Time Is Never On Your Side

When I was young and foolish, I thought I would live forever or at least until I was 30 (back then 30 was forever). I am having to reconsider that thought. As I approach 75, I have come to the conclusion that time is never on your side. Time inflicts pain. Once flawlessly working body parts start to hurt or ache or stop working altogether. Vision and hearing start to fade. It starts with that old sports metaphor "he's lost a step", meaning you're not as fast as you once were. Or you're not as strong or as mentally quick. Simple tasks are no longer simple. Perhaps the most tragic pain is the fading of memory that sometimes leads to the worst thing that can happen in old age, dementia, the inability to remember the who, what, when and where of you. This happened to my mother and it was heartbreaking. They say this is just a part of getting old, that getting old isn't for the faint of heart. This is bullshit. I've seen plenty of 90-100 year olds who are spry and still have nimble minds. They might have "lost a step" but they are still in the race. 

Time is a thief. It robs us of family members and friends. Sometimes we do this to ourselves by our actions or our choices. Either way is no less painful. Death is the most tragic characteristic of time. Being in the food and wine business, a lot of my friends who have died were also in the food and wine business - Rodney "Bo" Williams of the Inn at Sawmill Farm, Frank Stone of Empire Distributors, Eddie Ausch of Reisner's Delicatessen, Joe Hoggard of the Ships Cabin, Bayne Williams of Young's Markets, Vittorio Marianecci of Zenato.... The list goes on and on. The longer I live the longer the list gets. I guess this is the price for getting old, outliving your friends. 

Time steals in other ways. We also experience the death of some of our favorite restaurants. The most tragic and sickening has to be the loss of  Windows On The World at the Twin Trade Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001. It was a favorite of mine and all the fond memories are tainted with the memory of what happened; 79 employees died among the 2,753 people that day at the Twin Trade Towers. I am not able to forget that, when I remember "The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World".

My first trip there was in the early 1980's. Windows On The World opened in April of 1976 and was the creation of Joe Baum the wizard behind The Four Seasons, Quo Vadis, Tavern On The Green, The Forum Of The Twelve Caesars and many more magnificent restaurants. It had received lots of press and was the highest grossing restaurant in the world. Windows On The World was open as a private club at lunch, the best time for a great view. If you paid a small fee you could join for the day and go up. When I say up, I mean up. Windows On The World was on the 107th floor of the North Tower. There was an elevator that only made one stop and that was at the top. It was fast but strangely it didn't seem that way. You were in this dark box and your ears popped as you went up. It was a little disconcerting. No, it was a lot disconcerting. 

When we arrived, the doors opened to a elegant and stylish reception area but your eyes went to the left, to the light. Down a corridor to the 'floor to ceiling' windows with the astounding view. It was one of the most awe inspiring sensations I have ever experienced.

The name Windows On The World was absolutely perfect. We were a bit early for our reservation, so I asked if we could have a seat in the bar while we waited. The hostess took us to the bar and introduced us to Thomas the bartender. We had a seat, ordered a couple of glasses of wine and I talked up our new friend, Thomas. I told him we had a small restaurant in Captiva and how I had read so much about Windows in different food and trade magazines. This was before the internet. Thomas left the bar for a moment, returning with one of the assistant managers. She took us on a tour of the whole complex, all the dining rooms, the kitchen, the Wine Cellar in the Sky and storerooms. She even stood there while I chatted with the chef. After our tour she escorted us to one of the prime tables right by the window. It was a clear sunny day and the view was incredible, almost surreal. 

We sat. She said not to worry about our bar bill. It would be included with our final bill. She left. The table was so close to the window you had a sensation of floating on air outside the glass. It was so disconcerting for my wife that she wanted to move one row back if possible. I was in a quandary. They had given us one of the best tables in the house because they knew we were in the business and would appreciate it. Do I turn that down? It wasn't right for my wife to be uncomfortable, either.

Our waiter sensed the problem. I don't think my wife was the first to be disturbed by the height factor. He arranged for us to move one row back and we had a beautiful lunch. Everyone was comfortable. While waiting for our appetizers, I went back to the bar and thanked Thomas for arranging everything. I slipped him a twenty. This was back in the day when a twenty was actually worth something. He tried to refuse it but I left it on the bar. All the employees at Windows On The World were sensitive to the needs and desires of their customers. That was the kind of people Windows On The World hired. They made good money but money wasn't their only motivation. They wanted us to be happy.

It would be 3 years before I had a chance to return. By then it was no longer a private club at lunch but still an innovative restaurant concept with the spectacular view. Joe Baum never rested on his laurels. Of my 4 visits, I never went at night, always during the day. I was lucky because every visit was on a clear sunny day. I arrived early again and went into the bar and had a seat. Thomas was there. He looked up, saw me and said: "Hi, Michael. How are things in Captiva? I'll be right with you." I was blown away. How in the world did he remember me after all the people he had served in those 3 years? He is number 1 on my list of professional bartenders. We had another great lunch with a fantastic view, one row back from the window. They remembered that too. 

I made 2 more trips back over the years. Each visit was fantastic. On my last, Thomas wasn't there. His replacement told me that Thomas, with a friend had opened their own restaurant in Connecticut. I was happy for him. 

That means he wasn't there on September 11, 2001. He was one of the lucky ones. As was Michael Lomonaco, the executive chef of Windows On The World on that day. He was due into work but stopped on the ground floor to get his glasses replaced at an optometrist. He ran an errand and his life was spared. He lives with that survivor's guilt of "why them and not me" to this day. Knowing Thomas, he probably feels the same. 

We lose our "old friend" restaurants for various reasons: financial, advanced age of the owners or chef, greed of landlords, greed of "silent" partners, or bad behavior of the owner or chef. None of Time's reasons is more tragic or heartbreaking than what happened to Windows On The World. It was lost to the world's greatest crime, war. Man's inhumanity to his fellow man by use of murder. All brought about by man's inability to tolerate people who are different. It's greed of a different sort. This was the worst kind of war because it didn't involve soldiers but innocent civilians trying to make a living. There were some warriors lost that day; they were the policemen and firemen that ran into harm's way to help while everyone else was running away to escape the devastation and horror. They were the heros that day. It's been over twenty years and the memory still hurts. There were eighteen survivors pulled from the wreckage of the Twin Trade Towers on September 11, 2001. Eighteen out of almost three thousand. Time was not on our side that day. I can never forget that. It is part of my memory of Windows On The World, "The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World".