My Grandmother told me, when I was small, about how much she remembered from the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. She had said that when something of that magnitude occurs it’s impossible not to remember every single detail of the day. During those attacks on the United States of America my Grandma was sitting in a darkened movie theatre with friends in Detroit, Michigan. The movie was stopped and the announcement was made over loud speakers that The United States was under attack. Air-raid sirens sounded their wailing call across the country and people scrambled for their homes, and bomb shelters, seeking out family and fearing that the initial strike would be reprised on the mainland. Aside from the British burning of the White House in 1812 it was the first time in recent history that The United States of America was threatened on homeland soil. It wouldn’t be the last.
When I was young, I remember my mother recounting to me where she was the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. She was a student in school and remembers the teacher receiving word from the front office and turning on the television in the classroom just as the Zapruder Film footage flashed grim across the black-and-white screen. You never forget where you were when tragedy strikes. On a national level, these events instantly become part of the zeitgeist, defining the mood and tone of the country’s collective demeanor.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 I was working at a Starbucks coffee located in Jacksonville, Florida’s Eagle Harbor area. I had arrived at work at the usual five-thirty a.m. to open the store. I unlocked the door, disarmed the security system, switched on the espresso machine and went into the back of the store to punch the combination code into the safe’s electronic keypad. As the time lock counted down on the safe I went back to the espresso machine to make myself a drink while my opening partner, Rosanne, prepped the pastry case. At six a.m. we opened the doors and our early morning regulars began to trickle in, bleary-eyed and making with the normal pedestrian, small talk as they awaited their drinks. The sun rose bright and clear, streaming in through the glass front door and business began to pick up. A policewoman, one of our regular customers, was thumbing through her cell phone while she waited for her non-fat, triple grande wet cappuccino. She stopped suddenly and told me a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. We both shrugged and she left to grab a pastry from the bakery two shops over. A few minutes later she returned, a horrified look on her face. “Another plane hit the other tower.” She said to me.
As I looked around I noticed other customers outside were clutching their cell phones like some digital life preserver, the same look of horror painted on all of their faces. We are under attack, I thought to myself. My mind flashed with images of armed men storming shops and restaurants, taking hostages or spraying civilians with bullets, bodies slumping down between the aisles at Wal-mart. I looked outside and half expected to see military vehicles of some foreign nation crushing cars as they roared down County Road 210. Reports began to trickle in as customers with news feeds on their phones and satellite radios came in for their coffee. Some were panic stricken. Others seemed unshaken, as if they were watching a Ben Affleck blockbuster. More and more, though, America was coming to understand one thing: we were under attack and terrorists from the Middle East were the obvious perpetrators. Someone named Usama Bin Laden.
I had never heard the name Bin Laden. I was in my early twenties and world events were the last thing on my mind. I was more concerned with the struggle to pay my mortgage and light bill. Car payments and drinking money. Comic books and movies. Trying to score a record deal for my band. Playing shows. World News Tonight was the last thing to hold or even catch my attention. None of that shit ever happened here. How do a bunch of moronic religious zealots in a desert in the middle of nowhere concern me? I had enough problems with the religious nuts here in the Dirty South.
Now i was hearing about people jumping from thousands of feet to escape the flame-engulfed buildings, choosing to die crashing into the pavement below over burning to death. So many people lost their lives because of what? Because Americans enjoy freedom and a quality of life other countries can only dream of? Perhaps. Because of one infinitesimal group of people, a whole race was harrowed by allegations and suppositions.
For those who survived the attacks, so much changed that late summer morning. The possibility of terrorist attacks is, at times, almost palpable. The news media cashes in on this fear more than ever. Now, it’s a huge pain in the ass to get anywhere by plane and what was once a simple jaunt into Canada and back for a day trip has become a nightmare plagued with suspicion and drama.
Things will never be the same.
I will always remember where i was and what i was doing on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
