Giraffe and Other Short Stories

It’s 10:00 a.m. on the morning of July 28, 1945. My birthday was three days ago, and I’m now six. I’m driving into Manhattan with my parents in our old navy blue Ford. We’ve driven from Los Angeles. On a good day we’d make a few hundred miles before we’d have to add water to the radiator. This is our day of arrival into New York City. The sky is enveloped in fog.

As we enter Manhattan, people are congested on the sidewalks, looking to the top of a building that is so tall it can be seen from anywhere in the city, even through this fog. Some people are running. Others are pointing upward. Lots of cameras.  I lean out the open car window and stare.

Black smoke bellows from the 78th and 79th floors of the highest building I’d ever seen. The tail section of a Mitchell B-25 bomber protrudes from the building.  At 9:50 a.m. the bomber had slammed into the building. People later said the impact could be heard from a distance of two miles.

Wreckage is spilling onto the streets. One engine passes through the skyscraper, exiting on the opposite side and smashing through another building. The second engine and landing gear fall through an elevator shaft. The aircraft explodes. A high floor is engulfed in flames. Fourteen people die, but the one-hundred-and-two-story steel skyscraper withstands the shock and remains standing.

This was the first time I ever saw the Empire State Building.