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Beneath 9/11's terrible smoke, a flash of gold
9/11: 20 Years Later • Perspective
Beneath 9/11’s terrible smoke, a flash of gold
By Sally Jenkins
Columnist
Yesterday at 4:55 a.m. EDT
After the shroud rolled over the day, I remember just one dash of color in the pall, a smear of bright yellow. It was an old Schwinn steel-frame racing bicycle, and it moved like a canary in the smoke. The bike, like all bikes, was an escape, the ability to get somewhere under your own power, fast, to carve turns and pick your own lane through obstacles. But it represented something else too, that bike, as indefinably sweet as a wildflower growing in the sidewalk.
The first tower was hit at 8:46 a.m., and had I not worn the spouse’s sandals and forgotten where I put them, we would have been near the foot of it. Instead, the shoe argument made us late coming back from a long weekend, and we hit heavy traffic on an expressway. We came around a curve, and I said, “What the hell are those chimneys burning?” Then my eyes adjusted to the unimaginable: the World Trade Center, smoldering. The spouse, a photographer for the New York Times, opened the sunroof and stood up, waist halfway out of the car, with a camera. When the first tower fell, it looked like God took his thumb and just rubbed it out of the picture. The inarticulate noises that came out of our throats were not screams exactly, just low exhalations of grieved astonishment.
[Sally Jenkins's story from the day after 9/11]
By late afternoon, the $20 bill was soaked with sweat and I had probably run six miles. Footsore, I headed to a bike shop on West 14th Street. Inside, it was deserted except for a guy at the counter. I flashed my Washington Post ID and said: “Hi, I’m a reporter, and I need to get back uptown. But all I’ve got is $20. Do you have anything I could rent for that just for today? And I’ll come back tomorrow with more money?” ... He said: “I don’t got any rental bikes left. They took ‘em all.” ... I said, “Listen, if you have any old junker I could use, I swear I will come back here tomorrow and buy the most expensive bike you have.”
He said, “Well, if I get a bike for you, how you going to lock it up?” ... I said, almost in tears, “Do you have a lock I could rent for $20?” ... He said: “Hey, it’s not that kind of day. I’m going to give you a bike.” ... He disappeared in back and after a moment returned with that creaking 1970s steel 10-speed Schwinn. It was the bright yellow of a tropical fruit, “Kool Lemon,” as Schwinn advertised it in ‘74. It was so bright you practically had to throw a hand across your eyes to shade them. A tide of laughter rose up in my throat — in the middle of the worst day ever, I thought confusedly, how can you laugh? But that’s what the color summoned.
{snip}
By Sally Jenkins
Sally Jenkins is a sports columnist for The Washington Post. She began her second stint at The Washington Post in 2000 after spending the previous decade working as a book author and as a magazine writer.
Beneath 9/11’s terrible smoke, a flash of gold
By Sally Jenkins
Columnist
Yesterday at 4:55 a.m. EDT
After the shroud rolled over the day, I remember just one dash of color in the pall, a smear of bright yellow. It was an old Schwinn steel-frame racing bicycle, and it moved like a canary in the smoke. The bike, like all bikes, was an escape, the ability to get somewhere under your own power, fast, to carve turns and pick your own lane through obstacles. But it represented something else too, that bike, as indefinably sweet as a wildflower growing in the sidewalk.
The first tower was hit at 8:46 a.m., and had I not worn the spouse’s sandals and forgotten where I put them, we would have been near the foot of it. Instead, the shoe argument made us late coming back from a long weekend, and we hit heavy traffic on an expressway. We came around a curve, and I said, “What the hell are those chimneys burning?” Then my eyes adjusted to the unimaginable: the World Trade Center, smoldering. The spouse, a photographer for the New York Times, opened the sunroof and stood up, waist halfway out of the car, with a camera. When the first tower fell, it looked like God took his thumb and just rubbed it out of the picture. The inarticulate noises that came out of our throats were not screams exactly, just low exhalations of grieved astonishment.
[Sally Jenkins's story from the day after 9/11]
By late afternoon, the $20 bill was soaked with sweat and I had probably run six miles. Footsore, I headed to a bike shop on West 14th Street. Inside, it was deserted except for a guy at the counter. I flashed my Washington Post ID and said: “Hi, I’m a reporter, and I need to get back uptown. But all I’ve got is $20. Do you have anything I could rent for that just for today? And I’ll come back tomorrow with more money?” ... He said: “I don’t got any rental bikes left. They took ‘em all.” ... I said, “Listen, if you have any old junker I could use, I swear I will come back here tomorrow and buy the most expensive bike you have.”
He said, “Well, if I get a bike for you, how you going to lock it up?” ... I said, almost in tears, “Do you have a lock I could rent for $20?” ... He said: “Hey, it’s not that kind of day. I’m going to give you a bike.” ... He disappeared in back and after a moment returned with that creaking 1970s steel 10-speed Schwinn. It was the bright yellow of a tropical fruit, “Kool Lemon,” as Schwinn advertised it in ‘74. It was so bright you practically had to throw a hand across your eyes to shade them. A tide of laughter rose up in my throat — in the middle of the worst day ever, I thought confusedly, how can you laugh? But that’s what the color summoned.
{snip}
By Sally Jenkins
Sally Jenkins is a sports columnist for The Washington Post. She began her second stint at The Washington Post in 2000 after spending the previous decade working as a book author and as a magazine writer.
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