Jet Fighters, Sponge Bob and Bagels
Remembering a Very Scary Time
I’ll get a head start on this because on Sept. 11, no doubt most anything you read will have something to do with Sept. 11, 2001, and my blog just might get lost in it all.
It’s like it was yesterday, with fighter jets roaring over the Paramus home of my then 87-year old mother and the overarching fear that the attacks were just the beginning.
Fortunately, my brother was wrong.
Two days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I called my brother in Minnesota to talk about the deadly strike and he told me that it was just the beginning, that the U.S. was totally unprepared to defend itself and that he expected there would be many more attacks. Comforting words these were not but I also knew that my brother’s career in law enforcement led him to expect the worst.
My family was vacationing in Cape May, hoping for a week of relaxation and escape from the tensions of the world and our plans were somewhat unsuccessful. I was with my wife and son, who was 5 at the time, as we hadn’t yet adopted my daughter, who was 5 and living in an orphanage in Bulgaria.
The day of Sept. 10, 2001, was like the day of Nov. 21, 1963, not in terms of what happened but in that nobody in their wildest imaginations could predict what would be coming the next day. On Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, Michael Jackson hosted a 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden, where he was joined by Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, his Jackson brothers and sisters and other big stars. The next day, Jackson and his personal assistant Frank Cascio, were scheduled for a meeting at the World Trade Center, to return a “two million” dollar watch that Jackson used for the concert, and a diamond necklace for Elizabeth Taylor, but Jackson overslept and did not make the appointment.
On Monday Night Football, the Broncos beat the Giants, 31–24, in the first game played at the Bronco’s new stadium, “Invesco Field at Mile High” now known as, “Sports Authority Field at Mile High.”
That night, George Carlin, who like all of us could not know what would happen the next day, taped a special, which he titled “I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die,” which for obvious reasons was cancelled and reworked and renamed as “Complaints and Grievances” which wasn’t aired until 25 years later and after the death of Carlin in 2008. That Monday in 2001 was a good day for Charles Ingram who cheated his way into winning one million pounds on a British version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and for Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan who was named “Actor of the Century” at the Alexandria Film Festival although it was not a very good day for Antonio da Costa Santos, mayor of Campinas, Brazil, who was assassinated.
It was 77 degrees, windy and sunny on that Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, morning in Cape May when at 7:59 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew members, departed 14 minutes late from Logan International Airport in Boston, bound for Los Angeles International Airport. The jetliner would soon change course and at 8:46:40 a.m., Flight 11 crashed into the north face of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99.
Sometime between 8:50 and 8:54 a.m., Flight 77 was hijacked above southern Ohio, and turned to the southeast and at 9:03:02 a.m., it crashed into the south face of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, between floors 77 and 85. I was at the Cape May general store, fulfilling my daily routine of getting the Times and bagels and overheard a few people talking about something that happened about a plane crash and the World Trade Center.
I walked home, curious but not yet alarmed and my wife had already seen the news on the television at which time she quickly changed the channel to Nickelodeon and Sponge Bob Square Pants so that my son could remain blissfully engaged and unaware.
I am sure that I felt this feeling of dread and terror only one time before and it also was a life changing moment that touched the deepest part of my body. That was my father’s death when I was 10. The hours and days and weeks and months after the terrorist attack are a blur but they brought back similar crippling emotions along with a consuming fear of the future, no doubt a bout with post traumatic stress disorder.
After the attacks, I immediately called my mother in Paramus and she said she was fine other than the U.S. fighter jets that roared over her house periodically.
I returned to work in Chester later in the week and found it increasingly difficult to concentrate while a colleague offered a sense of perspective by observing that Osma bin Laden was probably not gathered with the al-Qaeda brain trust to map out an attack on Chester. Maybe bin Laden was familiar with Chester having been there to get an ice cream cone at Taylor’s but I doubt it.
In the weeks and months after the attacks, it seemed totally appropriate and realistic when the government warned everyone to put on Latex gloves and to check their mail for white powder which could be anthrax, but never was. The only result for me was that I quickly learned I was allergic to Latex, as shown by the itching, red blotches on my arms. The alarm had been raised after 64 letters filled with anthrax spores killed five people in the United States and sickened 17 in the late fall of 2001, evoking the fear of an imminent biological attack that never came, just like the fear of another massive terrorist attack never materialized. In the ensuing weeks and months, thousands of mysterious letters were sent around the country but none contained anthrax.
Just as alarming and just as believable were the warnings issued in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting and to seal all windows and doors in event of a nuclear, biological, radiological or chemical attack, which also never happened, but which did mean a lot of sales for hardware stores and a big boost for the duct tape makers. Personally I never used the duct tape for anything other than to secure the front bumper on my Honda.
In time, after too many sleepless night and over-indulgence in the balm of alcohol, I began therapy with a psychologist in Flanders who was very helpful in helping me to create a fantasy character who would offer me safe space and as I have discussed in other blogs, I created a bearded, white haired guy who wore coveralls and a red flannel shirt who was named Iris. Iris helped me get through the period.
Those times took their toll on me, forever a part of my marrow, shaking the false sense of security that I had always had, something that I have never recovered, to this day. Not to say that I was ever the picture of serenity but pre-2001, I felt more of a vague existential fear that some unknown terror would take over and after 2001, the fear was much more specific. I don’t know which was worse, it’s really a toss up.
I am sane enough to realize that my specific pre-2001 fears were neurotic but were the fears that have been cultivated by the government unrealistic and was the government intentionally overreacting by issuing dire warnings, like recommending that people buy repellant to fend off an imminent dinosaur attack? There were no subsequent attacks and no dinosaurs. Were we put into a total state of dread in order to satisfy the political objectives of the country’s leaders? At the time, nobody would have even considered such a scenario but today, it would fit into the conspiracy theory faster than you can say duct tape. At least Chester is still standing.