On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was working at a 100,000-watt 'Hot Country' radio station in northern Wisconsin. I was the morning deejay, went by the on-air name Dave Klein, which was the name of someone my first love met one night long ago - a hook-up that was a source of as much inspiration as devastation my freshman year of high school. I was long over the girl by the time I got the radio gig, but I don't think I'll ever forget my freshman year, and the name surely seemed more country music-appropriate than 'Jared Glovsky'. ("You want I should play some Shania Twain...!?")
That morning, I came into work like any other, keyed myself into the station at seven a.m., bleary-eyed, running on auto-pilot and sure to stay that way until I could get the coffee maker fired up, though I was in no particular hurry to make that happen. I rarely had a reason to be alert at that job. Early mornings at 100,000 watts were easy for me...easy breezy. Nobody would be there and nothing much started happening before 8 or 8:30, which meant that first hour was golden. I could let the automation crank out song after song from Toby Keith or the Dixie Chicks, and speak only intermittently, usually in and out of commercial breaks, knowing (with a fair amount of satisfaction) that whatever I said, and however frequently, it would be heard by a lot of people. Our broadcast tower sat advantageously at 1,100 feet above sea level, and my voice spilled out over Lake Superior, unimpeded by that flat blue tabletop, reaching three states and parts of Canada at the speed of light.
"Good Tuesday morning to you! 54 degrees right now in the Chequamegon Bay area under crystal clear skies! Don't forget we've got casino slots coming up sometime next hour, your chance to score some great casino prizes, and all morning long remember to listen for the sound of the touchtone phones! They're your chance to get into the drawing for a trip for two to Florida!"
Thus was my morning spiel in the last days and weeks of the pre-9/11 world. I would expend the bulk of my pre-coffee energy cranking all that out in the best radio voice modulation I could muster, steeping a little bag of country twang (just a little, to affect as much of "Dave Klein" as possible) in an oversized mug of (truly) absurd enthusiasm that routinely sloshed over the rim and soaked my shirt. It was an auditory illusion, of course. When the 'live mic' light switched off and the music started playing again, "Dave Klein" would turn down the speakers and resume his previous posture: slumped down in his chair like a partially deflated dummy, feet thrown up on the console, hands clasped comfortably across his chest, watching TV, half asleep. There was a little television in the on-air booth and on the morning of September 11, I was watching Welcome Back Kotter...I'm pretty sure...on TV Land. Or maybe it was Three's Company. Possibly Sanford and Son, come to think of it. But it was something fun and silly, for sure. Something friendly. Something innocent, frightless and forever young.
"Dave Klein" was twenty-eight years old, shaggy haired, scruffy-faced, a terrible dresser with a face for radio. "Dave Klein" was nestled comfortably, for the moment, in a decent-paying and cushy, but entirely dead end gig, contentedly watching TV Land. Frightless and forever young.
At 7:52 a.m., I segued into a commercial break with the promise of a weather forecast on the other side. Halfway through that bank of commercials, one of the sales people, Janice, phoned into the studio line, asked if I was watching TV. I said yes, told her that frigging Horshack still cracked me up after all these years (It MUST have been Welcome Back, Kotter!). She said I better turn on CNN. I said, okay, why? She told me a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. She seemed tense (though not hysterical) about it, but did not have a chance to elaborate. The commercials ended and I had to get back on-air with the weather.
"Sunny skies so far through Saturday, highs near 60, lows in the upper 30s to lower 40s! Chance of frost in the outlying areas away from the lake! You know what that means! Cover those plants, folks!"
I launched into the station ident, followed that up with a song, and hastily turned the channel on the TV to CNN.
I expected to see something unfortunate but mostly innocuous, maybe even just this side of comical. A single engine plane, probably, its ass end jutting out of a window high up, the pilot hanging from the building's antenna by his parachute. My mind was only able to conjure up a mere mishap in those last seconds of pre-9/11 life - a minor tragedy, with minor injury and no fatality. If I'd bothered imagining ten years into the future (though that was not really possible; "Dave Klein" never thought about the future), I'd have pictured people saying (laughing), "Oh I remember when that happened!"
What I saw instead was a gigantic fiery hole ripped out of the side of the north tower, black smoke pouring out of it, steadily upwards. My eyes widened, I felt a little pinch in my gut. I was not thinking terrorist anything, had no grasp yet of how bad it was, or would get (or still feel, ten years later), but I was muttering, "What the fuck..." aloud, to myself. This was more than I expected. More than Janice had alluded to on the phone.
Then, not five minutes after I had turned on CNN, as (ironically enough) OUR top of the hour news (CNN Radio) was playing, the south tower suddenly exploded in a massive sideways-shooting fireball. I was looking straight at the screen when it happened, but did not see the second plane approach, only the resulting explosion, and like the CNN anchors, I was confused at first, thought it was the north tower that had exploded.
Hearing the confusion, the disquiet, in the voices of the CNN anchors as they tried to figure out not only what had just happened but, now, what the hell was going on, gave me my first inkling that something was up, that not only was this bigger than Janice had alluded to, but this was beyond any garden variety tragedy.
I didn't do much of a radio show that day. I stayed glued to that little TV, watching in disbelief as each new horror unfolded. Co-workers started arriving, aware of what was going on by then, and crowded into the on-air booth with me. Once in a while someone made an attempt to collect himself, go back out to his desk and 'try to get some work done...', but he always came back eventually. Nobody got any work done that day. There was a sense in those first couple of hours, I think, though nobody said it out loud, that this might be the end. That hell was breaking loose and there was no stopping it. All of a sudden, 'casino slots' and 'touchtone phones', and trips to Florida and weather forecasts didn't seem to matter much.
I wasn't totally disengaged, however. I continued to talk in and out of commercial breaks, thinking that anybody listening, even just having their radio droning in the background, might be unnerved for not hearing a live voice at all. And on the suggestion of management, I started playing whatever patriotic country music I could find: In America by Charlie Daniels, God Bless the U.S.A. by Lee Greenwood. And after the second tower collapsed and news came of an 'explosion' at the Pentagon and another plane down in Pennsylvania, I went on and announced that everyone should find their way to a television as soon as possible and monitor exactly what's going on in New York and Washington, because it's going to affect all Americans.
"Things are changing right before our eyes."
I mention this only because it prompted a call on the studio line. A woman who had been listening to the radio all morning as she worked in her garden. She apparently had not caught our top-of-the-hour news breaks, or not listened closely. She had no idea what was going on, asked me to elaborate on what I'd said on-air, fill her in.
I was not comfortable explaining it to her. If CNN couldn't provide me all the answers, what could I possibly say to this woman? How best could I handle it? I didn't want to agitate her unnecessarily, but lulling her into some false sense of security somehow seemed more detrimental. In the end, honesty served as the best policy, though I think I barfed it all over her. I told her there were terrorist attacks going on out East. Thousands presumed dead. The towers had collapsed. The Pentagon was attacked. A plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. All flights were grounded now. Nobody was sure where the President was.
Et cetera.
She was aghast.
"I've been outside gardening all morning!" she cried. "I had the TV off! I was out there with the radio on! I listen to your station all the time! It's such a beautiful day!"
She kept bleating on excitably. She could have gotten off the phone at any time, gone into her house, turned on her television and found out for herself, but I sensed she was a bit afraid to. I let her ramble for a good five minutes, but finally had to beg off, and felt weird doing so. Felt like I was abandoning her...
Can it be that was ten years ago, already?
Everyone who was an adult then has a 'where were you...' story to tell. But I've had a chance to talk to some teenagers in my midst, who were just little kids when it happened. They have a unique perspective through the nebulous lens of childhood we don't often wonder about, being so (understandably) distracted with remembering and honoring the fallen and the survivors.
One kid who just turned nineteen remembers a TV being brought into his fourth grade classroom, the entire class watching the events as they unfolded. He said the teacher did not spare their feelings by sugar-coating it, that he was made aware - at least as much as one can be aware of anything at age 9 - that this was a national tragedy.
Conversely, another kid about the same age remembers no mention being made of it at all in his classroom, just everyone in the school being corralled into the gymnasium to play games for the day, abruptly, without any reason given.
Denial. Got it.
Still another, this one only in kindergarten ten years ago (kindergarten!), has vague memories of being aware that something had happened, and being let out of school early. She says the teacher alluded only to a plane having crashed, but by the time they left school, she says, other kids were already throwing around the phrase, 'World War III'.
Someone had caught wind.
Others I've spoken to were not at all aware something had happened...not aware of anything, in fact, until years later, and then learning of 9/11 only in newly burgeoning historical context, as it related to the fact that we are a nation at war. And that is the most significant part, I believe. These kids, from 15 to 19 years old right now, are at the vanguard of the generation coming of age that knows only their nation at war.
Really? Ten years? A decade since all that happened?!
Am I really thirty-eight years old?
I don't feel any different, and yet I know that I am. I can see it in my face every time I look in the mirror: the lines of aging, my hair starting to thin, not quite so shaggy anymore. For this loss of youth and time, I want to say I'm unhappy, but I can't. I'm happier now than I was back then. Not necessarily with (all aspects of) my life (in other words, not totally where I want to be), but with myself. I'm okay with things, with my age, my personal affairs. Facing forty doesn't seem to be as difficult as facing thirty was, and nothing is as daunting as it used to be. Nothing's quite as hopeful either, I must say...but it's not as daunting.
Truth is, I'm not a huge fan of "Dave Klein", looking back, and I would not give back the last ten years, if it meant having to be that guy again.
"Dave Klein" smoked like a chimney, still had acne for God's sake, wasn't as good of a father as he thought he should be, too young and too dumb to get it right. "Dave Klein" was still saying stupid things with the bluster of youthful certainty. "Dave Klein" was self-righteous. High strung. Hell-bent. He was less cynical than I am now, perhaps...believed more readily that great things were possible, that anything was possible. But that's because he never did anything, never tried. He was mostly lazy, self-absorbed, quick with platitudes masked as advice or opinions, but removed from any real risk, perfectly happy whiling away the days at that radio job.
All that was about to change. Within six months of 9/11, the radio station was sold, fully automated, and we were all laid off. "Dave Klein" went forever silent on January 1, 2002, and it was a good thing. At the time, it was jarring to lose my job, be pushed out of the nest, so to speak, but it spurred me to try different things, make a go of something substantial before I turned thirty. I could have stayed nestled in that tiny (albeit comfortable) cocoon forever.
The same could be said about this nation. In a way, we were all pushed out of a proverbial nest on 9/11, where we had bedded down and become complacent about the state of the world and our status in it. I agree with President Obama that we are a stronger society today. Make no mistake, it should not have happened, but it did, and it was a wake-up call for all Americans - to vigilance, gratitude and reflection. I truly believe that in the end, whatever we are or aren't today as a society, we're still better now than we were before that awful day. The only thing 'better' back then was the times...and even that is an illusion, ultimately.
It was the the best of times, it was the worst of times, as Dickens said...
So far, I have stayed away from the wall-to-wall 'coverage' of this 10th anniversary, and plan to for the rest of the weekend. I find the extent of it mawkish, and more to the point, for me, completely unnecessary. When it comes to 9/11, all the coverage and reflection I need or can stand goes on in my head every year about this time. I see the planes and the fire and the smoke and the dropping bodies and the confetti of madness. 9/11 is, and will always, and should be, a private ceremony. Oh, don't you worry, my friend with the bumper sticker, I will never forget. I simply don't need Anderson Cooper putting his two cents in, or endless analysis from pundits or experts, presidents or politicians telling me what happened, or didn't happen. I don't need to hear a History Channel compilation of every recorded message left that day by strained, uneasy voices now relinquished to the ages, or have the physics of the towers falling explained to me. I only need to know that they fell. And that Flight 93 fell from the Pennsylvania sky. And that the walls of the Pentagon crumbled.
But we, as a people - 'We the People...' - did not.
