How news from far away came to rest at the heart.
© Daniel Ouellette / Adobe Stock. (Inset by Molly Dugger Brennan.)
We live in a small world, tiny really and getting smaller every day. It’s often surprising how a news story from far away will end up affecting my business or me personally. This is the story of how one day, a headline did that very thing.
My husband Patrick and I used to own an orchid nursery in the Shenandoah Valley. Not only did we grow orchids, but we hybridized them and we competed at flower shows. We had a business that was not too big, not too small, about 10,000 square feet of greenhouses holding approximately 70,000 plants in various stages of growth. Ours was a pretty product and when the greenhouses were in bloom, it was breathtaking to behold.
We traveled north to south from New Hampshire to Florida, and west to the Mississippi River. At our busiest, we worked sales booths and competed in 35 shows a year. It was exhausting but never boring. Our biggest show, the one that accounted for the largest single chunk of our income every year, was the New York International Orchid Show. People flew in from all over the world to compete or just to attend, spending their vacation hours there. It was big time. The highlight of our lives as growers was the year we were awarded Best Plant in Show there. That was a dream come true, an incredible honor, and we were so proud.
Being old hands at shows, we knew not to try to unload our truck and set up our booth during the day. The key to arriving at a huge show and not losing your mind during set up was to show up in the middle of the night. The freight elevator, which was really small for the size of the building, would be free and the show area was empty.
Being New York, you never left your truck unattended at the loading dock, no matter what time it was. Not being into heavy lifting, I guarded the truck while my husband and brother-in-law did all the real labor, bless their hearts.
It would take hours to unload and set up. Hours. There’s not much happening on a loading dock in the middle of the night, even in the city that never sleeps. It might not actually sleep, but New York gets drowsy and quiet after 3:00 am. I’d get bored. I’d try to make friends with the dumpster rats. I’d talk to anybody who wandered by. If you talk to New Yorkers in the middle of the night, they scurry away faster than the rats do. The rats were at least curious.
Then an elderly Latino gentleman wearing a building uniform came out with trash. He was old enough to be long-since retired with grandchildren bouncing on his knee but here he was, working the night shift. Well, you know us Southern women. We can and will talk to anyone, and a little friendly repartee is our version of a cardio workout. We talked about his family, his children, his many grandchildren, and why I was there.
The next time he came down to the dock, he brought an office chair for me to sit in. Said I should be comfortable. Again when he appeared, he brought a small oriental rug, just the size of a welcome mat, and said I shouldn’t soil my shoes with all the stickiness on the dock. Said the next time I visited I should wear sturdier footwear. He was convinced I could “catch something” because my shoes weren’t work boots.
I had nothing to give him unless he was interested in blank orchid entry forms, so I tried to be entertaining. I wanted to be a bright spot in his day, because he was certainly shaping up to be the highlight in mine. Every time Patrick got another cart of plants from the truck, I had a few more amenities. I was seriously expecting a flat screen TV and a cable connection to appear by sun-up.
The last time I saw my new best friend, he commented that the truck was empty and that must mean our time to visit was ending. With a great flourish and the style only an old-school gentleman can pull off, he gave me a nut off a large bolt, placing it on my finger as a ring and kissed my hand. It was a goose-bump moment. So very sweet.
As he’s getting on the freight elevator, I realized that I did not know his name. Wait. What’s your name? With a bow worthy of royalty he purred, “The ladies call me Nacho.” The doors closed and he was gone.
I can’t forget my friend Nacho, nor the wee hours of the morning we spent bantering on the loading dock of the World Trade Towers. I don’t know if he was in the buildings when the Towers fell. I can’t search for him on the list of victims because I don’t know his real name. I truly hope he had finished his shift and gone home to his family but I just don’t know.
Life goes on. We continued to attend flower shows. The New York International Orchid Show moved to the Rockefeller Center and persisted. People come and people go. But every September 11th, I take that nut out of my jewelry box and wear it to appreciate that talking to strangers can be a lovely experience. Every September 11th, I wear it to remember.
The story above appears in our Sept./Oct. 2018 issue. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription.