Sometimes I just want to know...
Why is doing all this stuff important to me? I have no idea yet, other than I just get interested in something and then I go after it.. I remember that I always just feel compelled to get in there and see and experience things first hand..Is it simply morbid curiosity? Maybe, but because I am always so naturally willing to jump through flaming hoops to see things spectacular, I will continue my calling.
I think this information chasing obsession of mine originated in January of 1982 when I had just moved to Washington DC.
I was hired by the Washington Project for the Arts to assist in building a new performance space & gallery because of the job I did for my mom who is an awesome party designer to the degree that she was commissioned by them as an artist, to throw a party for a big “Texas” show that the “WPA” was putting on. I was a prop builder for mom back then and I managed to turn the whole place into an old timey Texas saloon and dance hall. I did a great job and with no resources other than some help from the newly inaugurated president Reagan’s bleacher committee and a lot of inspiration from being around all these real artists in there natural habitat.
Other than working week on – week off shifts 120 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico in the oil field, I had never really lived outside of Texas…
I had only been living there in DC for a week...The first big snow storm of the season just blew in…It was so cold that I was trying to warm up my socks by waving them over a kerosene heater and then putting them on fast enough to get a quickly dissapating sensation of heat.
I was looking out the big storefront windows of the old Franklin 5 & 10 cent store that was now the WPA’s new home at all the snow floating around in the air which occasionally twisted into a furious white ghost that would spontaneously explode against a geometrical backdrop of a dim grey sky that filled in between faded and sillouettes of old brownstone buildings which stood guard to wet black tire tracked streets lined with black naked trees and dirty frozen slush.
I think it was Petey Green (who’s radio show I really grew to love) who was talking on the radio as I teased the cherry red hot steel disc of the kerosene heater with dangling socks..
The voice over tha radio spoke of strange breaking news. In this big storm, an airplane might have actually hit a bridge, possibly the 14th street bridge and fallen into the Potomac river.. This was interesting, but I really had no idea what that actually meant until my new friend Anthony Cafritz, who was a young intern from Bennington College suddenly walked up to listen better to the radio. “Whoa” he said, “what the fuck is that all about?!? Lets go down there and see what happened”…”You mean it’s close enough that we could like run down there?” I said. Hell yes, c’mon, let’s go!” he exclaimed with the great ogling look for mischief that I desperately needed to see in order to instantly quell my fears that I’d given up fun friends from home with an insatiable apetite for adventure in trade for the “Art” experience… Thanks to Anthony, that was hardly the case.
Like the time when we were unloading the snobby featured artist work who’s name escapes me. Anthony and I were helping him take the work out of wooden crates when I said for lack of sophistication “ that’s some really cool shit man”.
The snoot quickly addressed my lack of highbrow sophisticated vocabulary by learning me that “ In the art world, we refer to this as a piece.” (you know what’s coming, right?) Suddenly, the man shape shifted from young turk artist into Ed Mcmahon,the straight man to Anthony’s timless classic reply which was…”You mean this piece of shit?”
That one lives in perpetuity.
I digress….
So we took off out the door of the WPA and started running down D street towards 14th. as fast as we could. I had never seen snow like this before in my life. There were homeless people holding up colored umbrellas that looked like beach balls for a roof. They huddled there over subway air vents on the Mall lawn that was so contrasting that they looked like big black squares painted on a solid white background.
The snow was really coming down and people were actually cross country skiing between the capital and the Washington monument..I had never!
"C'mon Ben, let's keep going! This way" he said... I regained my focus on our objective and took off running again towards the 14th street bridge..Wherever that was?
By the time we got to the Potomac river Anthony noticed that we were only at the Memorial bridge, one bridge north of 14th street where we heard all of the commotion was.
The first sign that something funny was going on was when we saw that the police were directing traffic. They were only letting cars go across towards Arlington but not into DC. There were also a few reporters plodding on foot through snowbanks that were quickly piling high on the sides of the bridge entrance. They were looking south, trying to steal a glimpse of something that had happened on the next bridge down. They had big ID press tags attached to them that said Associated Press and The Boston Globe. They seemed composed and very focused on getting across that bridge.
Anthony said: "We oughta follow these guys, they know where they're going." The police signaled and blew his whistle for us to get back away from the bridge just as an old grey haired black man slowly drove by in a really old dark green pick up truck. The bed was almost filled to the top with a big white pillow of snow. I motioned to Anthony and said "Jump in the back, he'll take us across..The cops won't come after us, they're too busy!"
Anthony, the guy who always had a quick answer for everything, suddenly looked a little confused and sort of just stopped like he was kind of paralyzed. Time was of the essence as this old guy was half way by us...It was now or never...I sprang into the back of that truck like a breaching whale landing flat on my back and banging the back of my head on something that was really hard and pointed and close to the surface. Luckily I had on my thick wool hat. The old man began furiously banging on his back window at me. I could see his breath as he was yelling for me to get my motha fuckin ass out of his god damn truck!
I lifted up my sore head and looked out the back to see Anthony getting smaller and smaller as we headed west towards the state of Virginia..I sat up as the old man had quieted down as he had grown weary of the fight .
What!? We're about to be in another state?? You've got to be kidding me??!?!?
We were about 2/3rds of the way across the bridge when I saw the Associated Press reporter so I jumped out of the truck and walked over to where he was. From there you could see across to the 14th street bridge where it looked like there had been a bad car wreck or something, that's I could see without my glasses. Suddenly the woman reporter from the Boston Globe started yelling dramatically into the little microphone of her cassette recorder "It's utter pandemonium here on the 14th street bridge where Air Florida flight 90 has careened into the bridge and is scattered about the Potomac..bla bla bla...The AP guy and I looked at each other as we both chuckled at this idiot of a reporter who was fabricating the whole story from another bridge a half a mile away from where she said she was. I couldn't help but wonder if this happens a lot, I asked the man and he shrugged and said "It's a shame when that happens." I guess that answers that question. We continued to walk to the other side of the bridge. He kept going straight on the road, I didn't understand why. The deal was going down to the left and up river. I don't know what that guy had in mind but I grew up in the country and so common sense tells me to simply follow the river to the other bridge. So I made my way down the snowy embankment towards the river bank. There wasn't anybody around there, I had it all to myself. It was really pretty along that frozen lake all the way to the 14th street bridge. I walked up the embankment. The road was closed as ambulance and police lights were going around all over the place. It looked really badly trashed out all over the first half of the bridge. There was a police car barracade blocking the road and so there was no way I could get across until suddenly an airlift helicopter launched off the ground creating a huge white cloud of snow all around which not only distracted all the cops but rendered everybody snow blind for just enough time for me to run like a deer across 14th street and down the other side to the river where all the action was.
I arrived at the bank of the Potomac. There were firemen closing the back door of a big ambulance truck-like vehicle. I asked one of them how it was going and he told me that there were six survivors in there, all suffering from hypothermia and that it was a miracle that anyone survived. I remember my first glimpse of the huge aircraft that looked as though it had just been broken in half like a toy. I stood in a stupor gazing out across
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