My
Dinner with Krewson
By Bill Metz
It was Wednesday
morning, the 11th of September. I'd just taken my seat in the auditorium,
waiting for the memorial service to begin. There are nearly 10,000
employees at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. I was one of
about 300 invited to this service to commemorate those who had lost their
lives a year earlier, and to recognize the efforts of Lab employees who
had been involved in the rescue and counter-terrorism efforts that followed.
I had done none of the above, but my current assignment had put me on the
invitation list and I felt honored to be there. Just as the service
was starting, my pager nudged me and told me I'd better get to my director's
office, now please.
"We need you to go to New York. Sorry about the short notice,
but we've got you scheduled for a 7:00 a.m. flight on Friday morning".
He outlined the project I'd be involved with. And as interesting as
it was, the foremost thought in my mind at the time was "Gee, maybe
now I can finally meet Krewson".
For those of you who don't know him, John is a writer for The Onion (http://www.theonion.com),
an incredibly funny guy, a gifted writer, and an SVRider who got transplanted
from Madison, Wisconsin. Since all the good riding areas involve a
5 hour round trip just to get there and back, John left his SV in the care
of legendary long-distance SVRider (and fellow Wisconsonite) Willy Rowe,
and (to our collective regret) signed off this list. I've got to add
that John seems almost heartbroken by this set of circumstances.
I picked up a few CDs to listen to on the plane; among them was a copy of
Springsteen's "The Rising", since I'd heard that it
was about the events of 9/11. I work in the Lab's Nonproliferation,
Arms Control, and International Security division, and part of what we do
involves remote sensing and detection devices. My role wasn't
a particularly glamorous one- I'd essentially be the "Mayflower
man", helping to pack up a project for shipping. It would, however,
have me working directly with members of the NYPD.
John and I planned to meet around 2:00 on Saturday afternoon. My employer
had generously put me up in a hotel that I'd never consider staying in-
the bill for my two night stay would insure my car for a year. This
did afford us a central location to meet at and which lent itself to a walking
tour of Manhattan. We spent the first few minutes literally walking
in circles. Ideas seem to set each other off like a string of firecrackers
in John's head- thinking about lunch loosed an avalanche of possibilities,
and with each one came associated ideas about oddball attractions and significant
sites in that particular neighborhood.
We finally decided on Italian, and John led the way to a marvelous nouvelle
Italian restaurant. The building was old but lovingly cared for.
The woodwork was gorgeous, the interior spotless, the service immediate
but unobtrusive. John ordered a buffalo mozzarella appetizer with
razor-thin, real Italian prosciutto and tomatoes and basil that you'd swear
were picked only after the order was placed. Lunch itself was equal
in its perfection.
 |
| Over lunch, John presented me with a copy of "Our Dumb Century", signed by the entire Onion staff. Yeah, my friends are envious… |
We headed down to the waterfront and toured the Intrepid, a privately-owned and restored aircraft carrier. They have 50 years worth of aircraft, spacecraft, weapons systems, and other related hardware on display. John is a military hardware buff, but the aftermath of September 11th gave him a bit more first-hand exposure than he'd have preferred, and blunted his enthusiasm a bit. Touring the flight deck, hangar deck, and command center provided a background for a running conversation that covered the Mafia, dysfunctional families, music, popular culture, religion, anime, military history, politics, the press, medical experimentation, cars, and about 43 million other subjects. It's pretty much "Sit down, strap in, and hang on"- the conversation will take you places you never expect, and I hoped my contributions amounted to more than a flat, bald spare tire rattling around in the trunk.
"What else do you want to see?". I was reluctant to ask him to take me down to the World Trade Center site. John was an eyewitness to the events that day, and posted a passionately confrontational letter to this list when the subjects became too trivial. He took me there, relating the overwhelming need to DO something that day. He'd tried to donate blood, along with, apparently, everyone else in the city. His blood type was too common to be of immediate use, so he emptied his closet to provide work clothes for the front-line rescuers. He found out later that, despite official stories to the contrary, the subway trains had continued to run up until the time of the first tower's collapse. His wife had been on that line and passed under the site minutes before. She made booties for the search dogs.
I wish I could tell you that my first look at the site inspired a hushed sense of reverence, like some sort of open-air cathedral, but recovery and cleanup efforts have left it looking like any construction site now. I was encouraged that the visitors who packed the area were focused on the significance of the place, and not just going there to have their picture taken to validate their visit. What was moving was the impromptu memorial set up across the street, where T-shirts from fire and police departments around the country hung by the hundreds from an iron fence. The fence was also adorned with flags from many different countries, and a large piece of canvas which had been painted with an American flag and inscribed with the thoughts, prayers, and well-wishes of thousands of people. There were, of course, the almost inevitable carts bearing photographs, T-shirts, hats, and every sort of trinket souvenir, but the overall mood was one of somber reflection, and respect.
It
was getting to be around 7:00. John mentioned that he had company
showing up at 8:00. "Do you need to get going?" I asked.
"Nah, let's get a beer". He led us through a maze of packed
streets, arriving at an Irish pub just outside of Little Italy. "This
place is uneven", he said, "Some nights it's great, and on others
it's pretty awful". We poked our heads inside, John inspected
it with some sort of mysterious social radar, and concluded it was a good
night. "Let's go downstairs, it's usually pretty quiet down there".
Again we pushed our way through a maze of people and gorgeous old wood-paneled
walls and polished brass, down the stone-walled stairway into the tiny,
quiet, womb-like cellar. It was nearly empty, and we grabbed a couple
of stools at the bar. Three hours and six pints of Harp later the
place was well past term. It would have been easier to carry on a
conversation in the running engine of a 747. We headed for the street,
and on to the subway where he pointed me in the right direction and we said
our goodbyes.So what can I tell you about Krewson? He's wickedly funny, and he's state funeral somber. He strikes me as someone who'd be equally at home discussing philosophy or setting your gym shorts on fire (with you in them). He hates New York, for every reason; it's kept him from the motorcycling that he so passionately loves, and it's replaced his beloved Wisconsin countryside with a hellish rat maze of asphalt and glass and brick and people too traumatized to greet you on the street. At the same time, I think he's enchanted by the intensity and energy and variety and vitality. But don't think for a moment that he's starstruck by the place- he knows what he wants, and it's so far from Times Square that it's hard to think of it as even being on the same planet. He's trapped into living a lifestyle that may insure that he'll never be able to retire, but he's generous to a fault and doesn't seem to give a damn.
But I've fallen into the trap of describing the stuff around him, and not the man himself. What Krewson is, is human. And I mean that in the most intense form of the word. He is straight up, unabashedly, unapologetically himself. He can be impulsive and bitter and angry, and loving and thoughtful and passionate. At any given moment, he is who he is, and it doesn't matter if that might conflict with who you thought he might be based on who you thought he was a week or a day or an hour ago. There is never a guarded moment, or the least bit of pretense. But none of this means anything. I can't and won't claim to be able to sum up anyone in a few hundred words after a few hours and beers. That goes in spades for Krewson.
Epilogue
Over the course of the preceding year, I'd commented to John a number of times how remote the events of 9/11 had seemed. It wasn't that I was unmoved by the sight of thousands of people dying in the course of a few moments, or that I wasn't horrified by the thought of people jumping to a certain death to avoid being burned alive. It's just that the only manifestation of this distant war was a five minute report on the nightly news. After wandering the streets of Manhattan with John, and spending the weekend working with guys who'd been directly involved with the events of that day, things changed. While I had never taken my job for granted or approached it in a less-than-dedicated manner, there is now a greater sense of urgency and purpose to my work. And I can't listen to "The Rising" without getting completely torn up inside.
SEPTEMBER