There is a plethora of TV shows and news commentary on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. People are telling their stories, either of personal experiences, remembrances of family lost, or even where-were-you-then? kinds of tales. I thought I'd add mine. It's not dramatic, heroic, tragic. It's just observations on the day, looking back through a cloudy glass of shriveled memory, by one who never felt personally threatened, since who would bother to attack Minnesota?, not involved except dimly, and unlike most of the world, only got occasional glimpses of TV screens and those gathered around them, so didn't have all those images drilled indelibly into their psyche. Just a few.
It was a typical September day, blue skies, few clouds, mild weather. I was starting my day with a pickup at a medical facility in Stillwater. I'd just parked my car in front of the building - we couriers have license to do that right in the driveway - and before I could turn the radio off the program was hesitantly interrupted with an announcement that it appeared that a plane had flown into one of the twin towers. It hadn't been too long before that where some small plane had hit a building, so I left my car with the impression that the same thing had happened again. Why don't they learn?
As I picked up my package, the woman behind the desk commented that it was really tragic, wasn't it? I agreed, not quite sure why she was reacting so strongly to a small plane/building crash. By the time I returned to my car, they were able to clarify that it looked like an attack, since another plane had crashed into the other tower. And these were commercial passenger jets, not little 4-seaters.
On the drive in, information began to build. Fires, people jumping to quick deaths rather than risk burning to death slowly since there was no way out other than down, planes being grounded, another plane flying into the Pentagon. Even later, a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania, puzzling since it wasn't even near a strategic target.
Much of that information wasn't yet being broadcast when I made my first phone call, this one to Mom. It was around 8:30 CDT, and I knew she and Daddy always were up an hour earlier at least. I also knew they didn't watch morning TV. After the usual preliminaries, I told her to turn on the TV. She asked me why, but I didn't want to break the news myself, just told her there was important news. What channel was it on? I said, "It doesn't matter. It will be on all the channels. Pick one you like for your news. I gotta go." They, like everyone else, spent as much of the day as they could tolerate watching TV. I was different. I caught glimpses, but stayed tuned to MPR, public radio news, to hear bits and snatches of the events while I drove around working. (Later stories emerged of cases of PTSD from too much TV watching. I no longer felt like I'd missed out, simply grateful I'd caught just enough visually.)
I still had to work. By the time I got to my drop, everybody seemed to have the news. Throughout the day, every building I walked into, whether front desk or shipping, normally-business-only employees were glued around TV sets never before visible on the premises. They all spoke in hushed tones, wore serious faces, moved slowly when they had to go about some business.
By late morning I was about as far across the metro area east-to-west as I could get from where I started, making some forgettable delivery to a large church in Wayzata. Twenty years ago my knees could still tolerate all the stairs leading up to what was the main entrance for both the sanctuary and office. Straight ahead, in an otherwise empty open space, a small TV sat on a pedestal. Nobody there to sign for a delivery, but rather than search further I was riveted to the screen by the sight of one of the towers collapsing. The "experts" on the radio had just been pontificating about how the towers were constructed, and how they couldn't fall, just the upper stories would burn, still terrible, etc. etc., etc. Here in front of me was one standing tall emitting large plumes of smoke while the other one pancaked straight down, one floor at a time. Then it repeated. And repeated.
After I finally found somebody to receive my package, and left the same way I entered, that TV was still showing the tower dropping. Or maybe by then it was the second one. By that time, the rest of my day was a blur. Details were added, refuted, corrected, building an increasingly clear picture of how we'd been attacked, and who'd been heroes by bringing their plane down before it could do the intended damage, how we knew because some had cell phones and reached out. Speculation was rife on whodunit and why, body counts, bridges closed, what all might be drifting down from the fires, how cops and fire fighters had turned out, what it was like after climbing down one of the tower staircases before it collapsed, who didn't make it out, what bosses had done to keep people on site too long, who ran in and who ran away, and so forth.
A few people spoke of how awful it was to try to breathe the air, how long it took to walk across a bridge to get away from the site, how difficult it was to reach anybody due to cell towers being overwhelmed, how much dirt came in around their closed windows, how horrible it was to know somebody who'd been in the towers at the time, how "there but for the grace of God...."
Some people were stranded for days when all the plans were immediately grounded, so the airwaves were filled with stories a little less horrific that what we'd just been through. A bonus of the groundings was not having any contrails in the sky, giving interested scientists a chance to study how much airplanes were affecting our weather. The rest of us just appreciated bluer skies. And more quiet. Any peace was welcomed.
It took way too long for the physical, health consequences of being on the scene registered. Nobody admitted it was anything more than paper from burning business files, maybe ashes from wood furniture, a bit of jet fuel. Nothing like aerosolized concrete, chemicals from plastics and fluorescent bulbs, vaporized people. Nothing requiring lung protection. That lesson was learned long after, and somehow those casualties are still not counted in the death tolls from that day.
One story sticks with me in particular. A couple of women spent their vacation starting just before the attacks hiking the Appalachian trail, totally without modern conveniences like cell or satellite phones for communication, just the necessities for surviving and appreciating the glory around them. When challenged by friends and family before leaving, wouldn't they miss their phones?, they laughingly replied what would they possible be missing? It wasn't like President Bush was going to declare war or something, right? Once they finally emerged, they entered a small country store, where the newspapers had huge banner headlines "Bush Declares War!"
Unfortunately much of America decided to declare war on Muslims. If 19 of them were involved, wasn't everybody? We shipped off all the Bin Ladin family safely to Saudi Arabia while closing borders to a religion. Many needed somebody to blame, somebody to wreak personal vengeance on, not somebody already dead from the attack, and struck blindly, senselessly. Our leaders declared war on an idea, terrorism, invaded two countries, and in doing so losing the support of most of the rest of the world, yet another casualty of the attack. Twenty years later we finally withdrew from Afghanistan, ending our longest and unwinnable war, leaving us easily open to the charge that we were on the losing side of that attack three times.
So now we are left with the commemoration, the veneration of the victims, the education of those who are too young to have had the experience of it, and maybe just possibly, a broader perspective on the world and the consequences of our actions in it.
One can always hope.
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