The thin, silver cloud hung lazily in the late summer sky, like an empty hammock. Tracing the cloud northward, it took on the appearance of a fresh, bruised scar, up to the point of its origin; a tortured, twisting column of cremation smoke where the World Trade Center had stood only a few hours before.

That’s the way it looked in late afternoon on September 11, 2001 from Interstate 287 in Fords, New Jersey, as my wife and I drove home from work. Right before our exit, a large open-topped eighteen-wheeler – the kind used for rubble removal - was parked on the side of the road, motor running. Waiting as patiently as a vulture.

When we got home, there was an eerie stillness to the neighborhood; as if it was holding a wake or sitting shiva. From all over the area - from as far away as thirty miles - people could see the plume of grey ash, hunched over like the figure of death.

That morning, a young woman, her second day at a new job in lower Manhattan, exited the World Trade Center PATH station, escorted by her uncle. Street level, they were greeted by a blizzard of paper, smoke and falling bodies. Walking fast, her uncle turned her around and steered her towards the ferry landing where she could get back safely to Jersey.

The New Jersey/Connecticut/New York State area is connected to Manhattan by a latticework of highways and railroads. Commuter ferries skim Raritan Bay and New York Harbor like waterbugs. Reportedly, one ferry captain, halfway to New York from Jersey, saw the first tower get hit and promptly turned his craft around and headed home. All along the Jersey shore, people phoned each other to check on the safety of friends and family members.

Two weeks later, on a warm Sunday afternoon on Lexington Avenue in the East 70’s, Manhattan’s streets were unusually empty and quiet. There were reminders everywhere of the tragedy downtown. Street lamp poles, bus stop shelters, and telephone kiosks had become frenetic newspaper obituary pages; they were desperately papered with Xeroxed pictures of missing family members - their names and the companies they worked for. Staring back from the posters were people of all colors and ages, smiling full of life; now gone in a puff of smoke. “Have you seen this person? Please call.”

A patrolling cop car trimmed in green crossed a deserted Park Avenue. The markings on the side revealed that it was from a sheriff’s department in Ohio.

New York City souvenir shops used to sell six-foot posters of a pencil drawing of Manhattan, looking northward, as if seen from the sky over Staten Island. It was very detailed; the artist seemed to have drawn every building in lower Manhattan. The World Trade Center, of course, was very prominent.

This Sunday afternoon, approaching one such shop from half a block away, one could see the same poster in the shop’s window, but with a new addition; smoke billowing from the Twin Towers. One had to wonder how someone had updated the art and printed and distributed the posters in such a short time span. One also had to wonder who on earth would buy such a poster.

Upon closer inspection, however, it was the same old poster – involved in a cosmic practical joke. The “smoke” was water condensation on the inside of the window pane.

72 Hours before the tragedy - on Saturday night, September 8, 2001 - New York City was as lively as a Gershwin rhapsody. Down in the Lower East Side, near Alphabet City, the Goth NYU students prowled St. Mark’s Place. It was apparent that the Mohawk haircut on men was about to make a comeback. Crammed inside St. Mark’s Comics, all bagged and sorted, were the pulp remnants of thousands of comics from childhoods in more innocent, bygone eras.

On the counter was a stack of flyers announcing a comic sale. St. Mark’s Comics had another location, “across from the World Trade Center.” The sale was at both locations, “Starting Wednesday, September 12.” “Sounds great! I’ll have to drop by,” said one customer.

In the balmy summer night, in Union Square, NYU students sat and talked, held hands, skateboarded, while touristas strolled and photographed crowds and architecture. Subway grates belched express-train rumblings; all bathed in the light from millions of windows in thousands of buildings.

It looked to be a great fall – a perfect coda to a golden summer.