I was at work. The boss came in from wherever he'd been and asked us if we were ready to go to war.
We asked him what he meant, and he told us he'd heard on the radio about the planes.
From there, we rolled from one rumor to the next.....Pittsburgh, PA was being evacuated.....planes were falling on all the major cities....the death toll in the Towers was expected to hit 50,000 or more....lots of weird stuff.
The manager sent me home to get a radio and bring it back (I lived about three blocks from work). I stopped off at the doctor's office down the street from my apt. to watch the news reports. When I returned with the radio, it was tuned to the AM talk and news stations, and stayed on for four days.
At my other job, at the local hospital, the departmental director had a TV brought into the shop, and it was left on for about a week, too.
That was a terrible, strange, and wonderful time. Patriotism had become fashionable again, and it was great. People paid attention to each other and cared about more than just themselves, at least for a while. We came together as a nation in a way that I'd never witnessed in my entire life.
Someone came into the hospital and dropped off about 200 American flags. I took 2 home and stuck them in the ground at the top of my steps. I lit candles, which I set under them, illuminating them from beneath, and kept the candles burning for a week. The flags stayed in the ground there until I moved.
Goddamn Osama bin-Laden for what he did, but God bless him, too.....for reminding us that we were, and could be, one nation.
