Where were you? The moment you saw the Twin Towers under siege; that you realized that they were going to collapse?
We all have a memory. It's seared in to the memory of most people over the age of 23. For those of us who were grown, or old enough to really understand the magnitude of the tragedy and the attack, we never do forget. This day comes each year, and we remember all over again. As we should, in my mind.
I, personally, really try to avoid scheduling anything significant on this date. I do not want to have a happy, or successful, or celebratory event that will overlay the remembrance of the loss of this date 17 years ago.
I was preparing to be in court that day. Not just any court, but Federal Court, in the Federal Building, in downtown Sacramento. The reasons are so irrelevant, but the memory stays with me because I literally sat down, as soon as I saw what was happening, and decided not to go. Before I ever really knew what was going on across the country, I somehow just felt that being in a multi-story, newly constructed, federal building was possibly not a good choice that day.
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| Sacramento's Federal Courthouse |
Later, after I was able to pry myself from the news; after both the towers had collapsed; I numbly climbed into my orange CalTrans construction truck and drove to my job site on Interstate 80 in the high Sierras here, near Truckee, California. There were almost no vehicles on the road.
When I arrived at our (17-mile long) construction project, most of the workers were absent. My small crew, the guard rail crew, were working, and I stayed with them the rest of the day. The officers that often worked for us, off-duty CHP officers working on special traffic safety contracts, were there. Nobody was speaking much. We were all in shock.
I knew that there was a strong possibility we would lose our officers because the highway patrol -- the state police-- was preparing to stand up cadres of officers who would be ready if there was a second wave of attack on the west coast. Nobody knew anything. All the airports were closed, and planes grounded, everywhere.
As we prepared to finish for the day, a lone vehicle approached on the long level portion of the freeway uphill from us. It's the area that's used for truckers traveling down the long descent from Truckee to the Sacramento Valley to pull over and allow over-heated brakes to cool. We watched the car approach from a long way off. It was the first vehicle to come by in a while, and the entire crew and I, and even the two CHP officers who were standing with us, looked up at the car. While our backs were turned, one of the two contractors rigs that were parked along the inside shoulder slowly began to roll. None of us heard it until it slammed into the truck downhill from it.
BANG! We all jumped out of our skins. By a sheer stroke of coincidence, the truck whose brake spring loose was the uphill truck. Rather than take off down the mountain, it slammed into the other truck ahead of it. But, it had been rolling for about 40 feet by the time it hit, and was fairly demolished.
I only remember this because, it was if this was, oddly, a relief. NOT an attack. NOT anything that injured anybody. Yet, such a close call. The unspoken recognition of how close it could have been if the crew were still working; if the officers and I had been standing between the two trucks; if the workers had been. I vaguely remember almost choking back tears. Any further injury to anybody on that day would have broken us. I know that it would have.
(I respectfully acknowledge that I borrow my title from a book of the same name, by one of the best authors I've ever read. I did not begin this post anticipating this choice. It just revealed itself as I wrote).
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