The CNN reporter from the Jacob Javits Center that Saturday morning said that the rescue effort didn't need any more food; people from all over the country had already banded together in mass patriotism and had sent truckloads. And I don't mean that figuratively - literally, trucks had to ship the food surplus to the only nearby place that could hold such a plethora of bottled water, canned soup, and chocolate pudding snack-packs: Giants Stadium (which by the way, is also from New Jersey but claims to be "from New York"). CNN flashed a list on my TV of supplies that were needed, including work gloves, goggles, and dust masks. So my lifelong friend Terence came over to my Jersey City apartment, just a mile away from Ground Zero across the Hudson River. He too was feeling hopeless and had to do something, anything to help the effort. He came down in his beat-up old Toyota van - leaking, dented and rusted (but still working) - which we appropriately dubbed "The Ghetto Van." He picked me up and we drove to a Home Depot hardware store on the other side of Jersey City where we could get the much needed supplies for America's Heroes.

If you don't know Jersey City, it's this city in New Jersey (Duh). It's fairly big too; together with the nearby smaller towns of Hoboken and Bayonne, it could easily be New York's unofficial sixth borough, although no New Yorker in their right mind would ever consider anything in Jersey to be a part of New York. "It's so far, it's like a whole other state!" they'd say. (Either that or we smell, which is quite conceivable - have you driven passed Exit 13 on the NJ Turnpike?!) Anyway, my point is, the distance between my apartment and the local Home Depot was somewhat of a haul, and, being in The Ghetto Van, an unpredictable expedition. Halfway across town, The Ghetto Van's radiator blew, and there were massive amounts of steam coming through the edges of the hood. We didn't stop to check though. We were halfway there and determined to make it. "Shit, are we gonna make it?" I asked Terence.

"Yeah, we'll make it. The Ghetto Van always gets the job done." This was hard to believe as steam started to seep into the van itself. "We'll get there. I hope." Hope was a good thing when you were on a mission to help out the rescue effort of arguably the greatest catastrophe in American history. We were determined to get those supplies and help out the tired construction workers who were working 24 hours, day and night, with hope that they'd find some survivors. Hope goes a long way.

Hope was interrupted though when my cell phone rang. It was Terence's cousin Jan who - as if unaffected by the world-shattering events of the previous Tuesday (or perhaps just confused) - was going to continue on with a house party down the Jersey shore. "Are you guys still coming?"

"Are you kidding?" I argued back.

"If I just stay home, I'll watch the news and they'll just say the same thing over and over," she said. "The only way I can deal with this is to party down the shore, come on!" she said with a sort of smirk so big, I could sense it over the cellular waves.

"Who's that? Jan?" Terence exclaimed as he turned the van around a corner, steam still rising from the hood. He had been invited to that party too and refused to go because suddenly other things were more important to him. "C'mon, doesn't she know we're in a war?!"

"No, we're on our way to get supplies for the rescue effort," I answered Jan on the phone.

"So just drop off the supplies, and come after then," she pleaded. Perhaps she wasn't effected as much as Terence and I - she saw the whole tragedy on TV in New Jersey, whereas Terence and I lived the madness firsthand, that crazy Tuesday in New York City. "We're gonna try and volunteer with Susan after we drop off some supplies at the Javits too," I informed Jan. (Susan was another one of Terence's cousins who was volunteering three blocks away from Ground Zero, passing out hero sandwiches to America's Heroes.) "We're not gonna make it." I hung up the phone. Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the Home Depot. It was time to get what was needed.

What was needed though, was sold out. Apparently, we weren't the only ones who saw CNN. Dust masks, sold out. Goggles, sold out. Work gloves were the only things left, so we bought about a hundred bucks worth and hopped back in The Ghetto Van to go back to the PATH train by my house to get into Manhattan. But we got only as far as the next parking space over in that Home Depot parking lot, because, as you would guess, The Ghetto Van stalled. Even more steam was rising from the hood, like smoke out of a smoker's mouth after unsuccessfully trying to quit for a week. "What do we do?" I asked. We were stranded in a big parking lot with no transportation and a patriotic urge.

Terence filled the radiator up with coolant and let The Ghetto Van "rest" while I made some phone calls. I called my friend Lisa who lived in the area for a ride, but she was nowhere to be found. My friend Albert lived in the area as well and I figured he too could be a patriot and help us out. Unfortunately, he was on his way out to do something else unrelated to Nine Eleven. Suddenly, in the parking lot, I felt as if Terence and I were the only ones in the world who cared about the rescue effort, which made our urgency to deliver our goods stronger.

"Fuck it, let's just chance it. If The Ghetto Van blows up, whatever. We'll die for our country," Terence said. It was sort of the 21^st century version of "Give me liberty or give me death."

"Let's do it."

The Ghetto Van chugged its way across town like the Little Ghetto Engine That Could. At times I swear it was having an epileptic fit. Steam was rising now more than ever, but we had no other options. It took about twice the amount of time to get through Jersey City this time, because The Ghetto Van kept on stalling. We were crossing this wide intersection when all of a sudden The Ghetto Van became the Little Ghetto Engine That Couldn't. It stalled in the middle of the grid.

SMACK!

A car hit us from the side. I felt the impact as it made the already dented side of the van even more dented. "Holy shit," I said.

"Someone hit us?" Terence questioned. He was so focused on getting the gloves to our destination, he was oblivious to the big THUD we just experienced. We didn't stop. It didn't matter. A small price to pay for our country. There was no swapping of licenses or insurance information. There was no need for apology. We just kept on and left the dent. The Ghetto Van was "ghetto" anyway. Soon, we were parked by my house. We hopped on the nearby PATH train which took us to midtown Manhattan in no time.

The Jacob Javits Convention Center on Manhattan's west side became the official volunteer center of Nine Eleven. It was a madhouse. There were still volunteers in line trying to sign up for the physical clean up at Ground Zero. Some had been there for days trying to volunteer. Seeing this made me feel better; perhaps Terence and I weren't the only two people who cared after all. We brought our hundred dollars worth of work gloves to a check-in person. "If you have food, we can't take it," she said.

"No, it's work gloves," I said. "CNN said you needed more work gloves." She directed us into this supply camp nearby. Doing a little homework paid off. We were led to this area across the street, behind a fence. There were mounds of supplies of all kinds, from work boots to shovels to goggles. There was so much, they could have opened a Home Depot right then and there. Some guy led us to the work glove bins, so we could donate our contribution to the rescue effort that we went through so much to deliver. But they needed these gloves! Perhaps someone's life would be saved because of them! I envisioned a worker seeing a trapped person behind a boulder saying, "If I just had some more work gloves, I could help this guy! Please, dear God, aren't there any more work gloves?!"

I walked over to the bins to donate those much needed work gloves, only to see what was inside the bins: about ten thousand pairs of work gloves similar to the ones we bought.

"I thought CNN said you needed work gloves," I asked the supply camp volunteer.

"Welder's gloves, not these things. Just stick those in the bin. We'll put them to use somewhere," he told me. Damn the media. We added our gloves to the mountain of others and left the site.

The rest of the day, Terence and I tried to volunteer, but there was a surplus of so many people, they wouldn't take us. So we blew the rest of the day cheering on cops, firefighters and EMS guys, and attending candlelight vigils around the city. The Ghetto Van rested all day and was good as "new" when Terence drove it home that night.

A couple of months later, our gloves - along with all the extra supplies and food donated - were sent off to Afghanistan to help their restructuring efforts. I'm sure our gloves saved a couple of lives over there.

I hope. And hope goes a long way.

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