53tdogs

I always had a radio on tuned to news/talk at my desk, since our division was first line support to the first line emergency responders for earthquakes, floods, fires and other California emergencies we would a lot of times find out faster initial information on the radio/tv.  Plus I’m a news junkie after 28 years of that kind of stuff.  It was what ?  7:05 a.m. California time when the first plane hit –  and hell on earth started for those poor Americans.

I put a call out over the intercom and via Email to all our department (about 120 people).  The equipment manager, brought the t.v. in from the conference room into our main office and we all watched in horror and dismay.  The next couple of hours we didn’t get much work done, (in spite of what they say about state employees – we always worked our tails off) but this was three thousand miles away and we couldn’t do anything unless the govenor called.  I called my supervisor as he was in San Diego at a meeting.  He said they were all trying to fly home, but they had to get a car and drive. Normally, I would have been with him at the meeting but I had a doctor’s appointment I couldn’t get out of, if I’d been there with my supervisor, it would have made me bonkers, being over 500 miles from home.  All I wanted and I think every body wanted was to be home.  Like Dorothy says "there’s no place like home" – especially in stressful times.

My ex was a helicopter pilot and when the FCC and TSB grounded all aircraft, he had to find a vehicle to drive four hours home, so he borrowed a friends car.  The funny thing, (not funny "ha-ha but funny – weird) is that he was in New York City, just three days before 9/11 attending a fellow pilot and friends funeral who had crashed the week before in Montana.  That crash hit home with me very much, as my ex (who wasn’t my ex then) was flying up on those Yellowstone fires too and I couldn’t get in touch with him until he called me after I’d called everybody and their brother.  I found out about the crash watching Fox News t.v. and ran to the kitchen to grab the phone and was frantically dialing numbers…I can’t imagine how the poor families watched t.v. on 9/11 knowing their loved ones were in those buildings or the first responders families knowing that their loved ones were running into those buildings. 

I like you Bonbon can remember those things like Kennedy being shot, although, I was living in France at the time, my dad heard it on the Armed Forces Radio.  He thought it was a play as they’d had the week before a play about Lincoln’s assasination, but when they kept reporting the same thing.  And with the time difference in France – (it was late at night), he got his uniform on and went to the base.  I’m sure people who were alive remember Pearl Harbor like that too. 

It’s etched in our collective memories.  I just pray to God that we will not have to go through anything like that again, but I’m afraid in "these interesting times that we live in" (to paraphrase an ancient Chinese curse 寧為太平犬，不做亂世人 ), we unfortunately will.