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September 11 Reflection (Cathy’s note)

A few weeks ago, I was talking to Rick Kilby (my podcast co-host) and our podcast producer, Chadd Scott, about the days following 9/11 and how they helped inspire my most recent book, Florida Spectacular. After recounting my quest to get back to Florida (from San Diego) in the days following the attack on America, they both said, “You should write about this.”

Well, I sort of had, except only one other person had ever read it. Initially, I submitted a less edited version of this as the introduction for Florida Spectacular. We — my amazing editor at the Press, Sian Hunter and I — went with the intro that’s in the published work. I think that one works better, but for years, I’ve had this story inside me. At first it it felt too raw; then, too bizarre; finally, it was really too… much.

September 11 is too much for a lot of us, even still. It’s 23 years today, and that’s quite literally a lifetime. If you weren’t old enough to remember it — or alive at the time — there’s really no way to describe it, the same way there was no real way for our parents and grandparents to explain December 7 to us.

Please know that nothing I write here intends to take away from the people who suffered so much more than I did on September 11, 2001. 

September 11 changed everything.

It marked the true end of the millennium, far more than January 1, 2000, did. That was the day I started realizing the American Dream wasn’t a dream for everyone, and it wasn’t as secure as I’d been taught to believe. It was a horrifying day. There is really no way to understand it. The closest you can find comes as an article about Richard Drew’s Falling Man. It’s worth creating an account at Esquire to read this article.

My only hope for those of you who don’t remember September 11 is that there is not yet another day of infamy that you will endure.

Personal Insight to My September 11 Odyssey

Now, as for some personal insight into what you’re about to read: I was not happily married, despite what I told myself and my friends. Days before I left for this business trip, my (now ex) husband had told me, yet again, that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be married anymore and that I had ruined his life.

Coupled with that, I hate commercial flights. I didn’t fly for the first time until I was 22, which may have something to do with it. I dreaded getting on the plane; I’d even written him a note to read in case the plane crashed. And I didn’t have any reassurance as to his fidelity in my absence — he wasn’t exactly an altar boy when I was in the same state. I didn’t know if he’d hand me divorce papers at the gate when I returned alive.

As it turned out, those worries would, within five days of me boarding a plane to San Diego, fade into a background eclipsed by smoke and fear.

Here’s the original introduction to Florida Spectacular. I hope you like it. It’s taken me 23 years to tell this story.

September 11 Reflection

On September 11, 2001, I watched the Twin Towers fall from my hotel room in San Diego, farther west than I’d ever traveled in my life, and after three days in what the Weather Channel says is one of the best climates in America, I was cold and missing home. I was there for a reclaimed water symposium. It doesn’t sound glamorous because it wasn’t. I worked with a bunch of people who didn’t like me much and, well, when the planes hit the towers, the stress didn’t make us exactly get along better.

September 11 Timeline

My phone rang at 6:23 a.m. (9:23 a.m. New York Time). (I can’t explain my memory of this time; according to all accounts, the hijackings had started but no plane had hit the World Trade Center. It is possible I’m recalling this incorrectly and it was 9:53 a.m. Eastern.)

I didn’t answer right away; I was sleeping and, remember, I had no idea the world was about to spin off its axis. My cell phone stopped and my room phone started. I picked up the phone.

“Cathy,” my (future ex) husband said. “A plane has hit the World Trade Center.”

“OK,” I mumbled, sleepy still. “That sucks.”

“Cathy,” he said again. “The president is saying it’s terrorism.”

“Yeah, well, the president’s an idiot.”

“Cathy!” he said again. “Turn on the TV.”

I did. At some point, I hung up the phone.

When the plane hit the second tower, I was still watching TV.

At some point, I called a co-worker in the same hotel. I didn’t know what else to do; we met at the conference. That’s where everyone seemed to be in shock, watching televisions in the most macabre way you can imagine.

Despite a boss insisting we all “stick together,” I rented one of the last cars available, planning to drive home. When it became apparent her boss needed it, he took it. In between frantic phone calls — or, more accurately, frantic attempts at phone calls — to find out if my cousin, who worked in the city, was alive, and calls back to my mom and dad in Clearwater, Florida, I heard from an old friend who lived in Arizona and had been out to visit me the night before. Did I, she asked me, want to crash at her place while the world  sorted itself?

September 12, 2001

By the wee hours of the morning of September 12, I found myself in Mesa, Arizona. I was grateful to be among friends, but exhausted. When I tried to go outside for a run; the dry air seemed to cram its gritty fist down my throat and pull the remaining air out of my lungs. I went back inside and tried to look at train and bus schedules, but, remember, this world was one where Google was still in its infancy. It was not as simple as opening a browser and typing “I want to go home;” it was an effort to find internet access, because wi-fi was for tech nerds and engineers and it didn’t matter, because computers didn’t have wi-fi baked in. The warm, moist safety of Florida felt a million metaphorical and physical miles away.

September 13, 2001

Early Thursday morning — really early; the bars had yet to close — I boarded a Greyhound bound for Florida. The trip was supposed to take two days. The events of the past two days had already started to reveal itself in cracks around my sanity. I would cry for no reason, shake uncontrollably, and find myself unable to breathe. Already prone to panic attacks — physical, frightening fight-or-flight responses I didn’t quite understand — this was a new level. I retreated from everything, and seemed to drift to the bus station in a fog. Once there, I realized I’d forgotten the pillow I’d swiped from the hotel. I bought a huge stuffed rabbit at the bus station gift shop, which was teeming with equally anxious displaced travelers. 

About that Greyhound Bus

To say that I am not designed for bus travel is an understatement. I love road trips, adore train travel, and tolerate planes. Other than school-related activities, though, I’d never spent any substantial time on a bus, much less a bus packed with displaced plane travelers, desperate to get home and not quite sure how bus travel worked. Oh, and we were all terrified another plane would drop out of the sky and kill us all. There was that.

Once aboard, I leaned my head back agains the rabbit and closed my eyes. I would be home by Friday morning, I told myself. Florida, still 1700 miles away, seemed somehow closer.

September 13, New Mexico

In El Paso, INS  — now the Department of Homeland Security —boarded the bus because yes, two days after Al-Qaeda took out the World Trade Center, decimated part of the Pentagon, and changed our lives forever, apparently our chief concern was whether or not anyone was illegally here from Mexico. This stop consisted of the agents asking everyone if they were citizens or here legally, and if you said yes, they moved on — didn’t ask for papers, didn’t blink — but if you said no, well, then, they wanted to see all your paperwork.

A Costa Rican couple who had been at a food conference in Las Vegas replied no, they were not, and their simple, honest answer was rewarded with great suspicion. They were traveling to Miami, where they maintained an apartment, and we would become partners in our pilgrimage to the Sunshine State. 

Texas was where things got interesting, which is something I never thought I’d hear myself say. Remember, these were the days before smartphones and decent cell coverage. Our bus, filled with nontraditional bus travelers like myself, depended on whoever could get cell service calling a loved one to get an update. People who were not yet born in the days following 9/11 perhaps cannot fully comprehend the cold, naked fear we all felt, and those of us lumbering across the country in a big metal box, cut off from our loved ones and any news, felt vulnerable indeed.

The televisions at every bus stop became our lifeline, our only way to know if more planes had entered our airspace, and we rushed to them when those bus doors opened. Fuel rods and battery packs didn’t exist, so when those bus doors opened, it was a mad rush to find the power outlets so we could call our loved ones.

September 14, 2001

When we pulled into Abilene and were told to get back on the bus by 12:30 a.m. Friday morning, most of us used the opportunity to race for those televisions, plug our phones into the few dubiously wired power outlets, try and erase the growing stench surrounding us, and trade information with other bus travelers.

I climbed back on the bus at 12:20 a.m. and fell asleep. When I woke again, it was 1:30, the bus was stopped. I assumed we were in Dallas, which was practically Louisiana, which was the South and well, it wasn’t Florida, but it was a world I understood. That’s when I heard yelling. Lots of it. I looked at my watch: It was well past 12:30 a.m., but too soon to be in Dallas. The yelling was close, and intense. This was no bar fight or domestic disturbance; this was a mass of people who were pissed. 

It seems our bus driver, along with another, had clocked out at Abilene, having hit his maximum allowable hours on the road — this was not him being a dick but rather an FTC rule I don’t blame him for following — and Greyhound, wholly and completely unprepared for massive amounts of travelers, didn’t have driver to replace him or the other driver. The two busses packed with smelly, frightened, and weary passengers were a byproduct of this, and people didn’t like being a byproduct. The notion of being stranded in Abilene — and this is an understatement — angered people. 

Abilene Bus Riots, September 2001

Abilene may have the nickname of “The Friendly Frontier” but at that moment, hearing a riot outside the terminal, it felt anything but. I longed for a hot shower and my family, yes, but for a few panicked moments, I had visions of being stranded in Abilene forever, six hours from my beloved Gulf of Mexico. Oh my god, I thought. I’m going to live here forever. 

During all this, huddled on the bus, I got to know my new Florida friends. There was the couple from Costa Rica, of course, but also a man trying to get home to Florida, where he would stay for only a bit before heading to see his girlfriend in South Africa. That, he told me, was a 23-hour flight. At this point, all I wanted was to be back in the salty air; I couldn’t image leaving again, much less boarding a plane and staying on it for 23 hours.

At this point, I’d been on the Greyhound for about as long and felt supremely disconnected from humanity. I did laugh, though, when the Costa Rican couple told me they’d kept tabs on me by looking for the stuffed rabbit ears popping up above the bus seat. If they could see the ears, they knew I’d made it back on the bus after the last bathroom break. 

Greyhound ultimately did send out two drivers, but only because someone on the other bus was a higher-up at Sprint. That person had somehow found the number of someone at Greyhound who could do something. Was this an abuse of power? Perhaps. Did I care? No. Nevertheless, the drivers leaving — did they even tell anyone, I’ve often wondered, or did they just go home, business as usual? — delayed our voyage.

Dallas, Texas: September 14, 2001

When we arrived in Dallas, where we were to make our final connection to a Florida-bound bus, a bomb threat at the terminal forced our bus driver to circle until getting the all-clear to park.

At this point, we didn’t so much as bat an eye at the bomb threat. We’d seen the Twin Towers collapse; we’d been threatened by INS; we’d been in a riot. And we could almost taste the sunshine at this point. A bomb threat would have been horrific the week before, but at this point, it was “scoop of chocolate, scoop of vanilla; don’t waste my time.” We were tired, angry, scared, and stinky. And we wanted to get home.

Of course, by then, the Florida connection had long left for sunnier pastures. Greyhound offered to get our Florida-bound foursome onto three different buses to paradise. We refused. We were a team now: Team Florida. Strength in numbers, we said over bus station grits. We’ll stick together.

This, of course, parted us from our luggage, but honestly, if we’d all had our luggage at the end of the journey, we’d have been shocked. When we finally crossed out of Texas, we seemed to all exhale at the same time. One step closer to home.

Leaving Texas: September 14, 2001

Things moved faster after Texas, but in a world no less surreal. In the (metaphorical) years I’d spent trying to get the hell out of Texas on this god-forsaken bus, I’d fantasized about my return to the South. At the top of the fantasy was a plate of gumbo in Louisiana. The Baton Rouge bus station jambalaya… well, to call it jambalaya is like calling freshwater shrimp, shrimp. I ordered it anyway along with a biscuit that was rock hard.

Back on the bus, I met my new seat mate, who showed me a fat spliff. I mean, Rasta-sized. It was briefly exciting — my anxiety was at an all-time high and this, I thought, would surely help. Alas, he didn’t offer me any, only wanted me to see he had it. I’m not sure why, but I’m still bitter. None of it — the plastic-tasting jambalaya, my new buddy happily getting high in his own world, the collective stench of myself and my fellow passengers — mattered. The past few days had numbed me; I existed in this detached reality of bus travel. 

Mobile, Alabama Oil Rigs: September 2001

In Mobile, Alabama, it was Friday night and the oil rigs were unloading. The poor men arriving home were greeted not only with their loved ones, but several hundred smelly, weary travelers who found themselves trying to explain how our world had been upended by terrorists with box cutters.

“You mean to tell me,” one man with a red mustache and distinct deer-in-the-headlights look about him said, “that a bunch of sand-n***ers with a box cutter took over planes and crashed them into buildings?”

He didn’t buy it and, hate speech aside, I felt bad for him. I wouldn’t have believed it either, if I hadn’t watched it unfold. No one would have believed this; Hollywood would have rejected the script as too fantastical. Nevertheless, it was our reality now.

Tuesday morning seemed a distant memory and all too near. More than 20 years later, it still does.

September 15, 2001

It was almost Saturday when we crossed the Florida state line. The entire bus reeked like we hadn’t showered in days — which we hadn’t — and a tropical storm had ripped up the Gulf coast the day before. The ride had broken us; we no longer complained when the bus stopped too frequently — “you should have booked the express route if that’s what you wanted” a grumpy driver told us in Texas, as if we’d had the luxury of selecting anything but the only available routes —or that all any of us had eaten was bus station food and Big Macs. Fresh vegetables were the things of dreams, as were easily identifiable cuts of meat.

“Welcome to Florida” the sign read. 

We cheered.

We were home.

For me, “home” was a solid seven hours away from where that bus crossed into Florida, but it didn’t matter.

After September 11, 2001: Reflections

Every year, I reflect on September 11, 2001, and I think about how happy we all were to get home. How happy we all were to get back to Florida.

The horrors of 9/11 shouldn’t be an intro to a book about what makes Florida great, and I’m glad my editor cut this.

But still… when I think about what it took to get back to Florida and how happy we all were to be here — to be home — I feel that sense of euphoria we all felt when we finally crossed the state line.

September 11 Odyssey

September 11 was, for many of us, not only a heartbreaking national tragedy, but an odyssey. Ask the thousands of people clamoring to get on a Greyhound bus. We were scared and alone and in wholly uncharted territory, and most of all, we all simply wanted to get home.

A broken marriage and a work weekend with people who couldn’t stand me pales in comparison to what so many people lost on September 11, 2001. But it’s how the day gets framed in my mind, and it’s how I reflect on the day. All of it — hostile coworkers, INS, riots, bomb threats, pot, aggressive oil rig workers — that’s all part of a grand quest to get back home. For the people on the planes and in the towers — and for countless rescue workers — that odyssey would never end.

For me, it ended when we crossed the Florida state line. And I’ll never forget the gratitude and relief I felt — and the sadness for those who would never come home again — when the bus made its way into Florida.

Coming Home

I frequently travel out of state, and every time I cross the state line to get back home, I feel a sigh inside me, a centering of myself. For me, Florida is paradise in all its iterations — the beaches, yes, but also the springs, the Deep South feel of the panhandle, the glitz of Miami.

I am not alone in this feeling. More than 20 million people call Florida home, more than New York and third only to California and Texas,^⁠ and of those two, we have more people per square mile. We seem determined to cram as many of us into paradise as possible, too: We’re the fourth-fastest growing state in the country, fifth if you count Washington D.C., which tops the list of population growth. After that, people are moving to Texas, North Dakota, Utah… and Florida.

And yet, look at the news: Florida Man rules the day. The rest of the country loves to poke fun at us; we’re the nation’s wang, according to Jon Stewart. The 9/11 hijackers trained here; we’re the reason the 2000 election cycle lasted (almost) longer than any other in our history (shout out 2020). We have pythons in the Everglades, iguanas in our backyards, crocodiles wandering around the Florida Keys.

People can’t get enough of how awful we are, but they can’t get enough of how awesome we are, either.

Why?

Maybe, just maybe, we’re not as awful as our reputation. Perhaps we’re not a bunch of ignorant criminals and white trash crackheads at all.  Maybe, instead of being a laughingstock, we’re actually… spectacular.

I have a bus ride from hell — and several other passengers — who will attest to how much it meant to get home to Florida.