In the hip nightclub world of 1985 Manhattan, many people were ashamed to admit they were card-carrying members of the Bridge and Tunnel Crowd, the unfortunate who lived in New Jersey and the outer boroughs but worked and played in Manhattan. Not me. I was proud to be included in that group, even at that moment of truth when my commuter identity would be revealed.

Like perfecting an art form, I’d cut it as close as I dared and bolt Limelight or Odeon, snag a cab, and commence the “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” dash to Penn Station to catch the 1:35 a.m. Trenton Local — the last New Jersey Transit train of the night.

One night, instead of my usual routine home via Penn Station, I left a club after 1 a.m. and instead headed for a PATH train to Hoboken to crash with some friends. Called The Tubes by old-timers, PATH trains ran through various points between Newark, Hoboken, Jersey City, and 33rd Street and the World Trade Center in Manhattan. I never understood The Tubes reference until I l saw old photographs of tracks threaded through cast-iron tunnels that rested on the bottom of the Hudson River.

A stairway in the middle of a pedestrian island off Herald Square led to the subterranean 33rd Street PATH station. Vehicles raced above as I disappeared below ground.

Still dressed for work from the morning of the day before, I felt conspicuous in my grey pinstriped suit and floppy, yellow polka-dot bow tie. The nervous energy of the crowd floated up with the steam through a grate. Something I had never seen before at that late hour: a horde swelled on the platform, anxiously peering into the dark tunnel for a Hoboken-bound train. To add to the anxiety of 900 people waiting for a train constructed to hold 800, a voice announced that, due to equipment problems, this would be the last train of the night. The pulsating music and crowded dance floor of the club I’d just left, with Shake Your Groove Thing in full swing, can certainly raise your heart rate, but the rush of jostling for a spot on the last train out will take your adrenaline to a level it’s never been.

I took a position near the end of the line, about four rows deep. No words were spoken; everyone knew what everyone else was thinking as a faint white light appeared in the tunnel.

As the car doors opened and people poured in, I jumped into an opening two rows in front of me and let the desperate push of those behind carry me further. Once inside, the goal was to find something to hold; otherwise, the inevitable short stop would send me flying. I made it to a handrail and settled in for the short ride to Hoboken. As we pulled out, I counted two people with canes and a young woman with a walker among those stranded on the platform.

The mood of my tired and cramped fellow riders was ugly. I would’ve guessed the strongest smell would be body odor, but surprisingly it was Nathan’s French Fries.

I made eye-contact with a drunken behemoth in coveralls as I allowed him three inches of precious space on the overhead handrail so he wouldn’t lose his balance and crush me.

“Look at us,” he shouted above the rumble, as we hurried though local stops. “Is this any way to live? We’re sweating like fuckin’ pigs while the rest of the world’s asleep!”

He wasn’t exaggerating that much. We had embarked on a trip that would take us under hundreds of thousands of sleeping New Yorkers.

Although I had turned the music off, I still had the headphones of my Walk-Man over my ears. I smiled slightly.

After getting no verbal response, the Behemoth pointed at me and addressed the crowd: “Look at this kid. It’s two in the morning and he’s still in his fuckin’ suit!”

As the train picked up speed, I realized we were heading for the World Trade Center, not the normal route for a Hoboken-bound train. Following the Behemoth’s lead, I yelled out: “We’re headin’ to World Trade!” which would easily double our trip travel time.

“Bullshit!” the Behemoth responded without the benefit of any factual inquiry.

I was quickly proven correct as we entered Exchange Place Station.

“The cherry in the suit’s right!” the Behemoth yelled, distressed.

To the PATH contingent of the Bridge and Tunnel Crowd, the World Trade Center was the gateway to New York.

Invariably during my high school and college years, if I heard someone worked in the City, I thought of the Trade Center. The uncle of a classmate, who was the object of my affections, was an undercover Port Authority officer; the hundreds of lawyers toiling away in gigantic skyscrapers tattooed with the names of banks in giant letters; the unofficial brotherhood of tan trench-coat wearing, pizza slice gobbling, Wall Street Journal reading businessmen — all either worked in or passed through the Trade Center every day.

The PATH was a portal of promise for the rest of us. It transported legions of young people, in new suits, carrying a single copy of a hastily typed resume for that first job out of college interview. Even when an interview didn’t go well, you remained optimistic because, grabbing a hot dog from a cart in the plaza by the WTC fountain, you were literally surrounded by tens of thousands of people with jobs. A college education wasn’t even required. Everyone had heard the legendary tales of high school dropouts who, starting as runners on Wall Street, could now buy and sell you and your father. See that twenty-four-year-old in the blue smock drooling on his NYSE badge while napping on the PATH. How much does he make?

I never worked in the Trade Center, but I did work a few blocks away at One Chase Manhattan Plaza. That meant I passed through WTC to get to the PATH at least twice a day. My 57th Floor office in One Chase would be remarkable anywhere else, but in the shadows of the Twin Towers, it wasn’t even worthy of comment. The Twin Towers defined the area.

Even my boss – a nationally-revered litigator who lived his life well above the fracas – was intimately familiar with the street scene surrounding World Trade. If you were lucky enough to have been chosen to get him a couple of hot dogs, he directed you to the Hebrew National Cart on Maiden Lane, the apparent victor of his informal sampling of the multitude of street vendors in the area. Others swore by Sabrett, with the colorful umbrella and ice cold Yoo-Hoo.

Unlike the trendy bistros of the Upper East Side, the food emporium near World Trade was largely embodied in carts and refurbished trucks. I was most suspicious of The Great Wall of China – a converted Mister Softee ice cream truck with a spinning aluminum ventilator that appeared to have bored its way through the thin roof. With no other visible means of power, the mobile kitchen must have been serving nuclear baked General Tso’s Chicken.

The coffee and donut carts, half the size of a mail truck, were also plentiful. Unusually large men squeezed in behind trays of baked goods, as piping hot coffee flowed from silver urns large enough to wire a platoon. The snap of a brown paper bag as I passed the donut cart signaled that another sugar fix was about to be fulfilled. In a city of culinary superlatives, I wasn’t surprised to see Best Donut in Town scribbled in black magic marker on the side of a pushcart,

We pulled into the deserted WTC Station, and, after an inexplicably brief stop, pulled out.

Just as we had acclimated to the tension and heat, our relative peace and calm was disrupted by two bone-jarring whacks, which could only have been the sound of someone getting punched in the face. Although the train car was already packed to capacity, somehow the passengers nearest the fight herded the rest of us even closer together as they tried to escape harm’s way.

Thwacks quickly became taunts. “You’re nothing, fucker!”

A woman cried out: “Somebody, do something. He’s beating his girlfriend!”

Just as the situation had reached its boiling point, from somewhere deep in the car, the authoritative sound of a whistle blurted out. The response was immediate. The seemingly unmovable crowd parted, and it was revealed that the combatants were in fact two fellow Bridge and Tunnellers, one in a New York Rangers jersey and the other in a New York Islanders jersey, embroiled in their own make it back to Jersey anyway you can odyssey.

Moving briskly though the crowd, holding a whistle between his teeth and continuing to sound the charge as he strutted, this figure of authority was not a police officer but a young civilian. I can’t tell you what clothes he had on, but I know he had a shiny silver whistle hooked to a thick silver chain, as wide as a dog’s choke collar. Part MacGyver and part urban referee, he quickly encountered the hockey enthusiasts, who, by this time, were winded and holding on to each other’s collars. Confused by the whistle, the fighters came to rest as the train pulled into a deserted Exchange Place Station, somewhere beneath the no-man’s lands of Jersey City. As the car doors opened, the young man grabbed each fighter and spinning them in a circle, flung them out of the car and sprawling onto the station platform.

Everyone on the train exploded into applause while the Referee took a bow, like a conductor at Carnegie Hall, and mouthed “Thank you. Ah, thank you very much,” to his adoring fans. As the train pulled away, the bewildered combatants pulled themselves up off the ground. With no more trains coming, their Bridge and Tunnel survival skills would surely be tested; they might even be forced to work together if they hoped to somehow make it home that night.

The spirit on the train became lively; we went from subterranean gloom to raucous party bus on a sunny St. Patrick’s Day. Pulling into a deserted Hoboken Station fifteen minutes later, we parted ways via four exits that led in different directions.

I climbed a stairway to the street and walked along the abandoned docks and overgrown brush that lined the river front. Less than several thousand feet across the river were the Twin Towers. They oriented me whether I traveled through Hoboken on foot, was lost in the maze of Lower Manhattan side streets, tanned on a SoHo rooftop tar beach, or crossed the Jersey swamplands on the glorified pinball rails officially known as the Pulaski Skyway.

It was well into early morning now. I continued past bankrupt waterfront redevelopment projects while just across the river sat not only the Trade Center, but also other priceless properties – The Woolworth Building, Trinity Church, and the Statue of Liberty.

I made my way by the old Clam Broth House and surrounding nightspots. This was Sinatra Country. I no longer felt conspicuous in my bow tie. I hesitated at the door of an establishment that was still open. Should I shuffle the final few blocks to my buddy’s place and crash?

Looking back across the river, all was quiet on the surface. But I knew better. A beacon at the top of One World Trade blinked a steady message. Lights were still on at Windows on The World, the incomparable restaurant on the 107th floor of One World Trade where countless Bridge and Tunnellers (and others from all over the world) had gotten engaged or celebrated some special occasion. People often refer to the island of Manhattan; it may be surrounded by water, but to me it’s always been very connected to the world beyond. The spirit of the city was too strong for any PATH car or train tunnel to contain, and I knew that if I held it for a moment that I could take it with me wherever I went.

I dusted some tunnel grime off my shoulder, straightened my bow tie, and flung open the door, just in time for last call. As I approached the smoky haze surrounding the long walnut and brass bar, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if the Behemoth, the Referee, or any other of my fellow travelers were waiting for me inside.

***

Bobby Sauro’s fiction has appeared in Vol 1 Brooklyn and elimae, among others. His short story “Forgotten Flyers” was included in the anthology “Flash in the Attic 2: 44 Very Short Stories” from Fiction Attic Press. He can be found online at sauromotel.com, @sauromotel and x.com/sauromotel.