You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
I’m writing this on September 11th 2010.
It was 9 years ago today that our nation was rocked by an atrocity that still brings quiet to the soul of every American.
September 11th is a date that elicits powerful emotions and stirs poignant memories.
September 11th has become a significant date in the American psyche. Like a line in the sand, it marks a transition from what we were to what we have become.
People will always remember where they were when that first jet hit that first tower.
I was just about to leave for work. I was waiting for the traffic report on Good Morning America.
The kids from the bus stop were all in the house, goofing around, throwing paper balls at one another as elementary school kids tend to do.
But there was no traffic report on this morning. It was Diane Sawyer talking over a city cam shot from a mile away. She was ad libbing, unclear of the insanity that was on the horizon. She said there’s smoke and it appears a plane has hit the world Trade Center.
And so it began.
What would follow was unbelievable. Televised images of atrocity and devastation that frightened me, and made me wonder if the world was coming to an end.
At first it was hard to know the impact of what was happening.
My boss called me and yelled, “Cordan get on a plane. Get on a plane. Get to the airport. Go to New York.”
“Go to New York?” I countered, my mind filling with the complexity of such a sudden move.
The line went dead.
I had a sack lunch and the clothes on my back. I had 5 dollars in my wallet and half a cell phone battery.
Go to New York?
I went to the airport, not sure what was about to happen next.
How was I going to buy a ticket? Where was I going to stay? Who was picking me up at the airport?
Normal questions for a trip to New York. Questions that would never need an answer on this historic day.
By this point the atrocity was unfolding in live horrific detail.
I hadn’t yet seen the images on TV, but I was listening on the radio.
The broadcaster’s voice was thick with emotion. Talk of fire balls and people jumping out of windows. It was HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds.” Could this really be happening?
This must have been what it was like when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Citizens sitting close to their radios, straining to hear each word of the announcer, listening to a voice in the nebula of space relaying information that was hard to fathom.
I entered the airport and quickly learned that planes had been ordered out of the sky.
Chicago to Denver. Welcome to Nashville. New York to Seattle, Hello Music City.
The baggage claim looked like Times Square on New Years Eve.
Every carousel filled with bags. A wall of people 5 and 6 layers deep.
I saw the bewildered faces of businessmen. I saw the blank stares of confused travelers.
But through it all, through this mass of uncertainty, there was a strange calm.
That is what I remember about the airport. It was calm. There was a polite, pull together as Americans, work as one kind of calm.
Thank Goodness we were not under attack in Nashville. Buildings had not fallen and death was not a dust cloud enveloping the street. But the day was unlike any other.It was eerie, surreal, and still orderly.
Americans are not usually a patient lot. We get upset when our burger is too rare. We bang the steering wheel when the light turns green and the guy in front of you doesn’t gun it.
On this day, when normalcy was being scattered to the unnavigated waters of crazy, there was a stoic calm, a realization that this was a profound moment in history.
I talked to dozens of travelers going from here to there. They told me what the captain said as the airliners descended in unprecedented order.
Imagine your pilot coming on the intercom and saying: “ladies and gentlemen. We’ve been ordered to land immediately. NYC has been attacked.”
Within an hour, the normally combustible airport was silent. Not a jet engine to be heard. The sky was blue and the air crisp. If you didn’t know any better you would say this is the greatest September 11th ever.
But you did know better.
The rental car counter was slammed. Cars were sold out in hours. Buses were packed and visitors looked shell shocked, as they left for downtown hotels they had no reservations to stay in.
It was this precise moment that created long lines at ex ray machines that now look at your private parts. It was this moment that launched two wars. It was this moment that made us say, we’ll never be the same again.
Normally, an event this big, I would be attached to a live truck,” but that was not the case on this surreal day.
It was the biggest news day of my life and I was on the side line waiting for someone to ask me what I was seeing.
“When are we going live?” I shouted to my boss over my phone.
“Network is going wall to wall,” he responded. “We might not be on the air for a long time.”
My boss was right. We went about our day like it was normal, but it wasn’t.
We gathered video and edited stories all for a newscast that might never come.
14 hours straight. Peter Jennings was on the anchor desk and he was in control of the world. He had commentary and experts and cameras at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Pennsylvania and beyond.
I sat down in the office of my boss after hours of talking to passengers.
I had experienced Nashville’s version of 911.
I hadn’t really seen the images that had been pouring out of NYC.
When I did, I was over come.
Visuals of dust clouds and people covered with soot. It looked like a foggy marsh of destroyed concrete. The pictures were so powerful, so visceral, like a sick evil permeating the screen.
It was like a horrible child’s pop up book where the imagery sprung from the page, while the text of the story was left to the imagination.
Who could do such a thing?
Terrorists?
10pm came. We finally broke from network coverage and delivered our own Nashville newscast.
By this time, I was live at a BP gas station in Franklin, Tennessee.
It was here that reports of gas gouging were rampant.
When I got to the station, anger was boiling. People were scared. Motorists were topping off their tanks and cars were stretched into the roadway. Citizens told me that regular gas was sold out and the station only had premium.
I went in to talk to the clerk. He was a mutton chop of a man wearing a little blue outfit and shorts. He had an Australian accent and he was agitated that I was in his store.
“Why are you jacking up gas prices?” i asked angrily.
“You’ll need to leave the store,” he said, his voice so thick with Aussie, I expected Kangaroos to pop out of his throat.
“They say you are charging exorbitant prices?” I questioned, the light of my photog’s camera blaring on the back of my neck.
“Get out or I’ll call the police,” he said.
I decided fighting a gas station attendant would not be good for anyone on this night, so I left and interviewed citizens waiting for gas.
The mood was angrier than the airport. People were frustrated and impatient. People seemed scared.
I got on live tv and the anchor tossed to me at the gas station.
I remember having nothing particular planned to say. I am unsure of the exact words, but I ended up saying something like:
People, it’s going to be ok. There is gas, there is no reason to leave your house to top off. Be patient. Be kind to each other.
There are a lot of memories from that day. The one that is somehow seared into my brain is a semi truck driving down the street. Just the tractor, no trailer. There was a huge American flag attached to the top of the tractor and a hand painted sign that read.
FREEDOM TO DIE
I will always remember that sign. I don’t know what it meant. Does it mean we are Americans who have the right to fight for our freedoms? Does it mean we are being attacked because of the freedom we have?
Only that truck driver knows exactly what his hand painted sign meant.
All I know; September 11th 2001 is a date that as FDR once said a generation earlier; “Will live in Infamy”
And that is crazy.