It was the day after Christmas, 1986.
It was my first year working on Wall Street (well around the corner, at 42 Broadway), and it was a Friday so no one wanted to be at work! That includes myself, as I had to drive back up to Bloomfield from my brother’s in South Jersey the night before…after smacking my head on a heating duct while playing flashlight tag in basement with my nephews.
I remember coming into work that morning with an aching head (not just from my injury), and hearing a co-worker complaining about having to work the day after Christmas, and then asking about his bonus. The supervisor, who we called “Phil” (because that was his name), said that the bonus was that he was allowed to come back to work on the day after Christmas! My colleague gave Phil sour look and went to the water fountain (something I had learned NOT to do). When the water came out yellow, he turned to Phil to complain. Phil told him it was the special ‘Christmas Water’ and my co-worker just nodded and went to drink more, but Phil stopped him.
The rest of the morning went by uneventfully, as we were not that busy, and we were young, we goofed around a bit, but still got our work done.
It should be pointed out here that our building was not that well maintained, the heating and plumbing was bad, we had to keep the windows open during the summer, and the office itself had not had an update since the early ‘60s… oh and it had a rat problem. Whoever came into work first, and got to turn the lights on, was often greeting with the rodents staring at them before they ran off. They loved to chew on the exposed wires for the fire alarms, causing several false alarms, so often that we stopped paying attention to them.
This day was no different, when the alarms went off shortly after noon, no one moved, we figured it was was a false alarm. So we continued to do our work (which at that time mostly consisted of making account adjustments via a paper spreadsheet for submission to the key-punch ladies in an attached room.
After a while we simply just tuned-out the sound of the alarms, until the door to our unit burst open and a guy ran in from the hallway, with smoke billowing in behind him! He was yelling “Fire, you have to get out…why are you just sitting there?”
Seeing the smoke made us realize that there really was a fire, which finally got us moving! We were on the 9th floor, and the elevators were off limits due to the fire, so we had to take the stairs. I remember Robert, who didn’t move quickly for anyone, but he was up and out like a shot! I was a bit more casual, figuring that we had time to get out (and because I had smoked half a joint with a friend on my break), while I moved quickly, I was not frantic…like my buddy Abe. He was an Orthodox Jewish man, never without his yarmulke, but when it fell off as he ran down the stairs, he just kept going! I stopped and picked it up for him.
Once out on Broadway, we gathered across the street in front of the Killarney Rose. I gave Abe his yarmulke back, and turned to see flames and smoke coming from the windows right above our office! By this time the FDNY had shown up, and they were pouring water into the building, with some of that water coming out of our office windows!
We had nothing to say…so we just watched!
Phil turned to us and said “We may be going back to work when this is over, don’t go anywhere!” We all just kind of looked at him like he was nuts, and I told him that I’d be in the bar if he needed to find me. I turned to walk down the short steps and into the Killarney Rose, with a few of my co-workers following me down into the darkness!
And this was a dark place, a real hole in the wall. It was mainly a shot and a beer kind of bar, but it was a cheap and it also served some bar food (eaten at your own risk) like some old hot dogs and wings, and there were bowls of peanuts and pretzels on the bar. You had to be careful however, as the bar was infested with roaches, so if you got a bit too buzzed and reached in for the peanuts, you never knew what you might be bringing back towards your mouth!
At first, we sat at the bar, and talked about work and the fire, while sweeping away the occasional roach, and drinking beer. After some time, Phil came in and told us we did not have to go back to work…to which we were like “Duh!”
Phil decided to join us, and we moved to a table and ordered more beers, and a few shots! We drank for another hour or so, and then we all went our separate ways. I hit a few more bars on the long walk from lower Broadway to the PATH station in the World Trade Center, where I boarded the train for the ride back to Harrison and my car!
For some reason I cannot quite remember what happened for the rest of that week between Christmas and New Year’s; however, I am pretty sure that we did not go back to our office until after start of 1987. I believe that we had most of that week off while they rehabbed the office…which consisted of cleaning up the soot and water damage, laying down new carpet, wiping down the desks and boarding up the broken windows.
It still smelled like smoke, but because we did not have multiple computer terminals, just one big AT&T Terminal connected to the mainframe, the damaged was fairly easy to repair. Fortunately the key-punch room was relatively undamaged, which allowed us to be up and running in early January.
At least the fire knocked down the rodent population for a little while, although they were back for our next disaster, when the Market Crashed in October of ’87 and we were working 10 and 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week…which interrupted their peace, bringing them (literally) out of the woodwork!
In the aftermath of the fire, I played it off like was the only one who stayed cool and collected during the disaster, and that I helped get everyone out safely. This was an illusion that was shattered when I regaled my family with the story (without mentioning that I was stoned at the time of the fire or that I got good and drunk afterwards) during our Easter gathering a few months later…It seems that my brother in-law, who was a member of the FDNY, was not impressed with my heroism.
Another lesson in humility.
Ordinary Adventures 