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September 11, 2001
Sep. 11th, 2006 04:05 pmStarted out like every other Tuesday at the time. I was wasting my time on a project, biding the hours until I could go home. My work was almost completely travel then, but I had latched onto a gig where I was working in Hahnville, at a Dow chemical facility. The conditions were deplorable and quite dangerous. Frankly, I didn't want to know what toxins were produced in the pipes around our building, but since I wasn't really working that hard to begin with, I wasn't complaining. The project manager was a grade A lunatic, and I mean that in the most certifiable of ways. She was crazy.
She was also in a meeting when the first plane hit. I found the news on CNN's web site, which almost immediately started having fits when the second plane hit. My coworkers thought I was kidding. As the event began to pan out, the news of the Pentagon strike came out. My brother's girlfriend, now fiancée, Katie sent an email to us (phones out of DC were pretty much shut down) saying Andy was driving to an interview at the time, on a route that took him around the Pentagon. She had not heard from him since the crash. My parents called me, freaked out. Tracey, then pregnant with Little Penguin #3, called me all freaked out, too. Nobody could find my brother.
Then the towers fell. The gravity of what was happening kind of struck everyone at the same time. Of course the hype was inflating everything, too. The country went into panic mode. The Sears Tower was evacuated. Rumors of other jets were plentiful. Every possible target the media could think of was examined and re-examined.
Ol' crazy lady project manager returned from her meeting, during which I personally went in to make her aware of what was happening. She and I didn't have the greatest of professional relationships to begin with, right? Well, she assumed I had really blown things out of proportion, just to be an asshole. The truth is that every one of the out-of-towners on this project suddenly were faced with the fact they weren't getting home, including her. Frantically, they all began calling airlines and rental car agencies, totally ignoring any work to be done. She just went and hid in her office. On an unrelated note, she later almost got me fired, but instead got herself fired. Long tangent.
I spent most of the day staring at images online and attempting to find my brother. Eventually, he was able to send out an email saying he was okay. He was on I-395 when the Pentagon plane landed, watching it fly by in his rearview mirror. That close, he was. In realizing a plane went down behind him, he came to a screeching stop on the highway, along with a couple of dozen other cars. There they stood, stupefied by the fire and smoke billowing from the Pentagon, when an old geezer comes creeping down the road, rolls down his window and asks where the exit for the Washington mall was.
Information overload. There was just too much. I left work early, didn't really give a shit what the boss said. I got home and hugged my brood tight, knowing that the innocent environs I grew up in were forever gone. Might as well lock the kids in the house and never let 'em out. The terrorists are in town and they want the jungle gym.
Within a couple of weeks I think, the W thrust us into Afghanistan and so ended moderate common sense in America. The night we invaded, I got good and lit on my front porch. A neighbor wondered over asking what I was up to. I recall simply saying we were at war. She kind of dismissed it, "Oh, that's not going to last long."
"No," I replied. "This will last a very long time."
I was right of course.
It's compounded, this day. I recall so many emotions, thinking how terrible a day it was, perhaps the lowest point in modern American history. Four years later, I found just how much more awful it could really be, when September 2005 turned into a month of Sundays. Apples and oranges, I guess.
Last night I saw a memorial before an NFL game and today multiple tributes to all that perished. Five years. We're worse off than when we started.
I'm curious to see what the country does on August 29, 2010. I'm sure it won't involve three Blackhawks flying over the Superdome before kickoff. Likely, it'll be the last dozen people left in town, having a drink with Chris Rose.
She was also in a meeting when the first plane hit. I found the news on CNN's web site, which almost immediately started having fits when the second plane hit. My coworkers thought I was kidding. As the event began to pan out, the news of the Pentagon strike came out. My brother's girlfriend, now fiancée, Katie sent an email to us (phones out of DC were pretty much shut down) saying Andy was driving to an interview at the time, on a route that took him around the Pentagon. She had not heard from him since the crash. My parents called me, freaked out. Tracey, then pregnant with Little Penguin #3, called me all freaked out, too. Nobody could find my brother.
Then the towers fell. The gravity of what was happening kind of struck everyone at the same time. Of course the hype was inflating everything, too. The country went into panic mode. The Sears Tower was evacuated. Rumors of other jets were plentiful. Every possible target the media could think of was examined and re-examined.
Ol' crazy lady project manager returned from her meeting, during which I personally went in to make her aware of what was happening. She and I didn't have the greatest of professional relationships to begin with, right? Well, she assumed I had really blown things out of proportion, just to be an asshole. The truth is that every one of the out-of-towners on this project suddenly were faced with the fact they weren't getting home, including her. Frantically, they all began calling airlines and rental car agencies, totally ignoring any work to be done. She just went and hid in her office. On an unrelated note, she later almost got me fired, but instead got herself fired. Long tangent.
I spent most of the day staring at images online and attempting to find my brother. Eventually, he was able to send out an email saying he was okay. He was on I-395 when the Pentagon plane landed, watching it fly by in his rearview mirror. That close, he was. In realizing a plane went down behind him, he came to a screeching stop on the highway, along with a couple of dozen other cars. There they stood, stupefied by the fire and smoke billowing from the Pentagon, when an old geezer comes creeping down the road, rolls down his window and asks where the exit for the Washington mall was.
Information overload. There was just too much. I left work early, didn't really give a shit what the boss said. I got home and hugged my brood tight, knowing that the innocent environs I grew up in were forever gone. Might as well lock the kids in the house and never let 'em out. The terrorists are in town and they want the jungle gym.
Within a couple of weeks I think, the W thrust us into Afghanistan and so ended moderate common sense in America. The night we invaded, I got good and lit on my front porch. A neighbor wondered over asking what I was up to. I recall simply saying we were at war. She kind of dismissed it, "Oh, that's not going to last long."
"No," I replied. "This will last a very long time."
I was right of course.
It's compounded, this day. I recall so many emotions, thinking how terrible a day it was, perhaps the lowest point in modern American history. Four years later, I found just how much more awful it could really be, when September 2005 turned into a month of Sundays. Apples and oranges, I guess.
Last night I saw a memorial before an NFL game and today multiple tributes to all that perished. Five years. We're worse off than when we started.
I'm curious to see what the country does on August 29, 2010. I'm sure it won't involve three Blackhawks flying over the Superdome before kickoff. Likely, it'll be the last dozen people left in town, having a drink with Chris Rose.
