Ten Years Ago....

Ten years ago tonight I met Garrison Keillor. He was doing a book signing at Barnes & Noble on Union Square, on a rainy Monday night. He did a reading from the book, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, and a monologue, and a singalong with the audience, for two hours, as only he can do. The whole time thunderstorms were raging outside, and through the windows behind the stage in the top floor auditorium we could see lightning bolts striking the World Trade Center, about a mile south of us.

Then he started signing books, there were at least 500 people there, and most had more than one book for him to sign, but he was kind and gracious and chatted with every person. When my turn came, he asked me if I was from Minnesota, he said my accent sounded midwestern. I laughed and told him I was born and raised in Brooklyn. He asked me where, and I said, born in Bed Stuy but I live in Brooklyn Heights now. He said, well, you must be doing something right! I laughed again and said, Mr. Keillor, it was really just a series of happy accidents. He laughed at that and said, Jim, my entire career is a series of happy accidents! He signed my copy of his book, "To a true Brooklyn!" We shook hands and I started down the escalators to the ground floor, paid for the book and stashed it in my backpack, and walked out into the late Monday night street.

The rain had just about stopped, the sky was clearing, the Twin Towers were bathed in flourescent white light just like every night. They were such a constant you barely saw them, like the stars and the tides. I walked to the subway with a few people I'd met that night and headed for home.

When I came in the door I took the book out of my backpack and set it on the table in my living room, then I took my dog Casey for his last walk of the night. When we stepped out on the front stoop we could see the tops of the Towers shining, the aircraft beacons blinking red and white. We barely saw them, they were such a part of the scenery. It never occurred to me that we were seeing them lit up for the last time.

The next morning I was walking Casey at the corner of Middagh Street and Columbia Heights when the first plane slammed into the north tower at 8:46 a.m....The book sat in its shopping bag for about three weeks on the corner of my table. When I opened it and read the inscription I realized it was no longer just a book, it was a time capsule from a world that no longer existed. It was like finding a best seller from Atlantis, and you just knew the world would never be the same again. I miss that other world....