Runner485 - 2008-04-24 8:14 AMThis should have been under Sid's post below A long read, but worth it....Don't know how it went to the top....Looks like I need a sig for this evolution!

Thanks Sid. It's amazing what people can write about. My own experiences with the Trade Center elevators are just memories of long ago and the mundane morning, lunchtime & evening ride to the lobby, unless the wind was blowing hard.

I worked on the 110th floor of Two WTC. To get up there consisted of an elevator to the Sky lobby on the 77th floor. Then a ride to the 107th floor....then a freight elevator to the 110th floor, 3 stories above the rentable spaces. We had no windows up there.

On windy days, if the mechanism for slowing down the elevators wasn't activated, and I don't know who or how that happened, the ride from the 77th floor to the lobby was not only as usual, fast, but the car banged back and forth while heading down to the lobby. Which was unnerving to say the least and required at least two additional drinks for lunch to calm your nerves!

Later today, I'll go pull out my copy of that issue and read the entire story.

PaulR - 2008-04-24 7:06 AMJ

Joe, when I first moved to Washington Place in 1969, one of our neighbors was Howie Olson. He was a foreman with an OTIS crew working at WTC.

I joined their Tues night poker group for most of the time I lived there. One evening I mentioned the Brooklynn Dodgers, and how I had grown up following that team, and how my entire extended family were all Dodger fans. He said "then you'll find this very interesting".

He went on to tell me that one of his laborers used to be a player for the Dodgers, how he now wears a hard-hat and eats his luch like all the others, while warming himself beside the fire barrell. I thought at first that he was referring to a minor leaguer, but when he mentioned that he was from Reading, PA,.

I knew right away

Runner485 - 2008-04-24 2:39 PM

Paul, without even opening up your link I know it is Carl Furillo....What an arm he had. While your entire family was Dodger fans we were NY Giant fans who of course hated the Bums....My regret today is that I never went to Ebbets Field to see a game, I just couldn't go, I detested them that much. All those years losing to the Bums turned around in 1951....You remember don'cha...In case you forgot I;ll remind you. It was the "shot heard round the world", and it had nothing to do with 1776!

BTW! The kids I grew up with were all Yankee fans and not one Dodger fan among them. We lived in Manhattan, maybe that's why. Matter of fact I never met a kid growingup in NYC, who admitted being a Dodger fan.....

Memories......nice thoughts, thanks

Tom McNulty - 2008-04-24 2:34 PM
{SNIP}
I used to carry my birth certificate on those trips in case I had to prove U.S. citizenship crossing the Gowanus Canal. Speaking of the canal, have you ever been able to eat lunchmeat since? The locals will know just what I mean. That was a long time ago.