September 11, 2001 was a beautiful day, and I was running late. I tend to do that on beautiful days, when there are things I’d rather do than work.
As I stopped at the coffee shop for breakfast I heard something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center.
I assumed it was some fool in a private plane. Private planes are accidents waiting to happen.
Dashing up Forbes Avenue, I passed a crew of workmen standing around a pickup truck listening to the radio. It didn’t seem odd. But I didn’t stop to inquire. I was running late.
I clean houses. That day I was due to clean for an elderly Jewish couple with a house full of books.
Normally they’d be at their dining room table, enjoying a second cup of coffee, while I cleaned the kitchen.
This time, they were in their den, with the television on. That was when I learned that a commercial aircraft had flown into the World Trade Center.
It was hard to believe, like something out of a movie. Like the Kennedy assassination. I’d thought that was a tall story when I first heard of it. I was wrong then too.
I wouldn’t believe any of the stories I heard that day, not at first. After John Kennedy was shot, there were all kinds of wild rumors circulating.
On September eleventh, all the stories were true. Another plane hit the second tower. A plane hit the Pentagon. A third plane crashed in Somerset, Pennsylvania, just a few miles from where I was.
The couple worried about their daughter, who lived in New York. They couldn’t get through to her until later that day.
They talked about a possible anti Semitic backlash.
Then they went shopping, like they always did when I came.
Every few minutes, I would check to see if anything new had happened. Nothing had, which didn’t stop the networks from telling us the same stories over and over and over and over.
President Bush was less than inspiring. When the planes hit the towers, he was in Florida, visiting a kindergarten. According to the teachers there, he was wonderful with the children. In time, he made a forgettable speech, before boarding Air Force One. He spent the rest of the day in the air.
Up until then, Bush’s presidency had been a joke. He’d lost the popular vote, as Republicans do. It was only after he took his case to a Supreme Court filled and did an end run around the Constitution that he became president elect.
The economy was lukewarm. He was an uninspiring figure, and a wonderful target for satirists.
As of September 10, I wouldn’t have given him much chance at a second term.
The next day, I knew he was going to be reelected. Just one more reason to be miserable.
I finished at the Jewish couple’s and moved on to my next job. I thought of stopping for gas on my way, then thought better of it. Cars were crowding the BP Station on Murray Avenue, and they were charging five dollars a gallon.
A lot of people were filling up, uncertain as to whether they’d be able to in the next few days. A lot of gas stations charged some outrageous prices that day. The worst offenders found themselves being shamed on the evening news.
My next client was a young woman, who should have been at work. But the city closed down, after the plane crashed in Somerset.
It had been twenty years since Pittsburgh was a manufacturing center, but we were still afraid we might be a target.
I don’t remember what I needed at the supermarket, but I needed something. So, I stopped on my way home, and of course the shelves were picked clean. Toilet paper was in short supply, ditto milk, bread and bottled water.
What I did find was a huge surprise. The “Post-Gazette” had brought out an extra. I’d never seen the paper do that before.
The “Press”, the evening paper, closed in 1992. The “Post Gazette” was competing with Richard Scaife’s very conservative “Tribune Review”, that also came out in the morning. On September 11, 2001, the Trib got scooped.
Thank heaven for cable. I could switch from the networks, that were all news, to a movie on Lifetime, or a rerun of “Law and Order”.
In the next few days, we would learn about Bin Laden, and Al Quaeda. There would be more speeches, more discussions, while I wondered what I could do.
I was too old for the military.
But, maybe, I could work in a shipyard, or dish up doughnuts, or sort files.
My parents had served and sacrificed to defeat fascism. What could I do now?
We were told to fly the flag and go shopping.
Easier said than done, if you were me.
I lived in a fourth floor apartment. I put a small flag in the flower box on my fire escape balcony, but the first high wind sent it to the Emerald City.
I like shopping, but I never have any money. I was happy to get a sundae at the frozen yogurt place to benefit the Red Cross. But my means were limited.
I washed and saved two liter bottles, and kept them. My plan was to fill them with water and bring it to first responders if the National Guard Armory, next door to my building, was bombed.
The Armory made life interesting. Like most of the buildings in my neighborhood, it was built at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Guard wanted to sell it, but it they weren’t finding buyers, because there were precious few places to park.
Back when my neighborhood became a neighborhood, most people didn’t own cars. So, nobody planned for them.
Parking there was a competitive sport, with Meter Maids for referees.
After 9/11, the Guard was called up. Guardsmen ignored yellow lines, fire hydrants, and other distractions, and parked where they could.
That brought the Meter Maids.
That brought my neighbors out in force to tell the Meter Maids to get lost. If they wanted to write tickets, they could go up to the business district and ticket the yuppies shopping at the boutiques. The Guard was here to serve their country. They could park where they liked.
The Meter Maids retreated.
In the weeks that followed, I would learn that a tank can take up three parking spaces by itself, without even trying.
The Armory was not bombed. It is up for sale again, if you’re interested.
A friend who lives near Lake Michigan, told me that at the Coast Guard station there, they parked a truck in the driveway, and had someone sit in the cab, to protect the station. It wasn’t attacked.
Things changed.
Our troops were in Afghanistan. Victories were quick. There were pictures of Afghan women throwing off their burkhas and smiling at the cameras.
No one in the Bush administration seemed to know that the British fought the Afghans for a hundred years.
My friend Nils, a veteran of Army Intelligence, went out to the airport and got a job with the new TSA.
When I went out to Kentucky to spend Christmas with the family, the metal detector found the screws in my left elbow. On the way home, I had to shuck my boots, because some fool had tried to blow up a plane with a bomb in his shoes. (Hint, someone will notice when you try to light your shoes.)
Bush was going into Iraq, on very flimsy evidence, that Saddam Hussein had been involved in the 9/11 attacks.
This time I knew what to do. I signed petitions. I wrote my congressman. No war in Iraq. But Bush wanted to go after Saddam, so he did.
It was a mistake. We know that now.
I found ways to be useful.
Michael Moore’s web page had a whole list of organizations set up to help service members and their families. I found Books For Soldiers.com. It was perfect for me. My housemate moved out, leaving me with boxes full of paperback spy novels, science fiction and horror stories. I boxed them up and sent them to APO addresses with microwave popcorn, candy and coffee. I hope they proved a distraction for troops in the field.
Our government, in it’s dubious wisdom, outfitted our troops with helmet liners and scarves made from synthetic fiber that melted if it caught fire. Leaving the wearer with some nasty burns.
So, the Knitters Guild came to the fore. They offered patterns for helmet liners and scarves to be made from washable merino wool, that would burn to an ash.
I knitted for our soldiers, as American women have been doing since 1776. I’m just a little proud of that.
I also made copies of the patterns, and distributed them. I gave a copy to some gentlemen from the Young Republicans. I’d like to have seen them at the yarn store, in their blue blazers, buying circular needles and washable merino yarn.
I worked hard to keep George W. Bush from having a second term. While he worked hard to make sure we were all scared of terrorists and certain John Kerry, an actual combat veteran, couldn’t keep us safe the way he could.
I was, by then, living in a blue collar suburb. A lot of the windows had blue stars in them. The local Methodist church had a makeshift memorial with the names of the young men from Western Pennsylvania who had been killed in action.
I joined the peace marches, all of them very peaceful, except when one marcher had a run in with some fraternity boys at Carnegie Mellon. They were holding ups signs that said “Nuke Iraq” and “Use Soap” (suggesting we didn’t wash.) I was one of many who shouted “Hey (pejorative) if you like the war so much, why aren’t you in the army!”
Somebody confronted the frat boy and destroyed one of the signs.
Future peace marches didn’t go past Carnegie Mellon.
Bush tanked the economy. Republicans do that.
John McCain campaigned as the war candidate.
We elected Obama.
He wanted to close Guantanamo Bay, and Fox News told their viewers that he would be turning terrorists loose on Main Street.
The wars kept on, and on and on.
As did the discussions, and the accusations.
There are memorials now, one out in Somerset, one at the site of the World Trade Center.
A lot of people are dead. A lot of people are grieving. Bin Laden is dead, and Afghanistan is back in the hands of the Taliban.
I am more scared of covid viruses and domestic terrorists than I ever was of Al Quaeda.
I wonder if we’ve learned anything in the last twenty years.
We were all going to be better after 9/11. We aren’t.