9-11-01

That was some amazing stuff, Corky.

I slept thru a phone call and thought it was a guy I had to meet for some freelance work. I looked at the caller ID and it turned out to be my old college roommate. I wondered why he was calling me at 9 am. I called the freelance guy back and he said "Are you watching TV?" in that tone of voice that made it pretty clear something was terribly wrong. I said no, why and he said planes crashed into the Twin Towers.

I suddenly knew why my ex-roommate was calling: Another friend of ours worked in the Twin Towers. I called my ex-roomie. "Have you heard from [friend] today?" he said. "We're trying to find him."

I called my dad. I told myself it was to assure him I wasn't in the city, because he's a worrywart and I imagined him concocting reasons why I could have been in the city. But the truth was that, at almost 28 years old, I wanted my dad to tell me everything was going to be OK.

While we were talking the Pentagon was attacked. "Shit," he said, sounding concerned for the first time.

I went to the bathroom, unsure of I was going to shit, puke or some combination thereof. I sat on the toilet and I couldn't stop shaking. I had friends in the Twin Towers...a friend working on Capitol Hill. What if they were dead?

Another friend who worked at a courthouse in Brooklyn called me, barely able to speak, and told me to call his parents and let them know he wasn't in the city but he was being evacuated. I drove to meet my friend for freelancing. "This is our Pearl Harbor," he said as he stared at the blue sky.

I began driving home. A couple minutes into the trip, the second tower fell. "The Twin Towers are gone," Scott Pettingill of WPLJ said. I'd grown up in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity. I couldn't even begin to fathom how our world had changed, forever, in a couple hours.

I went into the office--I'd just started a new job--to try to do some work, but I just stared at the screen for a while. Eventually, I was overcome with an exhaustion greater than anything I've ever felt. I started thinking about the funerals that would occur and wondered what kind of attack was next.

My friends ended up being OK, but I wondered about those who would never see multiple friends again. It took a long time before I could fall asleep without a whole lot of staring at the ceiling.

It's hard to believe it's been seven years. To paraphrase Dixiehack: I pray to God we never feel that way ever again.

And as I do every 9/11, here's the saddest thing I have ever read.

http://www.newsday.com/sports/columnists/ny-pow142365555sep14,0,2284636.column

 

"What we've got here is failure to communicate.
Some men you just can't reach...
So, you get what we had here last week,
which is the way he wants it!
Well, he gets it!
N' I don't like it any more than you men." *


Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they've always done before


Look at the hate we're breeding
Look at the fear we're feeding
Look at the lives we're leading
The way we've always done before


My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can't deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars


D'you wear a black armband
When they shot the man
Who said "Peace could last forever"
And in my first memories
They shot Kennedy
I went numb when I learned to see
So I never fell for Vietnam
We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all
That you can't trust freedom
When it's not in your hands
When everybody's fightin'
For their promised land


And
I don't need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
Your power hungry sellin' soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain't that fresh
I don't need your civil war


Look at the shoes your filling
Look at the blood we're spilling
Look at the world we're killing
The way we've always done before
Look in the doubt we've wallowed
Look at the leaders we've followed
Look at the lies we've swallowed
And I don't want to hear no more


My hands are tied
For all I've seen has changed my mind
But still the wars go on as the years go by
With no love of God or human rights
'Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars


"We practice selective annihilation of mayors
And government officials
For example to create a vacuum
Then we fill that vacuum
As popular war advances
Peace is closer" **


I don't need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
Your power hungry sellin' soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain't that fresh
And I don't need your civil war
I don't need your civil war
I don't need your civil war
Your power hungry sellin' soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain't that fresh
I don't need your civil war
I don't need one more war


I don't need one more war
Whaz so civil 'bout war anyway

 

Two other things stand out:
1) The way all TV was News... MTV, VH1 picked up CBS feeds, etc....
2) All radio was news or talk... no music...

 

Thanks for posting that, Corky. A little piece of history that's probably only interesting to people in the news business.

I woke up (West Coast) and turned on the TV -- a habit I got into, actually, after spending most of the day unaware of the Oklahoma City bombing and feeling stupid about that -- and saw the graphic at the bottom: "Plane hits World Trade Center"

"Oh great, some jackass crashed his Cessna into the WTC," I thought. At that moment, I saw the replay of the first plane hitting the tower. I sat bolt upright in bed until I figured I was up to date and then raced in to work. I was the last guy there. From sports. At 8:30 a.m. My dad was an FAA bigwig at the time, so I was actually able to help news side because I could get through when nobody else could.

 

Can't read that column again, Beej. Don't make me click that link. :'(

-------

As for me, I was riding a bus from the East Campus parking lot up to the J-school building in Athens. The driver had NPR on the radio and I heard something about an explosion at the World Trade Center. When I got to my stop, right as I was getting off, I heard something about a plane hitting the building and that it sounded pretty serious. So I skipped my class, hustled up the hill to the library, and joined about a dozen people in one of the conference rooms watching CNN.

About a minute later, the second plane hit the tower. I saw it live. I'll never forget it. I can still hear myself letting out an audible gasp when it hit. A couple people near me tried to call friends in New York, and couldn't get through, and that's when it really hit me.

All day, I was in shock. I didn't go to my 11 a.m. class, either, because I was still in the library with about 50 other people in that room watching on the TV. Later, of course, we learned all events had been canceled. There were a lot of biological warfare fears around UGA that day. I remember hearing that the CDC would be high on the terrorists' list.

Like everyone else, I started calling everybody I knew -- especially my best friend from high school, who was in the Marines. Never could get a hold of her. She sent me a text about eight hours later, said she was scared to death and the whole base was on lockdown but she was very proud to be where she was and do what she signed up to do.

That night, believe it or not, I booked a plane ticket to see a friend in Denver the next month. I didn't know what was going to happen to the world as we knew it. I wanted to take advantage of every day that we had, not knowing if we would ever get that chance again.

There was a real sense of urgency, that everything would be different now. And it was -- my life has never been the same. I know I'm not the only one.

 

IIRC, I was a sophomore in high school and I was in French class that morning when a teacher from the other room stormed into our room telling us that the WTC towers were attacked. They eventually rolled a T.V. into the room and we watched CNN and ended that day's lesson. After the bell rang, life went on. The principal made a small announcement, but classes continued regularly.

 

Just at that moment, I was thinking to myself that, seven years later, I was going to tell an anonymous Internet board poster to go soak his (or her) head. In ice water, preferably. That moment has come 'round at last.

*****

As with at least one other here, it was deadline day at the weekly.

No cable, so I ambled across the street several times to the tobacco store across the street to see what was happening on TV.

Listened to a lot of NPR, too.

The future Mrs. and I were going to a wine appreciation class on Tuesday nights and at that time I was working about an hour away. I was low on gass and every station was filled with cars and the price was spiking. I even saw one place where gas was $3 (!).

Funny thing, by 9:30 p.m. when we got out of class the great gas rush was over.

 

Putney, Vermont. A phone call woke me up with the news.

 

I was working for the minor league baseball team here in town and was getting ready to go to the ballpark to do some of the season-ending chores before going to my regular job at the paper at night.

I flipped on the TV. It was still on CBS from the night before and I remember the confusion in Bryant Gumbel's voice as they were showing the first tower. At that point it was still thought to be an accident so I went to the ballpark anyway.

I remember driving down and here in central Illinois it was an absolutely gorgeous spring-like day. The skies were a clear, vibrant blue. I had the talk station on and they went to the ABC News feed and I was stopped at a red light when the other tower was hit. When I got to the ballpark we just sat in the conference room watching the coverage.

I went home and when I was walking the dog before going into the paper I looked up and saw a couple of planes in the air, much higher than the normal air traffic over the apartment. It was Air Force One with its fighter escort.

 

One gas station by me spiked to 2.25 and backed down to 1.60 the next day. But they got reported and Michigan went after it for price gouging...

 

Same here.

I will never, ever forget that. A beautiful day and the worst day ever, all at the same time.

 

Getting ready to give a presentation for a seminar, going over my index cards and eating a muffin when the professor came in late and told everyone class was canceled. Was in traffic for three hours.