The man closes his eyes, he remembers....
The morning was clear and frigid as the young man walked hurriedly down the street. With the Chicago wind blowing across his body he leaned in to each step on his morning jaunt to the Chicago Board of Trade. The wet hair on his prematurely balding pate frozen by the time he covered the five blocks to LaSalle Street. The revolving doors ever turning were full of brightly jacketed traders drawing one last breath of steam and smoke as they approached the doors. Achieving a strange synchronicity the cigarette butts would fly toward the great stone ash bin at the buildings entrance and the traders would exhale the last smoke before the bell. Once within the warm confines of the hallowed old building the man would gulp coffee while he hastily tied a tattered neck tie with one hand. The Tie only needed a cursory knot to be considered tied and thus acceptable under Board dress policy. Walking, drinking, and tying were requisite skills for the young hungover traders of 1986. Riding the escalator to the second floor Trader's Entrance provided a brief staging point in which the man would kill the rest of the coffee, give the tie one final pull, and arrive at the top with identification in hand ready to clear security before making his grand entrance to the new trading day.
Entering the room that housed the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade was like walking to ring of a Heavy Weight Prize Fight ... The man was one of Three Thousand people who gathered daily at eight A.M. sharp to have the bell (fighters bell) ring them into action. Always running late and frequently hungover the man would reach his slotted destination at his phone bank with nary a second to spare. "What's the call?" he would utter to his clerks.. who would respond with the pending best guesstimate on where the market would open. 7:57...7:58.... 7:59....................P A N D E M O N I U M! The sounds of three thousand determined voices would fill the air. Hands reaching to the sky contorted into shapes denoting buying and selling and numbers and straddles and strangles and working orders and filled orders and killed orders ... the roar on this day.. January 28th , 1986 was deafening.
The man had phones. A phone on one shoulder, a phone in his left ear, and a phone in his right ..."five bid at six" he would chatter.. "sixes trading" he would yell into the phones calling out a first hand account of what his customer would see in little green numbers flashing half a world away on the Telerate Monitor ...."sixes trad.....ahhhh FUCK...seven bid" ..... The trades would be consummated. The ebb and flow of the market was like huge schools of fish swarming back and forth violently. The electricity in the room searing it's way through the air from one traders mouth to the next.
The morning opening and its brisk activity began to abate two hours into the day. At 10:00 AM as the markets slowed the room began the process of checking and double checking . Clerks and runners hurriedly scurried about papers in hand to verify this or that trade.. The phones ringing slowed. The man wiped the alcohol laden sweat from his head and shaking from the adrenalin release sat down on his stool to wait for the next onslaught that might or might not come.
In the United State Treasury Bond Pit and the other Trading Pits in the room were dozens television monitors. These monitors displayed lines of black and white numbers and letters denoting contracts and securities of varying types being traded around the world. On this morning one of the monitors in each pit was tuned to a local television station. This had been and was the protocol any time there was breaking news, and in 1986 the nation was captivated by the Space Shuttle program. Today's launch would propel the first Teacher into space, and it seemed that Space travel was within the grasp of the masses.
The faded screens projected images of the seven crew members as they paraded to the ship ... Space Helmets in hand they marched..
The trading rolled on as the minutes to launch rolled by. Phones ringing .. the shouts in the room never stopped until the final bell. There was always the roar of human voices engaging in open outcry trading.
11:37 AM.. The necks began craning to see the monitors ... to gaze in wonder at the power and might of Space Flight. The trading rolled on. Just shy of 11:38 AM the countdown initiated and T-Minus 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1...Liftoff! "Lift off of the Space Shuttle Challenger!" ....Applause erupted throughout the room and cheers echoed from the ceiling tiles as the craft rotated and soared towards the heavens. Thousands of eyes stared in wonder as the gleaming bird flew away from our Earthly grasp. When the man looked back to his phone bank and began to pick up a ringing phone, there was an epic gasp sounded throughout the room. One huge vocal inflection that jarred the mans eyes back to the screen where a billowing white smoke? was forming a "Y" (why?) in the blue sky. The room that was never quiet lost it's voice. Silence permeated the entirety of one America's major markets. The silence was surreal. The "Y" became a scribble of smoke snaking into different directions in the sky. Disbelief was tattooed to every face, and tears flowed down many. Life had STOPPED............................but only for that moment. For in the gaping maw of that silence were two small voices that uttered but four words that shook the human mass from it's horror and allowed TIME to march on ....The first two words were ..........."seven bid"..........the next two words were "at eight" .. and a sea of voices joined the fray and the Trading proceeded without seven astronauts ............Once again in the mans young life he was struck with the reality of how fast LIFE GOES ON.
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