Five Years Later...

Five years ago, at this very second, I was sitting in a brew pub in Detroit, Michigan, enjoying a cold beer (big shock…doing the same right now) with one of my associates and preparing for a client meeting neither of us was looking forward to. Monday Night Football was on, and, although neither of us cared much about the teams playing, it was way more interesting than the meeting prep.

Overall, the night was uneventful. Drank many beers, talked about my new wife, whom I’d just married three months earlier. Talked about his wife and kids and, of course, found time to discuss the various work-related rumors and innuendos (I already knew that I was about to be given a choice between a severance package or a move to either Miami or Atlanta). We left the restaurant sometime around midnight and walked back to our hotel.

After waking up with a serious hangover (too many “homemade” tasty beverages, I guess), I had a smoke, put on a pot of coffee and worked my way to the shower. Since the meeting wasn’t scheduled until 10:30, I had enough time to nurse myself back to health before meeting up with Al for a quick continental breakfast and heading out to meet with our client. I was looking forward to a brief meeting, followed by a quick trip the the airport. Al needed to be in Illinois for dinner with another client and I needed to be back in Fort Worth Texas with my lovely new bride.

As I was ironing my clothes, I was watching “Good Morning America” (as one does when on the road) and they suddenly cut to “Breaking News”…the World Trade Center had just been struck by…well… SOMETHING. It may have been a plane, but a caller had phoned in that there was NO WAY it was a plane. He knew the sound of airplanes, by God, and this was probably a missile. As old Diane and Charlie were discussing what could have possibly happened, the second plane hit. Live. On network television. No mistaking what it was.

Finished up with ironing, dressed and gulped down the last swallow of vile, hotel room coffee. Tried giving the wife a call but knew she was already at work. Didn’t leave a message, knowing that she’d never get it.

Downstairs I go and find that the hotel lobby, which should’ve been empty after 9:00, was full, all my fellow business travelers glued to the TV. Al has yet to make it down, but there’s one table available. I grab a bagel, another cup of coffee and find my seat, still glued to what is happening in New York City.

New development…something exploded at or near the Pentagon.

Well, shit. It finally sinks in.

Al shows up and, after a very brief discussion, we decide to make our meeting. Hell, no reason to blow it off. With all that’s happened, our planes will probably be delayed anyway.

Off to the client’s office we go, still somewhat dumbstruck by what has happened. After a 15 minute drive, we arrive at the low rise building in suburban Detroit and spent nearly 10 minutes with a very adrenalized armed security guard trying to convince him we weren’t there to blow up his building, but to meet with one of the building’s occupants. We are finally allowed into the building and are received by a low-level associate who escorted us into a conference room to meet with the men in charge.

Or not.

About 15 minutes after the meeting was to have started, low-level associate comes back into the conference room to let us know that executives who we were to have met with were stuck in an airport and weren’t able to catch their flight because of the attacks.

Really?

I was quickly able to determine that there was no way the attacks had impacted their flights if they’d truly intended to be there in the first place. I got stiffed.

“Mr. Buttnugget is sorry that he is unable to make the meeting, but he’s arranging for you to meet with Ms. Legal Secretary and Mr. Assistant-to-the-Assistant-of-Manager-of-Operations to meet with you gentlemen,” she says.

“Well, thank Mr. Buttnugget for extending this courtesy, however, the purpose of this meeting was to meet with him, not with people who lack the authority to make things happen.” I say. “I’ll touch base with him when he gets back in. May I place a long distance call from this phone, please?”

I call my sister, who is also a co-worker at the time, and she advises me that both of the WTC towers have collapsed.

“What…like the upper floors fell?” say I.

“No. They collapsed. They are completely on the ground. There are no more towers”, says she.

“Shit!”

“Where are you again?”

“Detroit”

“Oh. That’s probably a long drive, hunh?”

“Excuse me?”

“Airports are shut down. Probably no flights for days. You do have a rental car, right?”

“Yeah” I confirm.

“Good. You on your way home?”

“F**K! I guess"

OK. Keep in touch as you figure out what you’re doing.”

“I will. Call Mom. Tell her not to worry. I’ll call her later.”

I hang up with sis and tell Al what she told me. He’s on the phone with his wife and is hearing the same thing. Not only that, but news reports are now saying that there’s not a single rental car available in the United States. I call my travel agent and ask them to do everything they can to get me one. In the meantime, Al and I agree that, if worse comes to worse, I’ll take him home to Chicago and I’ll take his rental car from there.

Time to call the wife who, strangely, hasn’t bothered to give me a call yet. Because she has her cell phone off, I have to call the main office of the school where she teaches and have her pulled to the phone.

“Honey, all is OK here. I’m trying to get a car home. If I can’t get one, I’ll take Al home and drive home from there.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks. “Why aren’t you flying home this afternoon?”

Realizing then that her school has yet to announce (at almost 10:00 Central) what has happened, I fill her in on the details. Needless to say, she flipped.

“Go back to your room and turn on your cell phone. I’ll let you know what’s up.” I tell her.

Shortly thereafter, Al and I leave the building and start out on our 350 mile trek to his house.

I liked Al…in short spurts or when we were drinking. Spending 5+ hours in a car with him, however, was not something I was pleased with. Fortunately, because we were both so preoccupied with Peter Jennings on the radio, we didn’t have to do much talking. I talked to my Mom and Dad, my baby sister and my childhood best friend who opened up his place in the mountains of North Carolina, just in case this whole thing kept escalating.

On the drive into Chicago, I saw the Sears Tower and, for the first time that day, understood the magnitude of the WTC collapse. We got to his place north of Chicago just before 4:00 that afternoon.

After much insistence by Al and his wife that I stay with them that night, and much insistence from me that I not, I finally got on the road around 4:30 that afternoon. To mark the occasion, he gave me 6 bottles of home-brewed wheat beer that he’d bottled (which, by the way, were outstanding), and sent me on my way.

I’m not sure I slowed down below 60 miles an hour driving through Downtown Chicago, even though this was supposed to be rush hour. The streets were so empty that it was somewhat eerie.

I pulled into a truck stop just north of St. Louis for gas and a little something to snack on. After coming out of the bathroom, I saw the collapse of WTC for the first time on the TV. Because I’d just finished listening to Bush’s address to the nation, the visual of the towers collapsing was definitely an emotional moment.

I’d spoken to the wife a couple times during the drive, just to let her know where I was, but, somewhere between St. Louis and Joplin Missouri, my cell phone battery finally gave up the ghost and the wife went into a panic when my phone rolled straight to voicemail all 45 times she tried to call me. When I stopped for gas in Joplin, I realized I had no battery and called the wife on a payphone. Needless to say, she wasn’t happy.

I stopped in Tulsa, OK to grab a 9/12 newspaper but they hadn’t been dropped off yet. I tried again in Oklahoma City and was successful. That paper currently resides in a box in my basement.

At 6:00, I had just reached Sherman Texas. Sherman was over an hour away from my house, but it was my goal to make it home before my wife left for work at 6:45. During that last 40 minutes, I learned that a 4 cylinder Mitsubishi Gallant handled remarkably well at speeds over 100 miles an hour for extended stretches.

I pulled up to my apartment less than 5 minutes before my wife was to leave for work. Although we’d been apart for only 48 hours (almost to the minute), we held each other as though we’d been apart for months.

But then, it WAS the longest 48 hours we’d ever experienced.

After we’d hugged and realized that all was OK, I sent her off to work. I laid on the couch and, despite being awake for 24 hours, watched TV news almost all day.

20+ hours and nearly 1400 miles. It stands as my longest roadtrip to date.

For our parents, it was “Where were you when JFK was assassinated?” Up until that day, my generation had “Where were you when Challenger crashed?” Needless to say, September 11th rendered the Challenger crash a footnote to history.

Here’s hoping that we never experience anything which will knock 9/11 into the shadows.