Offered to show how technologically dependent we all have become.
Early, early, early on September 11, 2001, I got into my car in the northern suburbs of Baltimore and headed to the southern suburbs of DC - a one-way journey of maybe 65 miles. A client of mine had a dispute with her home builder over a large number of small ticky-tack punch-list items, and somehow she hallucinated that my presence at a planned meeting with a builders' rep in her home would help. Never one to turn down an honest fee offered, I fought through a slight head-cold and drove down through the gorgeous early morning mid-Atlantic sun and now-famously ironic clear blue sky and cool weather.
I recall stopping off at the NE edge of the DC Beltway, maybe 60% of the way down, give or take, and grabbing overpriced coffee at Starbucks in Greenbelt, then boarding back onto MD-295 onto DC-295 and then I-295 down along the Anacostia River - through the neighborhoods where you don't often find Starbucks, don't find lots of bright-eyed politico wannabes or literally any sit-down restaurant save one, according to local zoning records. I recall driving past the non-sweet-smelling Blue Plains treatment plants and back into MD onto MD 210, a very ordinary suburban artery going to a very ordinary, though increasingy affluent, southern suburb of DC.
My client - a very successful government contractor and consultant - welcomed me to her home and asked me to kill time in her den, keeping me on "reserve" in case I were needed. I entered the home at about 8:35 AM. She had no television on, no radio and neither did I. No one called me or her and her bulder's rep apparently had no telephone or radio on him (or did not turn it on.) There they punch-listed out and about - the minor dings on the hardwood floors, a slight misalignment of one molding piece, the ineffable installation of charcoal grey fixtures in her kitchen when she bloody well ordered black ones. I mainly sat in her den, tried to stay awake and read, ironically, Man's Search for Meaning in between head-cold medicine side effects and the occasional grunt or chatter from downstairs or elsewhere.
Eventually the builder's rep took the earful that my client had intended to give him, I shook hands with him, thanked her, shook her hand and got into my car at the edge of this property. The whole neighborhood looked brand new, which it was, a predominantly African-American middle- to upper-middle-class suburb of relatively young white-collar professionals, a sign of economic progress and optimism. I got into my Ford Aspire, buckled up like a good Marylander and drove straight north on MD-210 towards the Beltway, thereby raising the per capita income of that census tract with my departure.
Then I turned on the radio. It was around 10:40 by then.
I had been listening to Baltimore's 98 Rock earlier in the morning, and now Lopez was on. Lopez was a major conspiracy theorist, sort of like Glenn Beck in style but with Bill Maher's politics. Lopez was going on and on about the World Trade Center being attacked, but he wasn't making any sense. Of course it had been attacked - years before, in its basement garage. But he kept spinning foolishness, it seemed, and I was tired and was completely not in the mood for Lopez (whom I enjoyed) with my head-cold when I had a long haul ahead of me.
I switched it to NPR, and then I realized that I was less maybe 9 miles from the attacked Pentagon. I had a quick decision to make: go straight shot through DC, or the long way around past Andrews Air Force Base on the Beltway? Both sounded like a loser of a decision. I chose the long way around. After deciding how to handle the motoring issue, the actual reality of the situation seeped through - the Pentagon had been seriously damaged, both Twin Towers got attacked and both had already collapsed. But like a machine, I just kept driving.
It wasn't until I got to Greenbelt, near where I had grabbed coffee 4 hours earlier, that I saw an overhead sign saying "I-95 to NYC-NJ - MAJOR PROBLEMS." Finally, I broke down, pulled the car over and began bawling, knowing that my country was no longer a free nation from that moment. Before that day, my sense of what America was, was greater, more robust. Had I had no radio in the car, I'd have never known until I got back to the office, unless I pulled over for gas, and maybe not even then. When I returned, my medium-sized law office in Baltimore's suburbs was shut down and dark, the partners having sent everyone home.
I don't know what can be drawn from this non-story, other than perhaps a sense of the importance of modern technology as a means of modern community and civic life (a lesson no Kossack needs to learn, of course.)
Today's a beautiful day. My kids are with me, playing peacefully; we will hit the playground again soon. A lot has happened in my life since - fatherhood, divorce, relocation, opening up my own law office. But the overwhelming crashing sense I experienced on the Washington Beltway will never leave me.