Alamo, 911
New York, from many perspectives.

September 16, 2001 10:45 a.m.

e have been surfeited with photographs of the World Trade Towers struck, burning, vanishing like a magician’s trick, dead. In an effort to compensate, designers and cartoonists have made them into an icon. The parallel lines will become as recognizable as Churchill’s V for Victory; the buildings have become another Alamo, the dead firefighters and cops providing the gallant analogues to the Alamo’s defenders. Strange to conflate New Yorkers and Texans — yet perhaps not so strange. Both are brash, boastful, and see the country, and the world, through local lenses. Steinberg’s cartoon of the New Yorker’s view of the country, with 10th Avenue as prominent as California, became a famous poster. Beating him to the punch, Sam Houston drew a map of an independent Texas, should the new nation not win statehood. Houston’s “Texas” went from California to Virginia, with a good chunk of northern Mexico thrown in.

Rains Thursday night and Friday morning tamped down the dust, helping lungs, but turned it to mud, making life even worse for rescuers. The newest idea for doing something good became to donate socks. Many of these rescuers come from upstate or out of state. I met one who teaches rock climbing in the Shawangunk Mountains, which are 90 minutes north of the city. The Shawangunks (pronounced alternately Shawn-gums or Sha-wan-gunks) are not tall, but they have some of the longest stretches of sheer rock cliffs in the northeast. He was called in to oversee rappelling down crevasses of debris. He was the mirror image of the serial killer in Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, who was able to scurry over the rooftops of New York a century ago, thanks to his rock-climbing experience in the Shawangunks. The president’s trip to the city went well. It was needed. When the local political royalty, such as they are — the mayor, the governor, Sens. Schumer and Clinton, Rep. Rangel, gave a joint press conference early on, the representative of the nation was not the president but Joe Allbaugh, with his bizarre haircut (like Don King’s, run against a sander). Bush’s variable rhetoric also contrasted with Mayor Giuliani’s superb performance, and was becoming the subject of tart local comments. But there is an enormous will to see Bush succeed, and his mere presence catalyzed that.

The financial district is the city’s capital for jokes, and probably the nation’s. It is an arena dominated by young, fast-talking, cynical men. Creating and disseminating jokes, none of them PC, was a local art form. I have not heard any jokes about the attack yet, but I have seen a humorous image of how the damage should be repaired. Everyone with e-mail has probably already gotten a copy, but in case you haven’t, what you have missed is a photograph of southern Manhattan, with five World Trade Towers in a line, like fingers. The first, second, fourth and fifth are short. The middle digit is proudly extended.

That is consolation, and there will be many more efforts to console and defy. Until New Yorkers have absorbed what the wreckage looks like from every familiar angle, routine excursions will be a shock. I went through the Lincoln Tunnel for the first time of the war on Thursday. Cars and buses emerge on the New Jersey side facing south, and make a long left-hand turn that takes them three-quarters of a circle, and gives them and excellent view of the Manhattan. And there, at the southern end of the island, it was not.