Malcolm McCorquodale – Welcome, all y'all.

Remembrances of September 11

I wrote this on September 10, 2021 in Houston, Texas.

On the morning of September 11, I was driving to work listening to the radio. The announcer said that there were reports of an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City. I thought someone in a piper cub type airplane had practiced in Microsoft Flight Simulator and decided to try it in real life – then ran into trouble. Maybe caught by an updraft and crashed into someone’s office. I had an irreverent thought. John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, walks past his secretary and into his office. There is a small plane, possibly from the WWI era, three quarters of the way into his office, papers are all over the place, the walls are black with soot. The pilot looks up and says, in an English accent “Dreadfully sorry about the office old chap.” Cleese backs out of his office and exclaims to his secretary “There’s an areo-plane in my aw-fice!”. The secretary replies “Yes sir, that came for you about an hour ago.” and she returns to her typing.

I worked in a building on Houston’s beltway about 10 or so miles from downtown and arrived at work about 8:30 to find out that this wasn’t a minor event involving a little piper cub, but a full-sized disaster – a commercial passenger airplane had hit the Trade Center. Of course, there was no work getting done – everyone was looking at news sites on the web and constantly refreshing their browser. I went upstairs to get a Coke in the break room. Several people were gathered around a TV and we saw a replay of the footage of the second airplane hitting the South Tower. About 10:30 or so, we were told that building management was closing the building and that everyone needed to go home.

On the news I heard that the nearest hospital to the Trade Center was St. Vincent’s. There was something oddly familiar about that name. After a while, I remembered that my Aunt Ellen, (my father’s sister), worked at St. Vincent’s. St. Vincent’s was a major trauma/critical care center and the primary admitting hospital for Trade Center victims. After Ellen moved back to Houston, she told me that on September 11 they went into full disaster mode – extra cots, ready to triage badly hurt people, surgeons on stand-by, etc. However, most of the people that came in were not that serious; just treat and release. Ellen said that what was hard was all the people coming to the hospital looking for their family and loved ones and not finding them.

The Camping Trip, by Malcolm McCorquodale III

In the late ‘60s the McCorquodale family was living in New York City having moved there from Houston in January of 1966. One weekend Dad and I went on a camping trip in the Bear Mountains. I must have been about eight years old, nine at most. My mother, Robin, stayed home with my two younger brothers.
We had a lightweight tent, special dehydrated camping food, a special lightweight stove made specially for hikers and two canteens. Since we couldn’t carry enough water, Dad had maps showing where on the trail we could find streams for refilling canteens. Imagine drinking water that didn’t come for the faucet! Dad said that this was ok, as long as we dissolved a little water purification pill in our canteens after refilling them with water from the stream.
Before we started the hike in earnest, we stopped at a little store to get some last-minute supplies and information. I remember that we couldn’t find exactly where the trail started, but with the aid of a compass and a map we started through the forest and shortly found a trail marker. A trail marker was a symbol attached to what seemed like a random tree along the trail.
We hiked and hiked and almost ran out of water before we found a brook where we filled out canteens.
Later that day we made camp near a brook with drinkable water. To cook dinner, Dad had a small cylindrical propane burner that was about 6” long and a couple of inches in diameter. The burner was placed inside a circular container that was maybe 12” inches in diameter designed to shelter the flame from the wind. A “cooking pot” was placed on top of this and a few minutes later the re-hydrated contents of the dinner packs were ready to eat. After diner we had to clean our plates. We went to the brook, rinsed our plates and then used some brook sand as an abrasive to make sure that our plates were really clean.
The next morning, using the same stove, Dad re-hydrated some scrambled eggs and that he took a couple of pictures with me posing, sitting-up, partially in my sleeping bag eating the scrambled eggs that we made. I think I may have a picture of this somewhere.

My Day in Court on March 23, 2016

I went down to Jury Duty on Wednesday, March 23, 2016 in response to my Jury Summons.

A group of about 40 prospective Jurors were called – we lined up to go to court, went through the tunnels and up to the 11^th floor of the District Court building. Just outside of the courtroom, we lined up in lines of eight.

The sign next to the courtroom door said 133^rd District Court. I thought, the 133^rd – wasn’t that Judge Hunt’s (my grandfather’s), court, or was my memory playing tricks on me? We walked in, and sure enough, Judge Hunt’s picture was there on the wall just to the left of current judge, Jaclanel McFarland.

I talked to the Judge afterwards and told her that the big picture behind her was my grandfather. She said that Judge Hunt was the first judge in that 133^rd court and that at the time it was known as the “catholic” court. Judge McFarland said she wished that she had known a grandson of Judge Hunt was there in the jury and would have brought that to everyone’s attention.