25 years of NYC spirit never dies

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 31, 2003

NEW YORK &045; John’s first job was as a pecan tree shaker. &8220;They would throw me up in the tree &045; I wouldn’t climb it, now &045; they would throw me up in that tree and say, &8216;Now, shake those limbs, boy.’&8221;

&8220;They&8221; were the workers on the farm, including his grandfather. His other grandfather worked in the lumber business. He would take a paint brush and bucket into the forest and stripe the trees that were to be thinned and sold as timber.

This was life growing up for John in Thomasville, Ala. In 1971, John found his way to the Big Apple &045; or the Big Time, he’ll tell you. In 1978, he embarked on a career as a tour guide, something he’s been doing ever since.

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&8220;In 25 years, I’ve met two couples from Thomasville,&8221; he told my wife, mother and me as we stood in front of our hotel near the United Nations at the conclusion of John’s tour. &8220;It was a good time. It gave me a chance to tell the old stories.&8221;

John gets back to the South every &8220;two, three, four, five years,&8221; whenever a family reunion is planned. Past the few-and-far-between visits to Alabama and the even fewer-and-farther-between chance meetings of hometown folk, John is pure New Yorker.

Now barely two years past the devastation of Sept. 11, 2001, John said he sees a city getting back to normal but still anemic from the sucker punch landed on them.

&8220;We’re probably doing about 65 to 70 percent of the (tourism) business we used to do before Sept. 11,&8221; John said. &8220;That’s why we’re so glad to have you folks here.&8221;

As tourists in New York, being told New Yorkers were happy to have us here was not an oddity. Les, the minivan cabby who picked us up from the airport, told us the same thing. His deep Italian rogue made the 20-minute trip most enjoyable, but the excitement of having someone to cart around from airports to hotels was most revealing.

&8220;People didn’t want to come to New York. People were scared to travel,&8221; Les said. &8220;That’s why us New Yorkers are so glad you’re here. We want you to come and stay.&8221;

John called the few months following the terrorist attacks the city’s bleakest in history. He said it is hard to explain the city’s mood during that time. &8220;The best compliment I ever got was this woman who told me she enjoyed my tour … She told me that I had a great spirit. &8216;Never let anyone break that spirit,’ she told me. After Sept. 11, it was like someone broke this city’s spirit. Collectively, our spirit was broken.&8221;

The domino effect of the tragedy is still being felt, he said. Even as the economy is rebounding and tourists are returning to New York by the droves, John said things are far from what they used to be for those who live and work in the city.

&8220;Take a delivery guy,&8221; he explained. &8220;Used to when I was sitting at my desk on the 33rd floor I could order a sandwich and it was brought and put on my desk … Now, the guy has to stop in the lobby, and most of the time he has to show ID, which a lot of these guys are not going to do because one of the most popular trades for illegal immigrants in this city is a delivery person.

&8220;So now, I’ve got to go down and get my sandwich. If I have to go down 33 floors, I might as well walk across the street, you know what I mean?&8221;

In short, the small jobs, such as the sandwich delivery guys, are still missing.

&8220;You know that deli where we got lunch,&8221; he told us. &8220;They do a great lunch business, but they do an even better breakfast business … Before Sept. 11, they probably had 20 delivery guys. Now they have three.&8221;

The tale of the delivery guy is even more telling. John said it is estimated that between 40 and 200 delivery men were in the Twin Towers when they fell. Of those, John says most will never be identified because illegal immigrants cannot afford to come forward and risk deportation, and business owners cannot afford admitting they gave illegal immigrants work.

It is a Catch 22 that means some families will never get the chance for closure. In John’s eyes, they are not illegal immigrants but New Yorkers, all who worked and lived and died in the city he calls home.

Sam R. Hall

can be reached by e-mail to

shall@sctonline.net

.