story9843.xml
Title
story9843.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-09-11
911DA Story: Story
For me 9/11 started as a bad dream. I had set my alarm to the local news station. Often whatever is on the radio will work its way into my dreams before I wake up. As I slept the first plane hit the tower. I dreamt of fire as the "breaking news" music started playing and the first reports started coming in. Soon my subconscious realized something important was going on in the real world and I woke up. The radio was saying only that thick smoke was coming from one of the towers and that there were reports a plane had hit it. I got out of bed and turned on the television to gape. The voices of Katie Couric and Matt Lauer were talking with a woman who had seen the plane hit, while live footage of the burning tower played on the screen. The woman was saying the plane had been large, like a jetliner. I thought Katie and Matt sounded doubtful. I was doubtful myself, but then I saw the hole in the side of the tower and realized it was unlikely a small plane could have made that.
Then suddenly the camera jerked, a shadow on the screen, and then a silent explosion. Fire and smoke and shiny confetti floating down. The woman on the phone began screaming: "Oh my God! Did you see that? Did you see that?" I heard Katie say "Yes we saw it." I heard the change in Katie's and Matt's voices as, like the rest of us, they tried to grasp what they were seeing. I heard that sound in all the announcers' voices over and over on all the channels on all the televison I watched that day. Like millions of others, I realized this was no accident. I watched the two towers burning for a while. I started to make some sense of what was happening. There had been a terrorist attack in New York. I had seen part of it on live TV. They were going to have a hell of a time getting the fires out and it was going to be a black day.
At this point I was going to be late for work. I didn't plan to stay home all day and watch the towers burn so I called the reference desk at the library where I worked and told them I was going to be late. They hadn't heard about the second tower yet. Then I jumped in the shower. I lived a little over a mile from the Pentagon. I had the bathroom window open that morning. I heard a jet flying over, low and close. Must be military jets, I thought to myself. Then I heard a muffled explosion and no more jet sound. I nearly dropped the soap. Another plane crashing. But it couldn't be. Yet almost immediately I began hearing sirens. Still I refused to believe it, even as I rushed to get out of the shower. I still had the television on, but now it was a local newsperson saying there were reports of fire and a bomb at the Pentagon. Now I was the one saying "Oh my God, oh my God," over and over. It wasn't a bomb. It was a plane. I had heard it. I was looking up the phone number for the news station when the phone rang. It was a friend who lived nearby. "What the f**k!?" he said. "It was a plane. I heard it crash," I said. I don't remember what else we said. I don't think either one of us could really hear what the other was saying. After a couple of minutes I told him I was going to call the TV station.
"It wasn't a bomb. It was a plane." I said to the woman who answered the phone. "We know." she said and hung up. Now the television was saying there had been a plane crash. I called my parents to tell them I was okay. At this point I was unsure what to do next. Feeling it was probably not a good idea, I went outside. It was a beautiful early fall morning. The sky was a bright blue. There were sirens. But beyond that there was the feeling someting was off its track, like a bearing was loose somewhere grinding away. It must have been the adrenaline. I looked in the direction of the Pentagon. Behind the trees there was something low on the horizon. It could have been smoke or it could have been a cloud. There was no plume of black smoke rising into the sky as I had expected. Then I started walking towards the major road near my apartment which ran down a hill to the Pentagon. As I walked I kept looking towards the Pentagon. Finally I could see low on the horizon what was clearly not a cloud. Smoke. But it was white and gray, not black. Was that good? A man pulled up in a pickup truck and and stopped. "There's a big fire down at the Pentagon," he said as though he were talking about the local lumber mill. I nodded and pointed towards the smoke. I kept walking. A man approached with a handheld radio. "One of the towers just fell," he said. I nodded and kept walking. I no longer cared about New York. What was going on? How many more planes were there? What if there were a nuclear bomb, or a chemical bomb? Was I going to see the end of today? Should I be trying to get out of town, to save myself? Why was I walking towards the Pentagon? Then I saw a couple loading belongings into an SUV. They were heading for the hills.
I stood at the road and looked down the hill towards the Pentagon. In the distance I could see it, smoke billowing off of it. It was 10am, but cars were streaming up the road, heading away from the city. There were people walking as well, many in uniform, away from the Pentagon. I though it looked frighteningly like an exodus. I stood staring for a few minutes. People were talking into cell phones, their voices high with anxiety. I remember making eye contact with the people on the street, much more so than is usual in the city, seeing my fear reflected in their eyes. I crossed the street, took a few steps towards the Pentagon, then stopped. What was I doing? There was no point in my walking towards the fire. I turned and began walking back. On the way I passed a military office building. Cars were streaming out of the parking lot. Buildings all over the city were being evacuated. There were a lot of military and government buildings in my neighborhood, and after I returned home and decided to try to drive to work I found myself caught in a traffic jam of people trying to get home. At first I thought I was seeing the beginnings of gridlock and panic, but once I was away from my neighborhood the traffic lessened and I made it to work easily. At work I called another friend whose voice I wanted to hear, but got only her answering machine. I left a message. "If you're at home, stay there," I said.
At the library we gathered at the reference desk watching a handheld televsion someone had brought. We kept a list of the latest developments, but no one called the library to ask what was going on. A large television was set up in a meeting room and people gathered throughout the day to watch the news. Finally, at five the library closed early. I got ahold of the friend I had trield to call earlier and drove over empty streets to her house. Perhaps my only good memory of that day was seeing her face as she opened the door. I hugged her tight. She had slept the whole morning, finally awakened by a phone call from her mother telling her what had happened. We watched the television with a couple of friends of hers. After a couple hours I went and hung out with some other friends. We all wanted to see familiar faces, use them to help put in context what had happened. We watched more television. By now the TV coverage had become another aspect of the events of the day. What was the most remarkable piece of film we had seen? When it came on I pointed out footage a woman shot in New York of the debri cloud coming towards her. At the last moment a shopkeeper pulls her inside and locks the door. As the woman points her camera at the glass storefront the debri cloud rolls by like a tidal wave. The street scene disappears. As the woman screams all you see is a grey-brown roiling mass going past the glass storefront. It looked like the store was inside the twister from the Wizard of Oz.
Another piece of footage I saw only once. It was the President at the school he was visiting when the planes hit. He's sitting on the stage when an aide comes up and whispers in his ear, persumably telling him about the 2nd tower being hit. The expressions that passed across his face were unforgettable. He looked like someone had punched him in the stomach as he fought to keep his composure. I never saw that footage again. Perhaps it showed him in too "unpresidential" a light.
As I watched the footage of the Pentagon again and again I realized I knew the spot where the plane had hit. I jogged regularly on a path within a hundred feet of the building. On the television I watched a scene of chaos where I had run countless times. I watched a fire truck burn that I run past often as it sat parked by the heliport. A week later I found that truck. It had been towed to a far corner of a parking lot with a couple other burned cars and some debri. The truck was half burnt, and I could smell the jet fuel.
Two months later I stood under the stars on a cold November night, gathered close with friends, sipping warm scrumpie heated on the backyard barbecue. We looked up at the night sky, pointing out the fighter jets high overhead, talking about how the world had changed, wondering if it was going to be a long winter.
Then suddenly the camera jerked, a shadow on the screen, and then a silent explosion. Fire and smoke and shiny confetti floating down. The woman on the phone began screaming: "Oh my God! Did you see that? Did you see that?" I heard Katie say "Yes we saw it." I heard the change in Katie's and Matt's voices as, like the rest of us, they tried to grasp what they were seeing. I heard that sound in all the announcers' voices over and over on all the channels on all the televison I watched that day. Like millions of others, I realized this was no accident. I watched the two towers burning for a while. I started to make some sense of what was happening. There had been a terrorist attack in New York. I had seen part of it on live TV. They were going to have a hell of a time getting the fires out and it was going to be a black day.
At this point I was going to be late for work. I didn't plan to stay home all day and watch the towers burn so I called the reference desk at the library where I worked and told them I was going to be late. They hadn't heard about the second tower yet. Then I jumped in the shower. I lived a little over a mile from the Pentagon. I had the bathroom window open that morning. I heard a jet flying over, low and close. Must be military jets, I thought to myself. Then I heard a muffled explosion and no more jet sound. I nearly dropped the soap. Another plane crashing. But it couldn't be. Yet almost immediately I began hearing sirens. Still I refused to believe it, even as I rushed to get out of the shower. I still had the television on, but now it was a local newsperson saying there were reports of fire and a bomb at the Pentagon. Now I was the one saying "Oh my God, oh my God," over and over. It wasn't a bomb. It was a plane. I had heard it. I was looking up the phone number for the news station when the phone rang. It was a friend who lived nearby. "What the f**k!?" he said. "It was a plane. I heard it crash," I said. I don't remember what else we said. I don't think either one of us could really hear what the other was saying. After a couple of minutes I told him I was going to call the TV station.
"It wasn't a bomb. It was a plane." I said to the woman who answered the phone. "We know." she said and hung up. Now the television was saying there had been a plane crash. I called my parents to tell them I was okay. At this point I was unsure what to do next. Feeling it was probably not a good idea, I went outside. It was a beautiful early fall morning. The sky was a bright blue. There were sirens. But beyond that there was the feeling someting was off its track, like a bearing was loose somewhere grinding away. It must have been the adrenaline. I looked in the direction of the Pentagon. Behind the trees there was something low on the horizon. It could have been smoke or it could have been a cloud. There was no plume of black smoke rising into the sky as I had expected. Then I started walking towards the major road near my apartment which ran down a hill to the Pentagon. As I walked I kept looking towards the Pentagon. Finally I could see low on the horizon what was clearly not a cloud. Smoke. But it was white and gray, not black. Was that good? A man pulled up in a pickup truck and and stopped. "There's a big fire down at the Pentagon," he said as though he were talking about the local lumber mill. I nodded and pointed towards the smoke. I kept walking. A man approached with a handheld radio. "One of the towers just fell," he said. I nodded and kept walking. I no longer cared about New York. What was going on? How many more planes were there? What if there were a nuclear bomb, or a chemical bomb? Was I going to see the end of today? Should I be trying to get out of town, to save myself? Why was I walking towards the Pentagon? Then I saw a couple loading belongings into an SUV. They were heading for the hills.
I stood at the road and looked down the hill towards the Pentagon. In the distance I could see it, smoke billowing off of it. It was 10am, but cars were streaming up the road, heading away from the city. There were people walking as well, many in uniform, away from the Pentagon. I though it looked frighteningly like an exodus. I stood staring for a few minutes. People were talking into cell phones, their voices high with anxiety. I remember making eye contact with the people on the street, much more so than is usual in the city, seeing my fear reflected in their eyes. I crossed the street, took a few steps towards the Pentagon, then stopped. What was I doing? There was no point in my walking towards the fire. I turned and began walking back. On the way I passed a military office building. Cars were streaming out of the parking lot. Buildings all over the city were being evacuated. There were a lot of military and government buildings in my neighborhood, and after I returned home and decided to try to drive to work I found myself caught in a traffic jam of people trying to get home. At first I thought I was seeing the beginnings of gridlock and panic, but once I was away from my neighborhood the traffic lessened and I made it to work easily. At work I called another friend whose voice I wanted to hear, but got only her answering machine. I left a message. "If you're at home, stay there," I said.
At the library we gathered at the reference desk watching a handheld televsion someone had brought. We kept a list of the latest developments, but no one called the library to ask what was going on. A large television was set up in a meeting room and people gathered throughout the day to watch the news. Finally, at five the library closed early. I got ahold of the friend I had trield to call earlier and drove over empty streets to her house. Perhaps my only good memory of that day was seeing her face as she opened the door. I hugged her tight. She had slept the whole morning, finally awakened by a phone call from her mother telling her what had happened. We watched the television with a couple of friends of hers. After a couple hours I went and hung out with some other friends. We all wanted to see familiar faces, use them to help put in context what had happened. We watched more television. By now the TV coverage had become another aspect of the events of the day. What was the most remarkable piece of film we had seen? When it came on I pointed out footage a woman shot in New York of the debri cloud coming towards her. At the last moment a shopkeeper pulls her inside and locks the door. As the woman points her camera at the glass storefront the debri cloud rolls by like a tidal wave. The street scene disappears. As the woman screams all you see is a grey-brown roiling mass going past the glass storefront. It looked like the store was inside the twister from the Wizard of Oz.
Another piece of footage I saw only once. It was the President at the school he was visiting when the planes hit. He's sitting on the stage when an aide comes up and whispers in his ear, persumably telling him about the 2nd tower being hit. The expressions that passed across his face were unforgettable. He looked like someone had punched him in the stomach as he fought to keep his composure. I never saw that footage again. Perhaps it showed him in too "unpresidential" a light.
As I watched the footage of the Pentagon again and again I realized I knew the spot where the plane had hit. I jogged regularly on a path within a hundred feet of the building. On the television I watched a scene of chaos where I had run countless times. I watched a fire truck burn that I run past often as it sat parked by the heliport. A week later I found that truck. It had been towed to a far corner of a parking lot with a couple other burned cars and some debri. The truck was half burnt, and I could smell the jet fuel.
Two months later I stood under the stars on a cold November night, gathered close with friends, sipping warm scrumpie heated on the backyard barbecue. We looked up at the night sky, pointing out the fighter jets high overhead, talking about how the world had changed, wondering if it was going to be a long winter.
Collection
Citation
“story9843.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 11, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/15112.