story1291.xml

story1291.xml

born-digital

story

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2002-08-20

A Vacation that was no vacation.

I had made plans for sometime prior to attend the International Comics Art Festival in Bethesda, Maryland, outside of Washington DC starting September 12th.

Part of my planning for the trip was taking my car to the shop to get it ready for the 800 mile drive to D.C. from Detroit, which I had done before my 3rd shift on Monday the 10th. I took a taxi into work that day and got a ride home from a co-worker after my shift ended at Midnight. This meant that my car, usually in the driveway was not there the morning of the 11th. My plans for the 11th included waking up a little earlier than usual (for me that would be about 1:00pm), get ready for work, call a cab to go get my car from the shop. From there I would vote in the Detroit mayoral primary elections, go to work, come back home, get ready for the trip and go to bed early so I could leave for D.C. for my vacation starting the 12th.

At least that was the original plan.

The early morning hours was uneventful for me as I was clearing up a number items of personal business on my home laptop computer. The last bit of email I sent was sometime around 6:36am that morning on the 11th before I called it a "night" and went to bed.

As I slept the world changed around me.

About 9:30am, my mother, who lives across the street from me, called up and left a message on my home answering machine about the World Trade Center attacks. It would be the only message I would get during this time, but I was sleeping through it all and did not hear it.

Around 1pm, my father called my mother at home to have her check on me. He was worried about me because he knew about my upcoming trip and he did not see my car where it usually was when he left for work that morning. I am sure many things wild and not so wild had crossed his mind wondering what happened to me. So my Mom came to see if I was OK.

I woke to the sound of keys opening my front door. Normally I would not have heard such a sound from another end of the home, but I had already conditioned my internal biological clock to wake up then anyway, so my mother ended up beating my alarm clock by a couple of minutes.

I laid in bed wondering what this was all about when she approached my room.

Not hearing my usually rather loud snorring, the first questions she asked me was, "Junior, are you alive?". I thought she was being funny and responded that I was but was getting up soon anyway.

"It is terrible!" she said. "Terrorists have highjacked airlines and flew them into the World Trade Center. Both towers have collapsed to the ground. They flew a plane into the Pentagon and it is on fire. The whole world has turned upside down!"

I sat up in my bed and said rather somberly, "You know what this means? This means war."

After my Mom told me the reason on how she got here she went back home knowing I was OK. I got some clothes on and went to turn on the TV and signed-on to the internet to read some of the first email reactions of the events.

After only a short while, I got ready for work and called for a taxi to pick up my car. The driver and I only talked ever so briefly and I arrived at a rather empty auto place to get my car to go and vote.

I get to the local grade school to vote, and the voting volunteers (all of whom I have seen for years) and the school principal were talking about the days events.

I went to vote and being totally disgusted with my choices for mayor, I wrote myself in.

Before I left, one of the ladies, whose son and I went to grade school with, asked me how my brother was. My brother is an officer in the Army stationed in Germany and she knew about where he was. As far as knew, he was OK I told her, though no one in the family had talked to him yet. So now my thoughts dwelled on my brother and his future as I went to work.

All the TV's at work were tuned into the news instead of the Weather Channel, watching the horrors as World Trade Center 7 fell too late that afternoon. My mind was a daze.

I asked to leave early, I was not thinking clearly and wanted to get out of there. My boss allowed me to go.

So I began my vacation.

On my way home, I went to get gas and found the local stations had not raised their prices much, but the lines were long. Everyone was filling up it seemed.

I got home and signed online again, I quickly inquired and the ICAF convention had been cancelled. I had intended to share my hotel room with two other friends. One was scheduled to fly in from France, so I emailed him hoping he was not stuck on a runway in Nova Scotia (since all international flights had been diverted to Canada). He emailed back and was still in France. My friend from Nebraska then emailed me to confirm that the room he had gotten for us had been cancelled as well. The Hotel had called him when they knew the Festival was cancelled and because they need the rooms for people who were stuck in town due to cancelled plane flights. They were making sure we were not coming. We weren't.

I watched the news. And continued to watch the replays of the death and destruction. The President's speech to the nation, news reports from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, CBC showed more and more of the same all night. I wrote some of the angeriest email I have ever wrote. I was calling on a World War II style war to reshape the entire Muslim world like we reshaped Germany and Japan to those who wished to listen to my rant. I vented my anger (and sadness too) in word to all those who would listen. Those who knew me knew I was in my own pain. It was not thoughts my liberal-Democratic self would normally entertain they knew and deep down inside so did I.

And I spent the night watching more TV.

The early morning of Wednesday the 12th, about 6:30am daybreak, I went outside my home after my father had driven off for his work day again. And I looked up.

The sky was clear. Totally and completely clear. I live nearby one of the flight plaths to Detroit Metro Airport. There was NO jet trails in the sky. None. I have never seen a completely empty sky before. I was dumbstruck.

I soon went to bed for a few hours woke up and watched the TV and basically repeated the routinue for the next four days.

On Thursday the 13th my Brother called me and the family. He was on base when everything happened and the base went into lockdown for the next two days. He was home long enough to get a good meal, see his wife and child, get some clothes and head back. He would be working 7 days until further notice.

On Friday the 14th I remember getting all choked-up seeing Bryant Gumble getting choked-up after they played a tape of the British Royal Family's Honor Guard band playing the Star Spangled Banner at Buckingham Palace. I saw the same band only 3 months prior when I visited Europe that previous May to see my Brother and the sights. I found myself glad I had took my trip in the Spring instead of the Fall.

By Saturday the 15th I decided I had enough and cut my vacation short and go back to work on Sunday the 16th. I had enough TV.

It seems so much a haze now, almost a year later as I write this. I still find myself absorbed in anything about the events of 9/11 (one of the reasons I am here writting this). And I wonder if this need to read more and more of what happened may symbolize some sort of mental anguish on my part, or if it is a healthy reaction to the horrible events of that day? I do not know. I feel well enough now to start criticizing the President again anyway. I am also glad that the anger I had in my words then were never transformed into deeds.

And my Brother is doing just fine right now, though in the middle of a peace-keeping operation in Kosvo. "It is a slightly quieter corner of hell.", I like to tell him.

Perhaps, I am really talking about myself?

-Ray Bottorff Jr
Detroit, Michigan
August 20, 2002