A Look Back to 9/11

  My youngest child just interviewed me for a class project.  The topic was about where I was and what I was doing on 9/11/2001.  He was 20 months old then and has no recollection of how much America was changed that day.
  Normally, my blog posts have some humor.  But I think this one will be about my memories of that tragic day.
  We were living in Cincinnati at the time, and I was working as a subcontractor to the DOE Superfund site at Fernald, a former uranium processing plant during the Cold War.  I worked in the Records Management department, in a warehouse about 20 or so miles from the actual site, and I was part of a team that tracked the active records of the various projects going on at the plant during the cleanup.  We also house the historical records from when the plant was in active production.  The warehouse had thousands of boxes of documents, and walking through that warehouse with the racks of boxes extending way up overhead, would sometimes remind me of the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where the Ark of the Covenant was being wheeled though a gigantic warehouse to be archived.
  Anyway, on September 11, 2001 I was at work, listening to the radio as I entered information into a database regarding documents, what file folder they were in, and what box contained the file folder.  The "Bob and Tom Show" was on with their usual comedic takes on what was happening, sprinkled with funny songs and frequent guests to the show.  After one break, though, they came on and reported that someone had informed them that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.  They seemed skeptical until they saw a TV report with the tower smoking on the upper floors.
  I went to one of the managers and told him what I'd just heard and asked if we could get the TV on in the large conference room and see if it was true.  He and I went in and we were just tuning in when we saw a plane hit the tower.
  "Oh my gosh! Someone caught it on TV,"  I said.  Then I realized there were two towers smoking and we'd just witnessed the second jet live.  Unlike the movies, where things like this happen in slow motion, with exciting music and flaming explosions, the jet just flew into one side of the building at (I guess) a couple hundred miles per hour and windows burst on the opposite side as smoke and debris billowed out.
  I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.  Dozens of people, at least, had just died probably instantly.  And this being the second tower hit, I knew it was not a horrific coincidence.  The warehouse did not have good television reception, so everyone with a radio tuned in to whatever was going on.
  My wife had chosen to home school the kids that year, and the homeschool group had planned a trip to a bookstore for storytime and other activities, so they had no idea what was going on.  I called the bookstore and asked them to tell my family to just watch kid videos when they got home and to not watch TV.  At this point reports were coming in of the other planes down, all air traffic being diverted, and descriptions of people jumping out of windows at the World Trade Center.
  Since no group had claimed responsibility for what had happened, the uncertainty and anxiety levels were running high.  Fernald still had areas with radioactive material and radioactive waste, so the plant was at a higher stage of alert with non-essential personnel being sent home.  At the Records Center, even though we were safe from the nasty stuff, we were allowed to leave early as well.
  That night, with my family close, we watched as many Disney videos as we could until the kids dropped off to sleep.  Then we turned on the TV and watched the latest updates on the tragic events.  The stars were unusually bright that night because the usual smog above Cincinnati was gone.  Not very many people were driving around and there was no air traffic and everything was eerily quiet.
  I remember being in various stages of shock for several days, but eventually things got back to as near to normal as they seemed they would get.  I applied for and was accepted to grad school, so I moved back to Oklahoma in November 2001 and began classwork at OSU in January 2002.
  My youngest child, now 12, has no memory of what was going on on 9/11/2001.  I'm glad he asked to interview me for his World Studies project.  It brought back some vivid memories, and I thought I'd share them on this blog.
  
  

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night - For Real!

As a kid I went through a phase, as most boys did, when I wanted to learn about pirates.  Yes, they were rogues and scoundrels, and often downright nasty villians, but there were old black-and-white movies starring Errol Flynn and other swashbuckling actors that made some of the pirates likable.
I remember a Disney movie called "Blackbeard's Ghost," starring (I believe) Peter Ustinov as a somewhat bumbling ghost of Captain Blackbeard.  Before the movie came out (yeah, I'm that old), I found a book in the school library entitled "Blackbeard's Ghost," and I checked it out to find out more about Blackbeard and perhaps get a hint as to what to expect when the movie came out.

The book was NOT a Disney book, as I soon found out.

One night, as thunder rumbled outside from an early spring thunderstorm, I lay in bed and started reading the book.  The first part was like a mini history of Edward Teach and his last days as the British navy chased him down.  

Blackbeard was NOT a nice person in real life.  He certainly did not try to endear himself to children, or to anyone else for that matter.  He was hard as nails and quite terrifying, seemingly not to notice injuries for the bloodlust that drove him to do his dirty deeds.

He died a gruesome death (and by this point I knew none of this would probably be in the movie), and I felt really uneasy as I turned out my reading light.  I had stayed up too late as it was because I couldn't put the book down, and the storm outside made things even more spooky.  I was maybe 9 or 10 at the time and not fond of "ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night."

I lay in bed, watching the shadows of the tree branches as they grasped, clawlike, with each flash of lightning.  Blackbeard had died long long ago, and in the Carolinas nonetheless.  There was no way his ghost could have known a boy in Oklahoma City was thinking about him.  There was no way his ghost would travel that distance to frighten a kid on a stormy night.

But then...

"Psst," came a sound out of the darkness.

I froze.  Of all the nights to decide to sleep on the top bunk of my bed, I had to pick a spooky one.

"Psst!" came the sound again.

"H...hello?" I squeaked.

"Psssssst!"

Fear lending nearly superhuman abilities to me, I swear I flew from my top bunk and through my door into the hall out outside the door to my parents' bedroom.

"Mo-o-o-o-mmm!!!  Daaaaddddd!!!  Blackbeard is after me!!!" I yelled, pounding on their door.

They came out to calm me down.

"He's in my room!  I was reading about him and he showed up and he's after me!"  

And, as parents so often do when pirate ghosts are after their children, they calmly turned my light on and looked in my room.  I was hiding behind them, and wierdly comforted by the fact that Blackbeard would have to go through them to get to me.  Until I realized a ghost could just pass though them and get me.  I was doomed.

"Pssst," came the sound again.

"Here he is," my dad said, way too calm for me.

I looked around my dad and saw, not a fierce ghostly pirate, but my dog who had fallen asleep and was snoring as he was undoubtedly dreaming of things other than pirates.  He had a tendency to sleep more deeply the stormier the weather.

Silly dog!

Silly me! 

A Pane in the Glass

Nothing slows a person down like breaking a bone, and breaking more than one should slow a person down even more.  Kinda like a message to ease back a bit.


Apparently, I didn't get the memo when I was a kid.  In the second grade, near the end of the school year, I broke both of my wrists.  That was an adventure in itself, and I won't go into details here.  The tale should be somewhere on the Internet, perhaps in this blog.


Anyway, suffice it to say that I was miserable for a few days, with both arms in casts.  I really didn't like the slings, but two were more comfortable that the single sling that held both arms in front of me and put me off balance when I walked, especially up stairs.


For awhile, the slings were necessary evils, because much to my chagrin, going without the slings would mean that gravity (that tricky beastie that got me into my predicament) would pull my arms down and as blood rushed to my hands, it would throb near the breaks and cause all kinds of nasty pain.  


The first day I could manage without slings was wonderful.  I had a bit more freedom of movement, the pain in my wrists was lessening, and I could actually accidentally bump my casts against things without recoiling in agony.


After a few days, though, I really really REALLY wanted more freedom.  I couldn't bring my thumb and fingers together to hold a pencil (I loved to draw), although I could manage a fork and a spoon with care.


But what I really wanted to do was play baseball.  It was my favorite game and at that period in history, it was America's Pastime.  Trying to get a glove on over my cast was out of the question.  Throwing a ball was more like throwing a shot put.  And as for batting...


I had a plan.  I wasn't supposed to be playing ball and of course the glove and throwing thing made it pretty obvious that the doctor and my mom were going to have their way.  On the other hand, I found that it I carefully banged the palm side of my cast against the concrete steps to the front porch, I could get to a point where my fingers could close and my thumb could become opposable again.


I could hold a stick and swing at pebbles that I talked my friends into tossing toward me.  Then, as the cast got looser (okay, "brokener" would be more accurate, if that were a word), I managed to carefully hold a bat.  I could swing it as long as I didn't try to roll my wrists (the mere thought of doing that still has me wincing in sympathy pain decades later- it was that bad).


The stage was set.  Backyard baseball was on.  My mom naturally assumed I was just hanging out with the kids in the neighborhood because she knew the glove and throwing thing weren't gonna happen, and that trying to swing a bat was even more far-fetched.
Things were going well for awhile.  I could tap the ball even if I couldn't play in the field.  I was more like a pinch hitter than anything else, and it worked great until one fateful day.


We were in my back yard, and I came up to the plate.  I must have eaten my Wheaties that morning (I probably really had - it was my favorite cereal), because one pitch was right in my wheelhouse and I swung and connected.  The ball rocketed past everybody, through the open garage door, and with a mighty crash, through a pane in the glass window in the back of the garage.


Everybody scattered.  Pretty standard procedure for kids when a window got broken.  I stuck around, partly because I was so proud that I crushed that ball and partly because, well, I had nowhere to run because it happened at my house.


My mom came outside, probably because of the lack of noise more than anything else.  Parents seemed to get nervous when kids stopped making noise in my neighborhood.


"What happened?" she asked.


"We were, uh, playing baseball and the window in the garage broke," I said.  An honest answer, despite the lack of details.


"Who broke the window?" she asked.


"The baseball broke the window," I responded, squirming a little. "We were all out here when it happened."


Apparently, that was not quite the answer she was looking for.


"WHO," she began, "hit or threw the ball that went into the garage and broke the window?"


My mom knew that I hated to rat out my friends, and she knew that I knew that lying was not a viable option (my dad would be home and had a way of getting to the bottom of things), I was in a real pickle.  She probably figured that telling the truth would win out over loyalty to my friends.  What she wasn't ready for was me actually telling the truth.


"I did it," I said.


"You don't need to cover for your friends," she coaxed. "It wasn't Wesley, was it?"


Wesley was a bit of a bully.  I couldn't blame him for being a bully.  He had four sisters and no brothers so we all felt sorry for him.


"Honest, Mom," I said. "I did it."


She decided that I needed to cool off a bit in my room until my dad got home.  What she didn't know was that my story wasn't going to change.  It really was my fault.


That evening, when my dad got home, he asked how the window got broken.  I knew better than to blame the baseball and went straight to the truth.


"I did it, Dad," I said.


"How in the world...?" he began.  But then he stopped.  He was a kid once, and even at my tender age of 8, I already knew of some of his own misadventures.


I showed him my cast, where I had managed to make my hands useful, and explained that I managed to hold onto the bat and smacked the ball that broke the window.


He managed to hide a smile from my mom, and asked me what I planned to do about the broken window.


I offered to pay for it out of my allowance, of course.


That weekend, I not only got to pay for a new pane of glass, but I got a lesson on how to measure the frame, to fit the new piece of glass into place, and to use putty and a putty knife because if I could hold onto a bat I could certainly hold onto a putty knife.

Happy Birthday, America!

Happy Independence Day!  


Freedom.  


Enjoy it.


Use it but don't abuse it.

Just Listen

Listen.  Right now, just listen to what is going on around you.


What do you hear?


For many, the initial response is, "Nothing."  And while that may be true at times, I'll bet most of the time there is something happening quietly, or not so quietly.
  
So what do you really hear when you stop and listen?
  
This is what I am hearing:
  
Being summer (July 3rd) and hot, I hear the central air unit kicking on to help cool the house down.  I hear the outside part of the unit as well, because I'm sitting at a table near the back door and the unit is right outside.
  
I also hear a fan circulating the air in the living room.  It tends to be a bit warmer because we have electronics in there which naturally heat the air merely by being on.
  
I can hear the motor inside the refrigerator, and occasionally the motor of the ice maker as it works to fill the ice container in the freezer. For that matter, I can hear the water running up the tubing for the ice maker.
  
More faintly, I hear the motor of the upright freezer in the pantry off the kitchen.
  
I also hear voices.  My children are talking to each other.  Water is running in the bathroom as someone washes their hands.  Coughing.
  
The rattle of a medicine bottle.  Migraines are not fun, from what I understand.  I'm blessed that I don't suffer from migraines, but my wife and children aren't so lucky.  Perhaps the water I heard running was to fill a glass with water in order to take the medicine.
  
Footsteps.  Bare feet on the tile floor.
  
As I listen more closely, I hear the soft whoosh of the ceiling fans that are on in the house.
  
I can hear my own breathing when I pay attention, and the clicking of the keys as I type.
  
Outside, a cicada starts its song which fades away, only to be answered from farther away by another cicada in another tree.
  
I also hear the attic fan.  This house has two attic fans, which kick on and off depending on how hot the attic gets.  They are a blessing, because this house is able to maintain a reasonable temperature even on a hot day like today.
  
A neighbor has just fired up a lawn mower.
  
All in all, it's a pretty quiet afternoon.  But there are plenty of things to hear when I take the time to just listen.
  
What do you hear when you take the time to listen?

Summer Musings

The sun was setting on yet another hot summer day.  Venus, as usual, was the first “star” to show up as the sky gradually transitioned into twilight.  As the sky gradually darkened, the other stars came slowly into view.  The moon this night had already been up, looking like a bowl tipped on its side and it, too, got brighter as the gloom deepened.  Fireflies blinked on and off as they danced on the warm evening breeze that stirred leaves ever so slightly.

   

Soon, crickets began chirping a peaceful symphony.  Not to be outdone, tree frogs began their nightly chorus, and in the distance came the bass tones of bullfrogs.  The evening songs of the birds gradually faded out, as if the birds themselves were getting sleepy and were being lulled to sleep by the frogs and crickets.

   

I sat outside on an old blanket and took this all in.  The breeze, the sounds, the smells of summer teamed up to relax my troubled mind.  I had too many things bouncing around in my head, too many worries and concerns, way too much stress.  I needed a peaceful evening like this to soothe me.

   

People who know me, see me as a “people person,” which is what I’ve learned to become over the years.  But people who really know me, know that deep down inside I’m a shy person, struggling with myriad insecurities and preferring to find solitude whenever I can, even if for a brief moment.

   

That particular night, though, I managed to sneak away from my concerns and responsibilities and to find a soft, quiet piece of ground on the outskirts of town where I could just be. 

   

Fortunately, before I left home, I’d remembered to grab a small pillow.  Laying back on the blanket, the pillow under my head, I looked up and watched the sky grow darker and the stars and planets grow brighter.  More stars appeared, and soon I could see the Milky Way faintly glowing as it streamed across the heavens and I marveled at its beauty and the thought came to me that those stars were so far away that my ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestors probably saw almost exactly what I was seeing thousands of years ago.

   

At that moment came the realization I was hoping to find.  My ancient ancestors probably had many of the concerns that troubled me.  Most likely not the same concerns, but similar ones – Was I doing the right things in my life?  What kind of future was before me?  What could I do to make my life and the lives of my loved ones better?  Have my past mistakes doomed me to a dismal future, or could I learn to overcome my shortfalls and create a future brighter than I could possibly imagine at this point?

  

And as I gazed up, I realized that I’m the product of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of generations of uncertainty, of glorious victories, of agonizing failures.  I was alive and enjoying the cosmic view that all those before me enjoyed on darkened nights.

  

I think I should do this more often, I thought.

  

“I WILL do this more often!” I said aloud.  And as if to punctuate my statement, a shooting star zipped across my field of vision.

   

Wow.

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