story1178.xml
Title
story1178.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-08-19
911DA Story: Story
As I left my apartment to catch the 8:02 a.m. bus, I looked directly overhead and saw the crescent moon, reminding me of "2001: A Space Odyssey," an image from which I had used in a course lecture I had given the previous afternoon. It looked beautiful, up there in the early-morning blue. As I was looking, several balloons floated past my line of sight. A nice thing!
I had to get to the office for a 10:00 a.m. meeting with my new graduate student, so I did not have time to watch CNBC's "Squawk Box" as long as I usually would or to head to Starbucks for a morning coffee. I crossed West Gray to await the bus. It was about 10 minutes to 8. Waiting, I looked up to see a jet on its final approach to Hobby. As I was looking, another jet appeared to enter the approach pattern, curving into it at a distance that struck me as being oddly too close. Watching, the first plane then turned out of the approach and appeared to stay in a direction now heading toward Bush. It was notable in that I had not seen that before in my daily wait for the bus, but it had no significance. It seems foolish to say, but what ran through my mind as I was watching was, 'I bet that's what terrorists would do, fly planes into one another.'
It dissipated to simply become one of the number of those stimuli and random thoughts that form distractions while awaiting a bus, along with a helicopter, an older woman runner who was near the bus stop - stretching her legs in advance of running, and the like. I saw my bus turn onto Gray and I got ready to board.
The transfer I obtained indicated that my boarding time was 8:02 a.m. I sat in the first transverse seat on the right hand side of the bus. Several women were also on board. We traveled down Woodhead and turned on Fairfield. In several minutes, a dispatcher came onto the driver's intercom and said:
"We don't usually do this, but in the interest of history please note that an American Airlines jet was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center."
To say I was numb would be to attribute to me more activity than I felt. A New Yorker working in Texas, I did not know what to think, even whether I should believe it. I just looked out the window, wondering if any part of that message had actually happened had really happened or was just some misunderstanding. I couldn't imagine that the message was a joke or a prank, but I kept thinking it was a misunderstanding or an exaggeration of, say, a small plane, a plane that crashed into the river, a hijacker's threat. I imagined what I had seen in photos of what had happened to the Empire State Building in, what, the 1940s or 50s. However, I also kept thinking about what the implications would be if this were true. If it had been attacked. The number of people killed. What the scene was like.
I thought of my precious South Cove bench where I would often sit, back against the fence and the water and the WinterGarden with its wonderful palms and the playful and whimsical figurines in the North Cove park. I thought of the people I knew that worked in the towers. I thought of my friends and how many of them might have family or friends there. I thought of the pictures I had taken of the buildings over the years, their frames contrasted with that of the Woolworth Building being a favorite theme <http://www.divinestra.com/phila_03112002.html>.
Like a split-brain patient where no direct communication occurs between left and right cerebral hemispheres, it was as if one side of my brain was envisioning a world where we were under attack and right then and there the 50,000-plus people in the towers were/are endangered and, on the other side, everything remained just the way it had been moments ago, but for the odd misunderstanding of a Texas bus dispatcher.
The bus ride continued. Past Montrose. Heading into downtown Houston. I was looking to see whether any sign might be discerned out on the streets of some emergency. There were none. Passing the Enron building and its under-construction clone paired in a fashion modestly akin to the towers on the left and nothing seemed different. No one on the bus had spoken during this time period and were getting off at their stops. Recalling a stock crawler in the El Paso Building that was visible from the street, I made sure that I caught a glance of it to see what I might: it was canned stuff from yesterday, though; not including any current news. The ride proceeded.
At a certain point, the dispatcher came back on. Retraction, I hoped. But, he said:
"Again, in the interest of U.S. history, another plane has been hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center and another was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon."
And, again, my mind was numb in a dissociation between accepting and not accepting this news as being accurate.
As the bus stopped at the Eastwood Transportation Center, I departed saying 'take care' to the driver when he stopped me and said, "Didn't you hear? Planes crashed into the buildings and into the Pentagon." I could only respond with a "Umm-hmmm" and a nod and what must have been a very blank look.
Waiting for my connection, I remained numb. It would be 10 or 15 minutes until I knew which scenario was real. Catching the second bus and then exiting it for the short walk to my campus office, however, my numbness thawed and I realized that the news was probably accurate and I thought these remaining minutes might be the last of what I thought was perhaps a world that was no longer the same. I had a 'stop-and-smell-the-roses' moment, taking a deep breath and slowly taking in the greenery surrounding me. At the office, I immediately tried to get online and found everything overloaded and frozen. Not good, I thought. I was eventually able to access Yahoo! and saw "Plane strikes trade center, building aflame," and a photo that showed the smoking hole in the North Tower; the one-inch by half-inch photo looked bad but did not look as bad as I thought it might.
By then, however, several students had set up a small black-and-white television used for data-collection purposes. The only channel we could receive with no cable or antenna showed a grainy, static-filled image of lower Manhattan covered in billowing smoke and Peter Jennings speaking of the collapse of one of the towers and, within a couple of minutes, we watched the second tower seemingly melt before our eyes as it collapsed. The numbness I thought I had experienced earlier paled to that which now enveloped me.
I had to get to the office for a 10:00 a.m. meeting with my new graduate student, so I did not have time to watch CNBC's "Squawk Box" as long as I usually would or to head to Starbucks for a morning coffee. I crossed West Gray to await the bus. It was about 10 minutes to 8. Waiting, I looked up to see a jet on its final approach to Hobby. As I was looking, another jet appeared to enter the approach pattern, curving into it at a distance that struck me as being oddly too close. Watching, the first plane then turned out of the approach and appeared to stay in a direction now heading toward Bush. It was notable in that I had not seen that before in my daily wait for the bus, but it had no significance. It seems foolish to say, but what ran through my mind as I was watching was, 'I bet that's what terrorists would do, fly planes into one another.'
It dissipated to simply become one of the number of those stimuli and random thoughts that form distractions while awaiting a bus, along with a helicopter, an older woman runner who was near the bus stop - stretching her legs in advance of running, and the like. I saw my bus turn onto Gray and I got ready to board.
The transfer I obtained indicated that my boarding time was 8:02 a.m. I sat in the first transverse seat on the right hand side of the bus. Several women were also on board. We traveled down Woodhead and turned on Fairfield. In several minutes, a dispatcher came onto the driver's intercom and said:
"We don't usually do this, but in the interest of history please note that an American Airlines jet was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center."
To say I was numb would be to attribute to me more activity than I felt. A New Yorker working in Texas, I did not know what to think, even whether I should believe it. I just looked out the window, wondering if any part of that message had actually happened had really happened or was just some misunderstanding. I couldn't imagine that the message was a joke or a prank, but I kept thinking it was a misunderstanding or an exaggeration of, say, a small plane, a plane that crashed into the river, a hijacker's threat. I imagined what I had seen in photos of what had happened to the Empire State Building in, what, the 1940s or 50s. However, I also kept thinking about what the implications would be if this were true. If it had been attacked. The number of people killed. What the scene was like.
I thought of my precious South Cove bench where I would often sit, back against the fence and the water and the WinterGarden with its wonderful palms and the playful and whimsical figurines in the North Cove park. I thought of the people I knew that worked in the towers. I thought of my friends and how many of them might have family or friends there. I thought of the pictures I had taken of the buildings over the years, their frames contrasted with that of the Woolworth Building being a favorite theme <http://www.divinestra.com/phila_03112002.html>.
Like a split-brain patient where no direct communication occurs between left and right cerebral hemispheres, it was as if one side of my brain was envisioning a world where we were under attack and right then and there the 50,000-plus people in the towers were/are endangered and, on the other side, everything remained just the way it had been moments ago, but for the odd misunderstanding of a Texas bus dispatcher.
The bus ride continued. Past Montrose. Heading into downtown Houston. I was looking to see whether any sign might be discerned out on the streets of some emergency. There were none. Passing the Enron building and its under-construction clone paired in a fashion modestly akin to the towers on the left and nothing seemed different. No one on the bus had spoken during this time period and were getting off at their stops. Recalling a stock crawler in the El Paso Building that was visible from the street, I made sure that I caught a glance of it to see what I might: it was canned stuff from yesterday, though; not including any current news. The ride proceeded.
At a certain point, the dispatcher came back on. Retraction, I hoped. But, he said:
"Again, in the interest of U.S. history, another plane has been hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center and another was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon."
And, again, my mind was numb in a dissociation between accepting and not accepting this news as being accurate.
As the bus stopped at the Eastwood Transportation Center, I departed saying 'take care' to the driver when he stopped me and said, "Didn't you hear? Planes crashed into the buildings and into the Pentagon." I could only respond with a "Umm-hmmm" and a nod and what must have been a very blank look.
Waiting for my connection, I remained numb. It would be 10 or 15 minutes until I knew which scenario was real. Catching the second bus and then exiting it for the short walk to my campus office, however, my numbness thawed and I realized that the news was probably accurate and I thought these remaining minutes might be the last of what I thought was perhaps a world that was no longer the same. I had a 'stop-and-smell-the-roses' moment, taking a deep breath and slowly taking in the greenery surrounding me. At the office, I immediately tried to get online and found everything overloaded and frozen. Not good, I thought. I was eventually able to access Yahoo! and saw "Plane strikes trade center, building aflame," and a photo that showed the smoking hole in the North Tower; the one-inch by half-inch photo looked bad but did not look as bad as I thought it might.
By then, however, several students had set up a small black-and-white television used for data-collection purposes. The only channel we could receive with no cable or antenna showed a grainy, static-filled image of lower Manhattan covered in billowing smoke and Peter Jennings speaking of the collapse of one of the towers and, within a couple of minutes, we watched the second tower seemingly melt before our eyes as it collapsed. The numbness I thought I had experienced earlier paled to that which now enveloped me.
Collection
Citation
“story1178.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 21, 2025, https://www.911digitalarchive.org/items/show/11712.