I was 23 years old in September of 2001. That morning our department’s secretary let us know that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Everybody thought it was a fluke until we watched the second plane hit the other tower live. Then, there wasn’t a soul that didn’t think it was terrorism and that we were indeed under attack.
A morning meeting went on as planned. Absolutely useless, as a TV was on in my boss’s office and we were glued to it. Another plane had just crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
I don’t remember much else about the workday, but I remember that evening gassing up my truck as there was some little bit of panic that gasoline would be unaffordable by morning. I spent a few hours at Glenn’s Shell helping pump people’s gasoline as the line reached blocks both directions, on Central Avenue and 7th Street.
The next morning on the way to work, Kwik Trip South’s sign read $8.88 a gallon for gasoline. Another friend of mine reported the same at the East Kwik Trip. They would later deny they did it. My own two eyes told me different.
Our family would visit “ground zero,” as it was still called then, in April of 2004. The temporary PATH station opened late the previous year. The cleanup phase was complete, and the official reconstruction of the area had begun. Construction was well underway on the new 7 World Trade Center. The derelict Deutsche Bank Building was still standing, but extensive damage would mean it would be taken down within the next year.
Bethany and I visited in September of 2023, and the September 11th memorial moved me far more than I thought it would. There was something about that day in 2001 that would lead me to believe that the country would start along a path that we weren’t supposed to be on. That somehow, the world we knew it up to that time was gone.
I mean, I wouldn’t change the last 25 years of my own life for anything. I’ve loved every minute of it. But yet, I think we all thought our country would be something different. It’s hard to explain. I think anyone alive and witnessing what we all went through thinks about that from time to time.
Where have the last 25 years gone? Wow…
