Everybody who was alive and old enough to remember the events of 9/11 has a story. Some people, like our very own Paranoid Prepper who was in one of the twin towers when it was hit by a jet flown by lunatic terrorists, have a lot more dramatic story than others.
If you haven’t read his post about it, please do so (Click HERE to read it).
To be clear, Paranoid Prepper was HERE:
World Trade Center courtesy Wikimedia Commons
My story is completely and entirely different, since I live out in the middle of flyover country in a little town in the middle of nowhere.
I was sitting behind this very same desk I am this morning, thinking about getting a small project done before we all took a break together to celebrate Roberta’s birthday here at the office. Sandra had made Roberta’s favorite type of cake, and I remember I was working on an accounting issue with Ernestine & Janie, trying to figure out exactly where an item we had purchased was put into service.
As I was digging deep into an invoice, Sandra stuck her head inside my office door and said “A jet has flown into the World Trade Center in New York” with a shocked look on her face. I was both surprised (the WTC is WAY outside the flight path of any big commercial jet) and shocked.
I’m kind of the analytical sort, and as I continued through the invoicing my mind was wondering how in the world a jet had that major of a mechanical failure there… true, runway at LaGuardia runs northeast to southwest (I was an avid Microsoft Flight Simulator fan and knew every NYC airport well) and my best guess was that a flight coming off that runway had suffered a massive bird strike and lost power. (As an aside, this is very similar to what happened to the “Miracle On The Hudson” flight many years later… fortunately, due to brilliant piloting nobody was killed in that accident).
I was just settling on this as an explanation when Sandra came back to my office door, face totally ashen, tears running down her face. “Another plane hit the other tower,” she said. “The news is saying that there are more planes in the air, that there’s been a mass hijacking…”
Work was over for the day.
We don’t have cable at work (surprise, we WORK at work), but we did have a small TV with antenna, and we tuned into the only station it was able to pick up and sat there, as an office full of stunned Americans, and watched it unfold.
Here we were, a bunch of middle-age office workers in flyover country, far from ANYTHING worth a terrorist attention, spellbound & worried about what would happen to US. Not the USA, but US.
As we were watching, overreactions abounded. People went nuts, raiding the grocery store and gas station. Every single station in town immediately hiked their gas prices by an additional dollar a gallon, except one. A locally owned “mom & pop” gas station, a “6:00 AM to 6:00 PM service station (note, and actual SERVICE station where they do tires, batteries, etc)” kept their prices the same.
The owner of that station, a WWII veteran, told his son (who managed it) to keep pumping at the same price until the pumps went dry. “These are our friends and neighbors, we won’t gouge them.” His son, I will call him Charlie (not his real name) did just that, he didn’t close at 6:00, he stayed there selling gas until midnight, until everybody who wanted a fill up got one while all of the other price-gouging stations sat empty.
You know the rest, except for people in NYC, around the crash site in Stony Creek Township in Pennsylvania, and in DC, nothing really changed in our world while at the same time, EVERYTHING changed.
And now, it’s the 16th anniversary of that horrible day, and I am sad for many reasons. I’m sad for all those innocent victims, all those families who’s lives were destroyed. I’m sad for all of the survivors who have had to deal with the aftermath, with PTSD and survivor guilt. I’m sad for our country which was driven further into a police-state mentality. I’m sad for the Constitution, which has taken one hell of a beating in the last 16 years as people put a false sense of security ahead of our freedom.
I’m also sad on a personal level, Roberta passed of a heart attack, and Ernestine passed from cancer. Sandra passed from a rare disorder, one I never actually knew the name of. The owner of the gas station that stood up for is community has passed as well.
Later today, on my way home from work, I plan on stopping by that mom and pop station and filling up with gas, and sharing a few words with the owner (the son of the original owner) about that day, and thank him once again for standing tall in his own little way.
I think that’s really all we can do. Stand tall in our own little way.
If you have your own 9/11 personal story and you would like to share it, please do so in the comments.