Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the Blackout of 2003. Do you have a great story about that day? Send it in to OTBKB. I’d love to read it and post it. Send to louise_crawford(at)yahoo(dot)com.
My story isn’t that great: I wasn’t even in town. We were on the farm in California as we usually are and I had the most terrible toothache. We walked into a dentist’s office in Modesto and the dentist said ominously: "Come see what’s happening in New York City."
My heart sunk and I imagined another 9/11. But then he told us that it was a blackout.
The television was on in the examination room and I saw images of people walking through NYC subway tracks. I worried about family and friends there. But my mouth really hurt.
The dentist proceeded with the root canal.
Just emailed you!
My stories of that day aren’t great, but small. But I offer them anyway.
1. People began gathering on the front stoop of Old First. We found a battery operated radio, so everyone could keep up on the news, and as expected, it became a little party. We watched the buses get fuller and fuller and more packed as they drove by.
2. Daniel, the Korean grocer on Seventh Avenue, was open. So creative and inventive. He had rigged up car batteries to his coolers and his cash register, and he was doing a rousing business for us all. He covered all his vegetables with plastic and ice, and it was so cool and so much fun to shop there that evening.
3. That night we saw the stars. So wonderful, from President Street we could look up and see the stars. Everyone was sitting on their stoops, and talking to passersby, and offering to strangers some beer and food.
4. And the next morning, mid-morning, my wife finally walked in the front door, finally home from work. I had had no fear for her, despite not knowing where she was or spent the night. We all seemed to know that people would do what they could do, and it would be fine.
5. And then none of us got anything done that afternoon, because, being New Yorkers, we had to talk and talk and talk about it all.