I was on the morning commuter train into the city, on my way in to an audition for a TV commercial. For years I had been making my living acting in TV commercials (well… “acting” might be too strong a word to describe what I do) selling cereal and other fine, quality consumer goods.

A good living — but not the most creatively fulfilling. So, I was plotting my return to performing stand-up comedy. I started doing stand up in New York during the big comedy boom of the 1980s. My first stand-up gig was at the Comic Strip sometime in 1986; Adam Sandler literally shoved me on the stage. Sandler was a very nice guy with a very silly act that cracked me up. He used to do a bit about going to visit his hard of hearing grandmother, “Grandma it’s me, your grandson.” “Who? Charles Manson?” Funny kid.

I had drifted in and out of stand up over the years while doing other things — hosting a couple of TV shows, winning a couple of NY Emmys, performing in a Broadway musical (no mean feat since I can’t sing or dance). I was enjoying a pretty decent show business career, one that afforded me a house with a wife and several kids in it. But that stand-up thing never completely goes away. So, here I was, once again putting together an act and getting ready to get it up on it’s feet — scrounging up spots in clubs late at night with kids half my age when what I really wanted to be doing was watching TV with my wife with a big tub of ice cream in my lap.

I was going over my notes — jokes, bits, routines. Some I had complete confidence in (“A women stopped me on the street, she said ‘Excuse me sir, I must talk to you, I’m a Jew For Jesus’ I said ‘That’s nice lady, I’m a Jew late for work.”) some I thought were brilliant, but I couldn’t get an audience to agree with me (“I joined Obsessive Compulsives Anonymous. It’s like a 12-step program. Except it has 311 steps. They’re not all different — it’s just the same step repeated over and over again.”). Some were just half — baked thoughts scribbled in a fit of inspiration, but made no sense at all (“Outlaw Jello”? What was that??).

I had all kinds of scraps of paper with little comedy ideas to sort through and try and put into some kind of coherent shape. The train ride into the city was perfect for that kind of work — 45 uninterrupted minutes, pleasant view of the Hudson River. I had spent a couple of weeks doing this on the train every morning, getting the material together, getting ready to dive back into the clubs. Switching the gags around, finding the nuances, writing more gags.

As the train heads south from the Bronx, it makes a left turn on the elevated track into Manhattan. I glanced up from my jokes and saw a big cloud of dark smoke over southern Manhattan. A few minutes later we were all standing, poised to exit as the train pulled into Grand Central Station. Some guy was listening to a radio. He said aloud to no one in particular. “They’re saying a plane crashed into the World Trade Center.” He had a grin on his face — one of those, “Can you beat that? If it’s not one thing it’s another” grins. A plane? What kind of plane? “I don’t know,” he said. “Had to be one of those little ones.”

I called my wife. She was home and answered cheerily. I asked her to turn on the news to see if she could find out anything. A moment later she gasped. I had never heard her voice like this. She sounded terrified. “Oh my God. All those people.”

Within moments the information came together. She had just watched the second plane hit. There were two planes — big, passenger planes. Both towers were hit.

I told my wife I would try and find out what the hell was going on and call her back. I went to a newsstand in Grand Central, the one with TV sets tuned to the news.

I walked through Grand Central. An actress I know came up to me, “Hey Dave, how’s it going?” She had a big smile on her face and was in a chatty mood. She didn’t know yet. I told her something had happened and I had to call my wife. I got my wife on the phone again; the kids were in school. I decided to go home and make sure they were all right.

On the train ride home, I sat next to a woman whose husband was a New York City police officer. She couldn’t get him on the phone. She knew he was down there. We held hands.

A businessman in a gray suit had a small radio with earphones. He was a little on the heavy side, with a very deep voice. He calmly relayed the news as it came in. Some of it would later turn out to be confused rumors (“There’s a bomb at the Supreme Court.”) Some of it sounded like science fiction. “They’ve hit the Pentagon.” The Pentagon? How was that possible? I was on the verge of panic, but he was very calm, very steady. Deep, calm voice filling us in, our conduit to the world outside that train. He steadily reported all as it came in, with a deep voice, and a resigned resolve. I was having trouble comprehending the incomprehensible, but he knew — you could hear it in his voice: We were at war.

There would be much insomnia. There would be volunteering at Ground Zero, military service in the New York Guard, yet another baby. Years went by.

I got my stand up career up and running again. I still can’t get that 311 steps joke to work.

I saw the man from the train again, years later. On the 4:52 from the city. We recognized each other immediately. We both smiled broadly, we shook hands. He has a firm grip. “You doing okay?” Yeah, you? “Yeah, doing okay.”

I was very happy to see him again. A good, solid New Yorker. I don’t know him, but he’s got everything you’d want in a guy on a train on the day war breaks out.

– Comedian Dave Konig starred on Broadway in Grease! and is a New York Emmy winner for co-hosting Subway Q&A. Konig has written a novel, Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky. Konig is also an NRO contributor.