The World Trade Centers are Gone

Late night greetings from the middle of the country.

This great country, which can be made greater again.

Not gonna read 600+ comments right now. Maybe later.

I've mentioned this every year, but here it is again.

We had no TV at home, and knew nothing about what was going on until Milady and I drove into town. I know just where we were on our commute when I turned on the radio.

The first we heard was some substitute for Limbaugh saying he was stuck in Florida, and was all right. Curious.

Next a news guy started talking about closing refineries in the southwest. WTF?

Then a news guy gave that rarest of things, a succinct re-cap for folks just tuning in: "The World Trade Centers are gone." Just like that.

I didn't know how, didn't know about the planes, or anything else yet, I would pick that up as we turned around and drove back home. I just knew one thing: the bastards said they would do it, and they did. Damn them.

Sat down with our three mostly-grown kids at home and told them what we knew. I told them, this is your generation's Pearl Harbor. Everything changes after this. Fifteen years later, that seems to have been right, even if the after-effects of the ongoing, often pitifully-fought war on Islam differ from the all-out war on Japan and Germany.

We all drove to town and opened our then-sorta-closed little cafe for the day - had a few friends drift in - and watched numbly as the TV played out the fall of the towers over and over, and got the details on the Pentagon and Flight 93.

There's one other thing I thought, as the day wore on: That's it? That's all you got? You pitiful, cowardly punks!
Maybe a weird kind of feeling, but as big a dent as they put in the country, it was only a dent. God bless America.

"The World Trade Centers are gone." Yeah, I'm not likely to forget that in a hundred lifetimes.