up, and he wore number 7 at all his NFL stops in honor of his hero. The two also became good friends. Boomer spoke at length about this on his return to the FAN thatTuesday

As did (and this blew me away) Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling. Both Met broadcasters (and former players) came to NY in 1983, and both credited Rod Gilbert for showing them all the hot spots around the city, during the Mets-Giants broadcast on August 24.  Remember, Hernandez famously wanted nothing to do with New York when he was traded here from St. Louis. I'd now like to think that Rod had something to do with Keith's decision to sign a deal with the Mets after the 83 season. 

I'm sorry obviously that he never won a Cup here in NY, but to a man, everybody talked about how happy he was when the franchise finally won one in 1994. 

One last story that I think bears mentioning.... During a Knick broadcast last winter, Mike Breen and Walt (Clyde) Frazier were talking about former NBA player Popeye Jones, who son, Seth plays for the Columbus Blue Jackets in the NHL. 

Breen asked Clyde if was ever into hockey, and he responded "Oh yeah. My best friend when I first got to NY was Rod Gilbert. I'd go to the Ranger games, then Rod and I would go out on the town afterwards." 

Picture THAT! 

Charlie Watts (August 24)-  To have the job as drummer for the Rolling Stones sounds like one of the great gigs of all time. But I also imagine you'd have to have a certain temperament to pull that off.  You have one of the greatest guitar players of all time in Keith Richards, and one of the most famous performers in the world in Mick Jagger, with egos and personal chips on their shoulders to match. 

I imagine Charlie Watts had to not only be an amazingly talented drummer, he also had check his ego at the door. I'm a rock and roll fan, but I know many of you are more knowledgeable than I am about these bands. But let me ask you, could you see Keith Moon, or Ginger Baker or even the affable Ringo Starr on the same stage as the Glimmer Twins? It wouldn't be big enough for all of them.

Watts was the perfect drummer at the perfect time for the Stones, and one of the main reasons they have had the staying power they had. There were times I'd see him in concert and he looked like he was somewhere else in his mind. It was probably that he had played these songs so many times, he could do it in his sleep. Just an amazing performer and good man. 

Norm Macdonald (September 14)- I felt bad about Rod Gilbert and Charlie Watts, but Norm Macdonald was a real kick to the chops. 

Karl and I met Macdonald back in 1995, right after his first season on SNL at the Barrow Street Ale House. We thought Norm was drunk that night, but it turns out we were the ones who were hammered. Norm had quit drinking, he just talked like he was blitzed. 

I put Macdonald 2nd all time as Weekend Update Anchor. Dennis Miller is my all time favorite, and Tina Fey is right behind Norm. (Chevy Chase to me didn't do it long enough-though he deserves props for being the first)

One of my favorite memories of Macdonald was when he was on Celebrity Who Wants to be a Millionaire with Regis Philbin. The rules for the celebrity edition was you'd breeze through to the $32,000 question, even getting help from the other players if necessary. But from 64,000 on, it was you and your lifelines. And if you got one wrong, you're charity was only getting $32,000, and most likely you were ponying up the other $968,000. 

Norm amazingly got the $500,000 question right and was now getting the Million Dollar question. 

After pondering it for a couple minutes he answered, but before he said Final Answer Regis was like "Norm I'm being serious here, don't answer unless you know it." 

"Fine, just give me the half million." 

Once Norm committed to accepting the 500 thou, Regis revealed that the answer Norm was going to give was right. I thought Norm was going to kill Regis right there on national TV.

He was brilliant. And brilliantly talented. And most of all funny. 

Here is Norm Macdonald on Millionaire. 

Here is 34 minutes of all of Norm's OJ Simpson jokes from Weekend Update. (H/T to Ray for this)

And the best way to honor the late great Norm Macdonald? 

You Guessed it....

I'm gonna hold off on my Mets rant for a couple of weeks, since they are all but eliminated from playoff contention, we will wait till their officially cooked and then we'll give them the business. 

I usually try to end these on an up note. If I can find something off beat and funny. I think we've packed a lot into our first one back from hiatus. I always find this time of year tough. Back to school, back to the grind as it were. But the weather is usually nice and there are good things to look forward to. 

Thanks for hanging with me. It's good to be back and I missed all of you. (Well. most of you) 😁

Stay Safe 

and Have a Great Week

*This proved to be a problem if someone else in the house wanted to use the phone. Fortunately, I showed my dad how we could go to AOL Sports and get the NFL Scores right there on the monitor, and they wouldn't move! Marking the office football sheets became so much easier than listening to Sports phone or getting them off the TV.  A short time later, Dad ordered a separate line for the computer. 

** I shutter to think about some of the sh-t I wrote that ended up on Corporate Servers. In the early days of e-mail, you didn't have people monitoring the content. Nowadays, I'd have cost many people their jobs, including myself. Also, I probably cost myself a shot at being GM of the Mets, and if I want to run for office, I have no choice but to run as a Republican. 

Weekly Mail September 11 Special 2021.... 20 years later

 

                                                     

                                    September 11, 2021

20 years later, we look back on that horrible day....

The first thing I remember about that morning was walking to the train station listening to Imus in the Morning. The mayoral primaries were supposed to be that day, and Imus producer Bernard McGirk was interviewing people on the street about who they were going to vote for. Bernard was speaking to a woman who said she was a teacher who was badmouthing Mayor Rudy Guiliani. Bernard asked her "what she had against guys with bad hair who spit when they talked" The woman said she didn't want to talk to Bernard because "he wasn't axing her serious questions," to which Bernard responded, "I'm not axing you and you're a school teacher?" 

It would be the last good laugh I'd have for a while. 

The ride in to work was uneventful. I got in and started making phone calls on a closing that was supposed to go that day. The woman whose closing we were doing had been extremely pushy. I was going to be happy to get rid of this case. 

A little before 9:00, I got a call from a girl who had worked for us during the summer, and whose Mom worked in our Brooklyn office. The mom was home sick that day, and she told her daughter that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I went to our Internet computer and saw a picture one of the Twin Towers on fire. I thought it was just a small plane. 

In the conference room, some of the other people in the suite were watching this on TV. Our secretary, Rosie, was asking me if she should interrupt a meeting to tell them about this. I didn't think it was that big a deal. All of the sudden, Maria, a secretary for one of the other firms started yelling, the other tower's been hit. There's another plane." 

"OK Rosie, we better tell him." 

We kept the TV on and found a radio. In the meantime, the woman who we were doing the closing for was starting to call. As the morning wore on, I started to tell her that we probably weren't going to be able to do the closing today. Yes, she knew what was going on, but she still insisted on closing. I was about to blow a gasket. 

While I was on the phone with this lunatic, I heard on WOR radio that 1) The Pentagon had been hit, 2) There was a fire in the Capitol, and 3) that one of the towers had fallen. 

When I got off the phone, I called my father, who was working on William Street at the time. "They're locking us in, he said "I'll probably be here for a while." The thought of him being trapped in a building, knowing that he had trouble walking as it was, got me all choked up. 

(Later on, my sister Katie would comment that our Dad was on the front lines in Vietnam, and all these years later, he was pretty damn close to the front lines as America was being attacked.) 

I managed to keep it together for a few minutes, but then I nearly lost it again. 

Another co-worker, a former cop who had become a lawyer, about as tough a man I had ever met, came out of the conference room in tears. "There's no more Twin Towers. It's like, they're all gone." 

Meanwhile, the guys on the radio were talking about a plane crashing into Pittsburgh, and that there were 4 more hijacked planes in the air. It was time for us to make a run for it. 

Our office was on Madison between 40th and 41st, so we had to figure out where to go. I suggested we start making our way towards the 59th Street Bridge, but to avoid going near Grand Central and the United Nations, where I figured the next two planes would hit. So we walked down 40th Street to 3rd Avenue and up Third till we got to 47th Street. 

We ended up at Connolly's on 47th between 3rd and Lex. If Al-Qaeda was coming for us, they'd have to get us over beers and wings. 

 President Bush came on the TV (I can't even remember what time it was) He was at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. There wasn't a sound in the bar besides some guy yelling "Everybody shut the f-ck up!" Bush went on to talk about how he had alerted the military and been in contact with congressional leaders and leaders around the world. He concluded with this line: "The resolve of our nation is being put to the test. But make no mistake, America will show the world, that we will pass this test." While he would be criticized for the awkwardness of this statement, and we still had no idea what we were dealing with, I felt somewhat assured after this. The President would fly from Louisiana to Nebraska, and then back to D.C, the idea being to keep him moving and to make sure our capital was secure. 

There was no train service so there was no way for us to get home. I could have walked home over the bridge, but I didn't want to leave my coworkers. In hindsight, I kind of wished I did. The solidarity of walking back to Queens with thousands of my fellow NY'ers would have been something to tell the grandkids. Alas, it was not to be. 

Thankfully, I had heard from my father, who they were allowing to leave, and Katie, who was in school on 71st and 2nd. They were both fine. Earlier I had told my dad that I thought Kate should stay where she was. In my state of panic, I figured we should stay apart, better that only one of us got killed rather than both of us. It sounds crazy now, but I figured I was in walking distance of three potential targets: The UN, The Met Life Building (which would take out Grand Central) and The Empire State Building. She was safer uptown. There are still times I think about that moment, and shutter. 

At 3:00 I was walking to the bathroom at Connolly's when I passed by a TV that had NBC on. Tom Brokaw began giving the rundown "At 8:45 this morning, a plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. About 15 minutes later a second plane struck the other tower. At 9:40, a plane struck the Pentagon... " All I could think at that time was that Dan Rather had become famous because he was in Dallas when President Kennedy was shot. What was going through Brokaw's mind as he was reporting this. Was he scared because the nation was under attack, or was his blood pumping because he was covering the biggest story in years?  In the years since, I've read and watched documentaries about the Olympic Massacre at Munich in 1972, just about 19 years to the day before 9/11/2001. Jim McKay was on the air for over 15 hours covering the crisis for ABC. When it was over, he looked at the camera and said "They're all gone", just as my co-worker had when the second tower fell. 

There were some reports around 4 O'clock coming over that some trains were up and running. So I walked over to Grand Central and got the 7 train. I'll never forget the feeling I got as that train came out of the tunnel at Hunters Point, seeing the huge cloud of smoke down where the Twin Towers used to be. It was at that moment I went from being scared to being humiliated. That's the overwhelming feeling I had as I headed home that day. Anger and humiliation. 

I had never been so happy to get home and see everybody as I was when I got home that night. But I was dreading finding out about who didn't make it. I was able to account for my close friends and family that were down there, but I knew several of my high school classmates, with whom I had celebrated my 10th year reunion were firemen. Amazingly, there were very few people of the nearly 3,000 that died that I knew personally. It didn't make me any more comfortable or any less angry.

 Later on, I was on AOL. There were plenty of chatrooms devoted to 9/11. Many like me, were calling for the strongest possible retaliation. Others were taking a wait and see approach. Others were starting in with the "we have to understand why they did this." All these years later, even as I've gotten older and maybe softer in my old age, I can still feel the anger, the humiliation. I still can't bring myself to "understand why they did this" 

The next few days were remarkable for several reasons. Mainly the volunteers that came forward to help in the recovery efforts at what was now being called Ground Zero. Also there had been so many people donating blood, that the blood banks were turning people away. Donations poured in from all over the world. Just about every house in America was displaying an American Flag. As horrible as the events of September 11th were, the unity that prevailed in the days after attacks was amazing.

Sadly, I suspect we will never see that kind of unity again. 

A young woman who was reading the names of the victims of 9/11 on Saturday morning said something to the effect of "Let's try to stand together, instead of having to choose a side." In this age where we can go on social media and express any and all thoughts that may pop into our minds (guilty!) that might be a tall order. But it always helps to remember that we did, if even for a brief moment in our history. 

And they'll be people that will say that it never really happened, that it was somehow romanticizing the days after 9/11, but those people are wrong. I remember hearing about blood banks turning away people because they had more than enough supply. I saw strangers helping each other, I saw folks down at Shea Stadium in the parking lot loading supplies onto trucks to get to the workers down at Ground Zero. Nobody's making this stuff up. That's what happened. 

I took my son to his dentist appointment on Friday, and he was wearing a shirt with an American flag on it. The secretary complimented him on it, and then while he was in with the dentist she asked me "Do you these kids understand?" 

I know since Tim's been back in school (September 1) they've talked about it every day in his Social Studies class and in his English class they are reading a book about it. So yeah, these kids are learning about it, but do they understand? That's a harder question.

My parents and other people who lived through it used to tell me that the day President Kennedy was killed was something you had to live through to totally understand. There was no way to accurately describe the way the streets became deserted that afternoon into evening, how the country came to a standstill for the 4 days between the assassination  in Dallas and the funeral in Washington DC the following Monday. I read plenty and saw many movies about it, but the older I got, the more I realized our folks were right. If you weren't there, you really couldn't understand it.

And I suspect that's the case here as well. And I think the main reason is that they never knew the world before 9/11.  To people like Timmy and any other kid born in the 21st century, it's just always been. 

When I talked to Timmy about this, he said. "Maybe COVID-19 is to me what 9/11 was to you and Mom."  

In many ways I hope it is. I hope and pray he never has to live through anything as horrible. That's my hope for all our kids. 

God Bless Everyone we lost that day, and those that were left behind

God Bless all those who helped dig through the rubble in the days following, and are now sick and dying due to breathing in that toxic air

God Bless everyone who gave their lives defending our freedom. Especially the 13 American Service Members who were killed in Afghanistan on August 26. 

and God Bless America. 

Regular Weekly Mail returns next Sunday