The guy who asks for change in front of our bodega wears fatigues. I didn't notice until a few days ago, when he started talking to me after I asked him how he was doing. "I'm all messed up," he said, shaking his head, and tells me his story.
One of the firefighters from Squad One used to tell him that he looked familiar. They never figured out why. This firefighter was one of the twelve who died in the World Trade Center, of a company of thirty. Just that morning, some of the firefighter's remaining bretheren stopped by the bodega with an old photograph they found in the firefighter's locker. The picture was of the firefighter's father in Vietnam, along with a group of other soldiers -- including the homeless guy himself. "Of all of them in that picture, I'm the only one left alive." He had served with the firefighter's father, but neither of them made the connection until it was too late.
"The things I could have told him about his dad," he kept repeating. "The things I could have told him."
| FDNY | Squad One | Park Slope | Homeless | Vietnam |
