It was 1986. Two college buddies and I decided to spend "Liberty Weekend" in New York City. They were rededicating the Statue of Liberty and the festivities included a tall ships parade in New York Harbor as well as what was billed as the world's largest fireworks display.
Road trip!
The three of us piled into my friend's little sports car and we tooled off to NYC. Three girls on the town.
New York was mobbed. Every native New Yorker found a place to escape out of town and the city was overrun by tourists. You could tell they were tourists. Everyone had a camera and they were mostly all very polite.
My first vision of NYC was emerging from the Port Authority Trans-Hudson terminal at the World Trade Center. We came up the escalator into a huge lobby with banks of extremly tall and thin revolving doors. Emerging from the doors, we were compelled to look straight up. The amazing thing about the towers were that they were straight up and down--no setback. Bad for urban design, but great for cool photography.
We spent the entire day in Lower Manhattan, viewing the ships, hanging out at the South Seaport, listening to visiting marching bands on Wall Street. From every angle, the towers rose, imposing, yet comforting, since they were a ready landmark to help you establish yourself.
As sun set, we found a place on the grass at Battery Park, waiting for the fireworks to start. We were next to a guy from Brooklyn who held a transistor radio. "Reagan's giving a speech," he informed us. It was fast approaching 9 pm. People started to shoot off small fireworks and I suddenly became aware of the sheer mass of people around me. Literally thousands of bodies. You could not see grass--or what passed for grass.
July 4, 1986 was probably the 20th consecutive day without rain in the New York area. There was not one green leaf on Governor's Island. They had to truck bushes in and paint the grass green to provide a suitable backdrop for Reagan. They were worried that a spark from the fireworks could ignite, so they keeped the greenery to a minimum.
Anyway, for what seemed to me to be the longest 28 minutes of my life, Ronald Reagan spoke about the statue, the immigrants who were inspired by it, the "shining city on the hill," liberty...you could always count on Reagan to deliver a stirring speech...why did it have to be so goddamned long!
Finally, at 9:30, they shot the first of the flares off the barges that encircled Manhattan. I never before saw so many fireworks. I saw fireworks in my peripheral vision. I looked back and the twin towers reflected the fireworks off of the harbor and the river. They were aglow almost up to the 60th floor.
At close to 11 pm, the fireworks ended and Battery Park was engulfed in smoke. Visibility was bad. And the sea of thousands of people, moving like ants over a picnic, moved toward the World Trade Center.
We were beyond a mob. Nothing stood in our way. We took the shortest distance to the towers by whatever means possible. Need to get over the fence? There were hands to lift you over. Need to climb over the park benches? Someone was always willing to give you a boost. If you tripped, hands came out to help you up. We all had to move toward the towers to go home. We stopped for a moment so that I could regain my composure after a little bout of anxiety. The only way you could stop was to cling to a light post. The three of us clung against the tsunami of people until we could not cling anymore. We had to join them...all moving toward the towers.
We couldn't have been the first people there, but by the time we got there, it was already a confusing scene. The revolving doors weren't revolving fast enough, so the press of people finally collapsed the doors and we all freely entered the building and scampered down the escalators, which had been shut off for the night.
A few years later, I was able to go to the top of the North Tower and view the city at sunset from its windy observation deck. I'll admit, they weren't the most beautiful buildings ever, but the towers certainly did have a majesty and a spirit of audacity that reflected New York City quite literally and figuratively.
I'll never forget them.