Allegany Magazine August/September 2006 By: Joe Severns
September 11th Story
September 11, 2001. I ran that morning. I ran most mornings (that I couldn’t get out of) with my wife. I say I ran "with" her, but honestly, I chased her up, down, and around the streets of Valdosta. She is a runner. I am pathetic.
I was trying to mentally prepare myself for the inevitability of the day: dentist’s office visit. I am the biggest baby in the world when it comes to the dentist, and I wasn’t relishing the thought of being drilled. Cleaning or no, I ask for the gas. Nitrous Oxide for me please.
Usually, I watch television in the dentists chair, as he has LCD computer screens that double as TV’s at each chair, so we can watch Oprah, or Regis Philbin while he scrapes away plaque, or gives us a root canal. The cable TV was out that morning at his office, so I had nothing to take my mind away from the constant scraping and nagging ("Floss twice a day!" he’d say.) of Dr. Swindle.
His name is actually Swindle. But that is a story for another column.
I left his office, and headed home, where my office was. I am fortunate enough to work at home, and the 11th was no exception. I had a couple of classes at University as well, but they weren’t until later in the afternoon. I did have a meeting with my boss and the lady that was buying the ad agency where I worked. It was a lunch date. I didn’t really want to go, but it was a free lunch, so what the hell.
I was driving my car towards home, and listening half heartedly to NPR on the radio. The station sounded terrible. Lots of folks talking over each other and yelling a lot. I tried another NPR station, but it was the same. I thought that someone had left a microphone open during a telethon. Something wasn’t right.
About thirty seconds later, I heard a reporter speak of an airplane that hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. I honestly thought at the time that we were dealing with a small Cessna or a Lear Jet. Not a jumbo jet. I remember learning about a small craft that hit the Empire State Building in the 1930’s, or the small plane that landed in Memorial Stadium in Baltimore in the 70’s. I didn’t think that it was such a big deal at all. As a matter of fact, I remember thinking that the pilot must have been a student, because surely one couldn’t miss the Twin Towers.
I got home and turned on Fox News and called my wife to let her know I left the dentist unscathed. I hung the phone up as soon as the images on the TV registered with me. The enormous amount of smoke couldn’t have been from a Cessna as I had thought. No. It was much worse than that. Something LARGE hit that building. I got a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. The reporters on TV talked of an attack. But who would use airplanes?
Terrorists.
Then Washington was hit. I called my wife and told her to come home, that we were at war. She declined, but was aware of the threat. She had heard it on the radio just a few minutes earlier. My stoic wife. What a rock.
I called my grandmother in Chicago, the ex-Marine. As I greeted her, and looked at the TV in disbelief, another plane hit the second tower. I shrieked. I advised my grandmother to get water and food for herself immediately and to get a little cash in case she needed it. I then called my brother, the cop. He had problems of his own. Some students at the University were causing a problem. I was lost. For a solid minute or two, I just stared at the television as they repeated their footage of the second plane hitting. Then word of other hijacked aircraft came over the waves. The Pentagon was hit. What was next? Congress? The White House? Three Mile Island?
What was happening?
I drove to the gas station and filled the tank, anticipating a run on gasoline. I then drove to my bank and my wife’s, and took out cash for both of us. Then I drove to the desolate grocery store. I picked up "survival" food. Canned goods, dry goods. Lots of water. I drove to my wife’s office and picked up her car, then filled the tank with gas. I returned home and made a list of everything I thought that I should list. Names and phone numbers, food lists, emergency contacts, etc. I did all of this in twenty minutes.
Then I waited. I waited on word that more had died. I waited to hear what was happening.
Then came the collapse. I screamed at the television. No one knew what was happening. I saw a large plume of dust and I knew that the building had collapsed. I cried for the dead.
Then another.
When will it stop? When? What the hell did we do to anybody? STOP!
And then it did. Eventually. I showed up for my meeting at lunch, and so did they. I couldn’t concentrate. I had a whisky with lunch to calm myself down. I needed 12, but one would have to do.
I went on to class in between watching the news and meeting with my new boss. One was cancelled, the other, Math, wasn’t. We protested. Our teacher asked,"And what are you going to do about this?" Good point. Though at the time I thought that she was being incredibly insensitive.
When I got home, I held my wife in my arms and worried. What was to happen now? I watched our President. He cried on TV. He promised retribution. I was ready. Ready to sign up to be a Marine, or an Airman, or whatever. Pride and anger swelled inside of me. Flags went up. A nationalistic attitude pervaded the nation. We were pissed, and stood as one. At least for a little while.
I watched as our nation stood as one, and stood proud as our men and women worked to fix the problem. I wrote opinions about the matter. So did everyone else. Everyone seemed mad, and mournful, and proud all at the same time. I wondered if this is what Pearl Harbor felt like.
We eventually cleaned up the messes, though it took months, and we went to war, which is taking a bit longer. We identified who perpetrated these terrible acts, and we hunt for the ones that are not dead or caught. We fight with ourselves over how far we can go to figure out where the next threat lies. We blame one or two men for all of this. One is on the run, and one runs for office.
And recently, we have forgotten. Even though we promised ourselves, our neighbors, and the dead that we wouldn’t.
I continue to be outraged at the thought that a small group of people opposed to our country caused such a furor. The terrorists did more damage that day than I think they realized. I believe that they intended to bring down the Twin Towers (mission accomplished), The White House, the U.S. Congress, The Pentagon, and myriad other locations. But because of their lack of coordination, they were left to deal crippling blows to fewer targets than they planned. However, their stranglehold on the policies of our nation, the way that we live our daily lives, and the introduction of terrorism into our lexicon as a perceivable threat means that they did what they set out to do, and more. I think that the terrorists wanted to show America and the rest of the West that they could hurt us; that they could make us look up from our morning papers and coffee and recognize them, and they did it. Now, we take our shoes off at the airport, thanks to Richard Reid. We have to lock our pilots in their cockpits, submit our grandmothers to invasive searches of their persons, and give up clipping our nails while on holiday because a small faction wanted to make a point.
We also have to watch as our nation divides itself. Our news media is more than happy to scare us into watching faithfully, and hopefully we won’t Tivo the commercials out. We are fighting each other, in schools, in business, and especially in politics. It occurs to me that pre-9-11, there were grey areas. Now it is black and white. You are with us, or against us, you are either a Republican, or a Democrat, Fox News or CNN, or lately, again, White or Black.
September 11th means more to me than the loss of life, or the attack of our values by airplanes full of people and fuel. It means that we are vulnerable. That we are not invincible, and that we bleed red, but only for a few seconds, and only if we are directly affected by a calamity. There is a disconnect between fiction and reality. People spend all their time worrying about themselves, talking on their cell phones, using their computers, driving their cars, and mocking each other to notice that the America they thought they knew is crippled, or doesn’t exist. We have grown fat thinking that our military is a video game, that our vote doesn’t matter, or that different is wrong. Tolerance used to be a virtue, and as a matter of fact, it is an integral word in our state motto, but it is not practiced, at least not out in the open. We cry for ourselves when we are even slightly inconvenienced. We complained that news coverage of the terrorist attacks on September 12th was eating into our favorite TV shows. We forgot what it means to be Americans, or have redefined it.
The saddest day to me was September 11, 2004. That was the day that I realized that America, for all its power, people, and influence, was so self absorbed in each individual, that the well being of all of us took a back seat to each of us. In my new home town, less than 20 people showed their support to the local Air Force contingent fighting in Afghanistan, and the rescue operators we have in Iraq from the same base. There was a high school football game that night. And God forbid anyone miss that.
My Editor, Shane Riggs, asked me how I felt about what happened that day, and what it was that I carried with me for these past five years. Anger, Mr. Riggs. I watched as flags went up, and then came down again. I watched as our lockstep turned into chaos. I watched America wane. And that, above all else, makes me angry.